NIGREDO

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 The performance art piece is a 25 minute live - streamed installation 

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Nigredo as the initial phase of the alchemical process marked the death or destruction of the original form (prima materia) to form the chaos, suffering or pain. In other words, black phase includes the beginning of the spiritual process of ascent, which must first come with the abandonment of all old habits, relationships and dependencies of the material world outside. Only then the “purified soul” becomes free to re-unite with “rejuvenated” prima materia

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 In alchemy, nigredo, or blackness, means putrefaction or decomposition. The alchemists believed that as a first step in the pathway to the philosopher's stone all alchemical ingredients had to be cleansed and cooked extensively to an uniform black matter.

 

In analytical psychology, the term became a metaphor 'for the dark night of the soul, when an individual confronts the shadow within'.