Arantxa Araujo
Interior Beauty in Motion Fellow:
February 2021 / 28 Meditations 1 Month
LUX is a project by Arantxa Araujo / In collaboration with Gabriel Chakraji, Vicios Ocultos, and Mariana Uribe
LUX is a virtual invitation to show up daily for an experimental meditative practice. It merges meditation, scientific research and experiential technologies in an aesthetic expression. The idea is to visit The Interior Beauty Salon every day for the month of February to exercise our awareness.
Individuals are invited to observe and listen, both internally and externally, for one minute attempting to view without judgment or expectation, simply noticing the video, and also our emotions, our thoughts, and our breath.
Could fully immersing ourselves into an audiovisual experience expand our consciousness?
Along with this question there are many that come to mind. Acknowledge what questions come to you. Notice them. You might want to keep a journal for these and any other ideas and reflections.
After watching the videos, I invite you to close your eyes and now keep noticing. You may spend as long as you want, but try to spend at least one-minute doing nothing but noticing.
You may watch the videos at any time. In establishing this practice, it is recommended that we watch the videos at similar times (for example, at 9 am).
On February 28, 2021 at 7pm EST, we will all practice for half an hour in community, a live participatory performance. The performance will be livestreamed from the Leslie-Lohman Museum to your homes. We will revisit what we have experienced and noticed. After finishing the performance, we will have a conversation about our shared experiences.
To register for the performance click HERE or contact The Interior Beauty Salon
For more information scroll down or click HERE / To watch video introduction click HERE
To watch Lux’s daily videos, February 1-28, please scroll down
Arantxa Araujo related links: website / IG
Image courtesy of the artist
WEEK 1 /BEING & NOTICING
7 meditations focused on presence, noticing our surroundings and external context, slowly moving inward to create awareness of our physical, affective, cognitive and vibrational bodies.
DAY 1: 02-01-21 / Allow yourself to observe and listen. Be.
DAY 2: 02-02-21 / Notice the noise. Let the chatter go. Find stillness.
Day 3: 02-03-21 / From stillness, the movement is easily perceived. What causes this movement. Stillness.
WEEK 2 /CLEANSING AND HEALING
Rituals that allow the physical body, the emotional scars, the mind and the nadis or energetical channels to flow in a balanced and peaceful manner.
Day 9: 2-9-21 / Continue listening through your entire body. What do you sense? What do you feel? Allow the inner spaciousness to reveal the moving energy.
Day 10: 2-10-21 / Visualize water flowing. Passing through. Bringing what is needed and taking away what is not. Finding a balance of giving and taking. Finding a place of balance
Day 11: 2-11-21 / Breath in and out. Notice and recognize. Visualize incense burning impurities in the air. Allow fire and wind to burn and release. Breath in and out
Day 12: 2-12-21 / Sit and listen with all your body. Create time for self-reflection. What do you notice?
Day 13: 2-13-21 / Allow the internal fire to begin the transformation. Notice change.
Day 14: 2-14-21
WEEK 3 / ALCHEMICAL TRANSFORMATION
By becoming aware and allowing all our bodies to be cleansed and healed, one allows small changes to occur at different levels of our existence, and in time larger alchemical transformations arrive which gives us access to heightened consciousness.
Day 15: 2-15-21 / Calcination: the initial phase. We are called to bring about some change in our substance: physical or chemical constitution. To oxidize a part or the whole of ourselves- we invite our attachments of the material world to become ash.
Day 16: 2-16-21 / Dissolution: the ash of what was, the dissolved substance—the structures of artificiality, breaking down the conscious self into its parts and waiting… letting go of control for the emergence of examination.
Day 17: 2-17-21 / Separation: to examine the parts through isolation. These emergent parts are now ours to filter and discard any unworthy material. In this is a very conscious process; our true selves begin to arise.
Day 18: 2-18-21 / Conjunction: we must now recombine the filtered elements from separation. Together they continue their process of combining. True Self birthed from the divine union of duality.
Day 19: 2-19-21 / Fermentation: living the process from intuition and knowing—ultimately, leading to inspired action as we learn to connect and trust the world beyond the physical.
Day 20: 2-21-20 / Distillation: purification of the unborn Self. We condense our fermentation. Free from attachments, our fermented Self becomes the change in our perception of reality.
Day 21: 2-21-21 / Coagulation is the sublimation of the purified Ferment from Distillation: the sensed level of awareness that is beyond all things, the union and embodiment of the Spirit.
WEEK 4 / MEDITATION IN LIGHT CREATING DAILY RITUALS
This time is ours! On the 4th week we reinforce rituals of being and noticing; cleansing and healing; of allowing alchemical transformations in our bodies; and lastly remind ourselves that healing and wellbeing is a daily practice.
Day 22: 2-22-21 / Noticing the true self. How do you feel?
Day 23: 2-23-21 / Change is constant. Shifting paradigms. New Perspectives.
Day 24: 2-24-21 / Flow. Flow. Flow.
Day 25: 2-25-21 / Listen to your beat, your full body, your heart.
Day 26: 2-26-21 / Let go. Breath.
Day 27: 2-27-21 / Each moment is an opportunity to remain present.
Day 28: 2-28-21 / Each ending is a new beginning
LUX Closing Performance and Talk at The Leslie Lohman Museum
Could fully-immersing ourselves into an audiovisual experience expand our consciousness?
On February 28, 2021, LUX culminated a 28 -day journey with a half-hour virtual practice, and a participatory performance live-streamed through Zoom and YouTube from The Leslie-Lohman Museum. LUX invited us to show up and immerse ourselves in an audiovisual oasis of consciousness, and to allow visualization and meditation to expand our awareness and to dissolve any duality between subject/object.
The Performance was followed by conversation about our shared experiences. This involved Arantxa Araujo, Gabriel Chakarji, Mariana Uribe, Anna Costa e Silva, and Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo.
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art is the only dedicated LGBTQ art museum in the world with a mission to exhibit and preserve LGBTQ art and foster the artists who create it.