Hayden Dunham: Salt of a New Earth // Salt nýrrar jarðar
0:03:01 - Origin
0:02:09 - Destruction, Creation & Energy
Everything on the planet is made of both matter & spirit, spirit is imbued in matter, the container of the spirit. Everything comes from stardust, everything is unique, everything is material and immaterial. The earth is the host where matter and spirit co-align. Everything, Everyone can understand everything on a material level that ascends to the spiritual and traverses time and space. Nothing, no one is ever lost, nor leaves the earth. Nothing can be created nor destroyed, only turned into energy. Energy can also be converted into material. This process is repeated forever on a cosmological scale. Hayden Dunham’s heavy metal alchemy with the creation of SLYPH has revealed the interdependencies between us and everything on the earth. It’s a journey that came from an urge to examine the shadow of human’s extractivism and its polluting consequences and led the artist to see things for what they are beyond a simple truth of good and evil.
0:06:05 - The Journey
Salt of a New Earth retells Hayden’s inner journey of transmutation and embodiment in making SLYPH. You can experience their journey in the exhibition through the evaporative, ever-changing artworks in the show.
The Bridge is the material representation of the philosophy of Begin Again. Begin Again makes a loop from the sky to the earth, the high ceiling to the SLYPH puddle on the floor. Referencing the cyclicity of Begin Again that we are all bound by. That we are all never completely destroyed, nor created, yet we can transmute into energy and leave traces, imprints behind when we do so. Like the SLYPH’s malleable nature, our bodies can change again and again while we live.
0:07:04 - Salt of a New Earth
Hayden Dunham calls for participants to be “the salt of a new earth”.
0:01:10:10 - Quantum Touching
The same particles that can be found in the very fabric of all things on earth now are the same particles that millions of years ago danced with each other in stars. When two particles are separated, they remain connected by something that defies logic. If one particle vibrates the other particle reacts in unison, despite oceans separating them, this is quantum entanglement. This unison when experienced by humans is like a past-life experience on a cellular level. When we touch human ashes or the deposits of the earth, volcanic ash, the texture and feel resonates with something inside of us. For you to notice you must hone into that frequency beyond logic, inside of you.
0:04:07 - Begin Again *
Begin again. We can all begin again, just as aluminum can. The heavy metal that liberated the minds and souls of people and became the harbinger of rebirth for a new earth. The earth is from dust and becomes dust. Again and again. We are dust and become dust. When we begin again a part of us is released and a part of us is left behind. We are all bound with each other and our environments through this cyclicity of life, matter and existence. Begin Again is the cloud that becomes rain, leaving an imprint on the earth only to evaporate and return to the sky again. Only to prepare to come back down again. What is left is material and what is released is immaterial. Begin Again transmutes us, transports us and connects us to the universe. When we embody this cyclicity we will be the salt of a new earth.
0:03:08 - Alchemy
Hayden Dunham is a heavy metal alchemist, soothsayer of matter and diviner of spirit. Hayden is concerned principally with discovering methods for transmuting material, finding a universal solvent, a figurative elixir of life. Hayden Dunham is all consumed by a new alchemist code. Not only by conjuring up a new material in the hopes of counterbalancing aluminum contaminating effects but also transmuting the way it’s perceived and understood. This they did through a journey with their own form of chemistry and speculative philosophy. Hayden Dunham relinquished energy into embodying the aluminum in order to find ways to transmute a flawed substance of value, into a substance of great value. Salt of a new earth is a journey of transmutation, both emotionally and physically. Salt of a New Earth is a journey of personal enquiry, alchemist procedure and full enlightenment.
0:05:06 - SLYPH
SLYPH strengthens the message of Begin again. It brings new hope and promise of pure cyclicity. SLYPH not only clears aluminum poisoning from polluting heavy metal on a chemical level. It will lead the way to new dimensions on all levels. SLYPH strengthens our life energies and synergy with other energies, human or not. SLYPH converts matter into energy, and has proven capable of revitalising and evolving organic life on planet-wide scale. SLYPH is a gateway substance to the air plane. SLYPH leaves imprints when it evaporates and affects the mineral compositions in the exhibition. Hayden Dunham made SLYPH with the composition of gypsum, water hyacinth, sulfur, silica and calcium. In the process they embodied the new material and started lacing their clothes with aluminum and SLYPH, in order to understand the material transmutation close to their own skin. To hone into the frequency of transmutation on a cellular level. SLYPH was used and incorporated in the making of the works in Salt of a New Earth.
0:01:05:13
Text by Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir
