Samadhi

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film still
© Jordan Belson, Courtesy Center for Visual Music

In meditative practices of certain eastern philosophies, samadhi denotes a state of awareness that is beyond waking and sleeping and is accompanied by the complete fusion of the individual soul with the universal soul or, rather, by the physical and the spiritual world becoming one. Jordan Belson, who was engaged intensively with meditation at the time this film was made and saw visual art forms as a means of externalizing internal processes, conveyed his transcendental visual and auditory experiences in his film. Using optical and mechanical procedures, he created a filmic world of images in which circular and ring-like shapes, reminiscent of organic and planetary phenomena, are reversed, dissolved and consolidated in constant cyclic, pulsating transformation. This is accompanied by celestial or rhythmic electronic sounds and breathing noises that recall the central role of breath control in yoga.