One + One (2006)

Joachim Koester

16 mm film transferred onto video, black and white, sound, 5’30” and 6’00”

Joachim Koester’s installation Morning of the Magicians and double video projection One + One + One features ‘The Abbey of Thelema’ – a ruin that once housed a magical community led by the infamous Aleister Crowley in Cefalu, Sicily. The long abandoned building is in a dilapidated state, buried in bushes, with a hole in the roof; hidden, like a sleeping castle, in an otherwise highly developed and posh neighborhood of the city. Inside, Crowley’s drug-heavy and sexually explicit frescos are still visible through layers of graffiti and peeling paint, making the building, one of the few remaining monuments in the largely invisible history of the occult’s travel from extreme obscurity to its gradual assimilation into the mainstream culture of today. The title of the video work is an allusion to Godard’s film One Plus One.


carrie emberlyn