16mm film installtion, black and white, mute, 3’16”

To navigate, in a genuine way, in the unknown necessitates an attitude of daring, but not one of recklessness (movements generated from the Magical Passes of Carlos Castaneda)

In an ambiguous dark space, a mime performs the exercises described by the anthropologist Carlos Casteneda in his 1998 book Magical Passes. According to Casteneda, these were secret shamanic gestures meant to invigorate the ”subtle body” and enhance one’s ability to navigate “the dark sea of awareness”. Though Castaneda received international acclaim and a PhD for his anthropological research he was eventually disclosed as a fraud.

With his new film Koester enters this treacherous territory of a choreography of fact and fiction. Koester’s focus is on a bodily movement system intended to access or express physical sensations beyond cognition, and its potential as a platform for different identities and politics to emerge.