There are many ways I can describe BNR, I choose to give you my perspective, the first in-hand description of how I created BNR and how it created me.
What is it? An art movement that started with the statement:
BODY = The New Religion.
The belief, our Body is the highest authority that exists, made me shift my whole creation around it. It is a religion that goes against itself, commanding one thing only - Listen to your Body!
The true story behind the creation of BNR
The creation of this artwork started on a single day on February 20th, 2015.
I woke up in my studio and immediately started to write down, “The Body Manifesto”. Something had happened that I had never experienced before; a direct force flew through me and moved my hand to write down the words of the manifesto about the Enlightened Body.
A REVELATION. I was amazed, the words were not familiar to me at all! It was the beginning of an awakening journey to a new reality. Knowing who I've always been, an Enlightened Body. From that day onwards, I was so occupied with my new realization, I decided to dedicate my life to “the Body” and create the artwork, Body = The New Religion (BNR).
Soon enough I started to plan the first exhibition; collecting disciples for BNR, manufacturing artifacts carved with the symbols of the Released Body Parts’ Autonomy (RBPA), spreading copies of the Body Manifesto and graffiti of the Body Parts symbols all over, and collecting materials for the first exhibition of BNR.
A week before the exhibition's opening, while constructing the main sculpture, “The Art of Repression”, something unexpected happened.
ANOTHER REVELATION. This time it was the Repressed Body, showing me terror and darkness from my unknown past. It was a shock I was not ready for and especially not in this crucial moment, a week before the opening. Not yet feeling the impact that showed up so suddenly, I was confused yet determined to go on with the plan and continue with the construction of the exhibition. The final day had come and we opened the exhibition with a grand concert by “The Wanderers of the Body Orchestra” and myself as the "Master of the Body".
I placed all the orchestra members inside the grid structure of the sculpture, “The Art of Repression”, and dressed them in tomato-leather outfits I made for this event. We set down to play the 5 songs musical piece I wrote, "The revelation of the Body Through the Grid". The show was beyond proportions. The energy in the installation space was very high and the audience seemed to be dazzled by all the happening that was going on around them. I was taking a role, which from that day onwards I declared myself to be, the “Master of the Body”. Mastering the orchestra and provoking people into the ideas of the BODY = The New Religion, declaring that we are all one and therefore we must celebrate our bodies while we still have them, explore beyond the limits of our consciousness and beliefs and break through the grid, off the grid, into our self, which is the Enlightened Body.
A few weeks later, I went on with my mission; to convince people to listen to their bodies, to gather more disciples for my New Religion, aiming to have the biggest artwork ever seen before, which everybody is a part of, just for being a Body.
I went to New York to be a "BODY = The New Religion missioner" in the grid city of the world. The new information about my past was revealed to me only a few weeks before came out, full-on, in that big scary city for the first time. I stayed there for three months, processing my Post-Trauma through a set of intense therapy. Meanwhile, I was also performing in the city, as the Master of the Body, spreading over 10,000 copies of The Body Manifesto, constantly trying to promote the "Enlightened Body", while going through severe moments of Repression; panic attacks, flashbacks, and mental collapses to a level of physically fainting.
Because BNR started with my revelation of the Enlightened Body and then shifted dramatically after my second revelation of the Repressed Body, I unconsciously blamed my body for being repressed, and this division within my body took me to a new level in my creation when I started to write “The Theory of Bodies” in which I could explain "what it is to be a body", first.
The basics of the "Theory of Bodies" is that we are all bodies - everything perceived is a body. Physical or nonphysical, bodies are a definition of something much more real which can not be "defined", the Self. All bodies have the same function - to discover themSelves through a cycle of Self-Realization, from being Repressed to confronting the repression and becoming a Wanderer, the one who seeks to answer the question "what am I?". A Repressed Body that wanderers through itSelf will eventually and inevitably end up its quest as an Enlightened Body who completely knows itSelf, and can now put into light other hidden Repressed Bodies. The fulfillment of the cycle of Self-Realization sparks the beginning of a deeper cycle which goes on and on forever in our bodies. Adding to that, we have infinite bodies in us, since we were born, all looking to Realize themSelves through this cycle. Emptying our bodies with each cycle we end, and by that, coming closer and closer to ourSelf.
The more I think, create, and live this fascinating subject of the body, the more I realize that I have yet even not come close to discovering a bit of what this exploration can show me. One thing I do know for sure, BNR is an independent artwork that creates itself. This realization was another major one for me because up until that moment, BNR was my life, I believed in it with all my heart and I was LIVING it through my own Body. Now I see it as it is - a Body, totally devoted, in the most epic way possible, to commemorate itself before it will leave this world forever - a body, which in itself, became a piece of art.
