Joshua Reed Stuart is a transmutator working in experimental and documentary film, mixed-medium frequency modulation, and interdisciplinary image modeling. Attaining unto the adept's path, he fuses the esoteric to life-long pursuits in glyph re-animation, poetic lore, and digital conjuration.
My motivation always begins in questioning, and unfolds from critical penetration toward the source, or root, of a widely held perception or belief. My epistemological questioning of the purpose and nature of being, and G_d, began when I was four-years-old; and from that moment, my life has taken both destructive and creative inquest into modes and behaviors that challenge and transgress religious, cultural, and sociological boundaries.
Digging further into this framework of thinking there is a “challenging-forth” necessary in any creative development. An intuitive livewire within my mind perceives this “challenging-forth” is a sentient intelligence of a nature and origin still wholly alien and unknown to us, yet prevalent in every spark of imaginative and creative output since the dawn of records of such human endeavor, that to deny it would be anathema.
The consequential step that follows “challenging-forth” is calling-forth. This is generally the receptive/conductive phase of creation in my practice where I find myself sojourning to the wild and desolate places of the American SW, chasing ranch and desert roads to their untraversable terminations in places so far removed from human society that the only interruption that reminds one that you are not the only human left alive is the rare jet blast of an aircraft circumambulating the stratosphere several thousand feet overhead. Once there, I call-forth contact with these intelligences, both natural and preternatural, that help download the leftover puzzle pieces for the final creative phase, embodiment, which still remains a dark mystery to me.
I believe there is still much questioning required if we are to arrive at a mutually holistic and scientific disentanglement of the human psyche and soul from the draconian fetters of modern philosophical and religious paradigms. I hope we find ourselves capable of doing so, maintaining the therianthropic and animistic spiritual landscapes of our ancient forebears, while simultaneously employing the wisdom to not fall prey to the violent whims of our primeval emotional matrix. Perhaps if we are wise and strong enough, we may even find healing from our species’ collective trauma and suicidal trajectory.