Case AION2051 – 25/01/1946:

“Well, the straps were unfastened, and the door I could see was cracked right open.  I unstuck my back from the leather chair and sidled over til my feet could reach the marble floor.  The door- it was steel on the inside, unprimed oak on the outside- pushed aside easily.  But it was the light.  Struck me down, as if I was a mole or something.  After a few minutes it didn’t weigh on me so much, and I could see the trays and tubes around, then the way out.  And I practically flew out of there, out of the lab, out of the glass doors, nobody could stop me.  Hadn’t been outside in ages, felt like a kid.  Felt like a kid running home, snot all down my face so happy I couldn’t care. …  The air outside was like a hit, you know? And I’m just turning round and round before I finally see I’m still barefoot.  Barefoot and I can’t feel the grass, the stones.  But I can see the rising concrete face of the building, and I can feel myself rising, I can feel that the gravity of the Earth and me, it ain’t so grave, you see? I was feeling the weight of my body, and it was nothing.  Nothing.”

Case AION725 – 03/11/1955:

“I had been out in town near Rangeley, just past that bend by the pond looking for inspiration.  It was tranquil, a mild breeze rippling the water’s surface and casting shards of the sky into uncertain shapes.  One man, hunting with his dog I think came by, who stopped to chat…There was some confusion, but then I spoke, not with great force but with a good deal of conviction and the words…came out of me and were floating in front of the air.  It wasn’t so much the thing itself, the occurrence, but that this had calmed him.  He told me afterwards, that it was as if the words had been spoken directly to him, inside of him, and he understood completely.  He understood all the directions they could take, all the meanings and backthoughts, all the double entendres and even the pure intentions of it.  He knew, he knew I had spoken to him.  I’ll never forget the way he explained it.  Now it seems to be activated by certain words, and I can feel it in my throat, in my vocal chords before they appear.”

Case AION542 - 04/04/1979:

“I was just around the corner, behind those trees where you can’t see the Centre.  I’d just spent several hours in there.  An elderly couple were enjoying a stroll through the forest, in that magnificent winter light.  Hard, crisp light with clear oranges that bloom on every surface they touch.  I remember, because they were both wearing jumpsuits, white and yellow, and those large visor-like sun shades.  Most curious.  Quite the vision of the future.  But it was just then that when I blinked my eyelids did not open again, and I had an involuntary squeezing of the eyelids.  I began to see those fireworks and city maps you get when you press your eyeballs, ‘floaters’ we were taught to call them in med school, but that always sounded crass to me.  But extremely vivid.  Of course I was concerned, I’d had cataract surgery some years previous.  But opening my eyes. Oh my. It was another world.  They bore halos.  Not just the couple.  The trees, each leaf, each cell.  They turned in place around their centre, appearing to constantly drift to the side while staying stationary.  Those at the periphery of my sight were the most intense, but I couldn’t quite pin them down, like seeing a hummingbird, but some genus beyond terrestrial, beyond celestial even.”

Case AION3733 – 17/02/1992:

“Sometimes, after sessions we’d be hanging out in the rec room.  Still feeling some of the after effects of the test, right?  Everything just that little bit more unstable, but in that unhitching you also get that chance to reach out, to touch.  The thing I’d been doing just before this had been really focused, pretty intense, I’m still not sure what they gave me or what exactly the procedure entailed but it was strong, man.  The session leader had explained it comparing it with some other work, tests on phantom limbs where people could feel the absent part of them by touching like their cheek, or their shoulder, but talked about it like some form of physical empathy.  And the two of us taking part, we were sitting like us now, opposite each other when I felt a sort of tickle from another place, a kind of absent, satisfying sort of twitch. She looked at me and I could see she was there too, it was like a real arm, another invisible one that both of us had grown and was the link between us, but more fluid and just humming.  Just a few seconds, but we moved with it. … I guess it just put me in that direction, cuz after I was just sitting on the couch, other volunteers drifting in from their activities when I could feel the reaching. … These limbs, they seemed to extend between all of us, locking us into some sort of embrace.”

The above are the edited transcripts of the qualitative, highly subjective accounts obtained following the subjects’ release.  Each test required the sustained participation over a course of sometimes years, and each passed repeated standard health exams.  Despite scientific inaccuracies, the raw data contained therein indicates a strong association between the subject’s experiences and the possible successful outcome of the ongoing Aion Experiments. in releasing latent biopsychic energies.  The Board hereby advise to continue all activities.  Said subjects will again be taken into custodianship and further developed.

Research: Chris-Fite Wassilak

Sam Keogh (b. Dublin, Ireland, 1985) graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin 2008 with a B.F.A. in Painting. Recent exhibitions include DANGEROUS THINGS, Exchange Dublin, Dec 2009, a collaborative residency with Joe Noonan Ganley; Gracelands 09, Dromahair, Co. Leitrim, Sept. 2009, curated by Vaari Claffey; EUPRAXIA, The Joy Gallery, Sept. 2010 with Joe Noonan Ganley and Alice Lucy Rekab and NEU! Monstertruck Gallery, Sept 2009. Forthcoming exhibitions include BABLE, Artlink, Buncrana, Co.Donegal in May 2010 awarded as part of the Artlink New Art Award.

Takeshi Murata (b. Chicago, USA, 1974) graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 with a B.F.A. in Film/Video/Animation. Murata has exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California; Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Peres Projects, Los Angeles; Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York; Eyebeam, New York; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; New York Underground Film Festival; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, Foxy Production, New York, and Deitch Projects, New York, FACT Centre, Liverpool, UK among others. In 2007 his solo exhibition BLACK BOX: TAKESHI MURATA took place at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Other recent solo exhibitions were held at Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, and Ratio 3, San Francisco.

Ulf Rollof (b. Karlskrona, Sweden, 1961) graduated from the Royal University College of Fine Arts (KKH), Stockholm. He subsequently became a student of Michael Schnorr in San Diego, California in 1978. Recent Solo exhibitions include Proyecto Axolotl at the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico in 2009. Under, Millesgården, Lidingö, Sweden, 2008  Nu at  Brändström & Stene, Stockholm, Sweden 2007.

Ciaran Walsh (b. Carlow, Ireland, 1980) received an MA in 'Art in the Contemporary World' in 2007 from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Since 2003 he has exhibited at various art-spaces in Ireland (including Mothers Tankstation, FOUR, and The City Arts Centre in Dublin; VISUAL, Carlow and The Dock, Leitrim). He curated the temporary public art projects HEDGESCHOOL (2006) and SWEET FUTURES (2007). He has contributed to several art-related publications and self-publishes the art-zine Travelogue. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

The Morris/Trasov Archive is based at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver and is an extensive collection associated with the art practises of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov. Michael Morris (b. Saltdean, England, 1942) graduated with honours from the Vancouver School of Art in 1964 (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) followed by two years of postgraduate studies at the Slade School of Fine Art at the University College London.
Vincent Trasov (b. Edmonton, Alberta, 1947) majored in languages and humanities at the University of British Columbia in 1966 and 1968. The collaborative art practice of the Morris/Trasov Archive includes material generated by Morris and Trasov individually as artists under multiple pseudonyms, as well as additional material collected by both Morris and Trasov. The Morris/Trasov Archive was conceived and initiated as Image Bank in 1969 and was subsequently titled the Morris/Trasov Archive some time after 1977. The Image Bank system of correspondence by mail for exchange of information and ideas between artists became active in 1969.

Robin Watkins was born 1980 in Stockholm, Sweden.
While mainly working collaboratively with Nina Canell in various formats, Watkins is also an active sound collector and musician. He has released many full-length albums and has performed sporadically in a number of constellations during the past decade. Most recently Watkins published The Luminiferous Aether, which is the first in a series of sound editions on Wiens Verlag, Berlin. Recent projects include: 'Performative Attitudes', Kunsthaus Glarus (Glarus, CH) 'Cologne Contemporaries', Projects in Art & Theory (Cologne, DE), 'Calling Out of Context', ICA (London, UK).

The Luminiferous Aether
Friday 9 April, 5 pm & 7pm
By Robin Watkins

To mark the closing of Aion Experiments an event will take place on Friday 9 April at 5pm and again at 7pm. Entitled The Luminiferous Aether, it comprises of documentation made by Robin Watkins of low frequency audio signals which originate from the streams of charged particles that reach the Earth’s atmosphere through the Solar Wind, giving rise to the Aurora Borealis and other magnetic storms. With temperatures dropping to minus 50° C, the field recordings of Solar radiation were made during three consecutive days and nights outside of a small village in the remote Yukon-Koyukuk region (the Arctic Circle, Alaska). For the Project Arts Centre sound screening, listeners will collectively experience the work through individual radio headphones and receivers, grouped in front of a central transmitter.

The event is free, and with limited capacity. Please note that the 7pm event is already over subscribed.
Bookings early to ensure a place: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it