Uronstelaii

by Pablo Helguera

In 1660, a mysterious sect of Dutch mystics arrived to an island in the New World with the objective to create a new society. Their governing principle revolved around the uninterrupted performance of a single dramatic work in seven tableaux vivants. Invoking alchemical imagery and hermetic thought, their goal was to arrive to a higher state of being by collectively embodying the symbolic representation of all of human and divine knowledge. Their experiment, which would last a century, would test the human boundaries of time, physical endurance, and the collective commitment toward an idea. "Like a 'lamb in wolf's clothing, ' Pablo Helguera uses the exoteric mechanisms of historical erudition to lure us to his magical island of the Ourobourians. But right about the time we lose our footing on the land's slippery shores-when we begin to wonder if the artist has gleaned an esoteric tradition for more than just source material for his island's symbols and nomenclature, when we start to navigate his land with the non-verbal hunches of the alchemists' score, and call into question the artifices we employ to gather the world around us-we realize Helguera has really taken us on a journey to another land altogether, the most forbidden of the self." -Lise Patt, founder and director of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Los Angeles "Pablo Helguera is a splendid liar, a first-class storyteller, a curious mind constantly in search of stories, a creator of parallel universes and impossible characters living in credible situations, which invariably probe our certainties, intuition and knowledge." - Naief Yehya, writer and critic

70 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2010

About the author

Pablo Helguera (1971, Ciudad de México)

Pedagogo, artista visual y escritor reside en Nueva York donde es director de programas educativos del Museo de Arte Moderno (MoMA). Sus estudios se centran en temas como historia, pedagogía, sociolingüística, etnografía y memoria. Autor de libros como “Endingness”, “Manual de estilo del arte Contemporáneo”, “Estela y las Hojas”, “The School of Panamerican Unrest”, entre otros.

Reviews

[Ray Ogar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads title info is spelled incorrectly: the title is, “Urÿonstelaii”

Midsommar meets The Village as an academic report.