Alchemy In The Kitchen: Surrealism and Alchemy.

Carlos Humberto Ortiz Ariza

Matrikel Nr. 366274

Experimentelle Klanggestaltung

Semester 1

September 15 / 2015

Contents:

Alchemy In The Kitchen: Surrealism and Alchemy.

Bibliography
Annex:
Alchemy In The Kitchen Sound Installation Recipe.

Alchemy in the kitchen:

Surrealism and alchemy

Alchemy is a practice and tradition difficult to define in a direct way. From its Egypt, Greek,
Chinese and Arab origins, to the legitimation and spread that had in the middle ages in Europe,
alchemy is a tradition coming from ancient times and practiced in different cultures through
different times.
The teachings and practices of alchemy are usually expressed in esoteric and highly symbolic
terms. It is found usually that a word can have multiple meanings in the literature that exist on the
topic, and many terminology and symbols were created exclusively to keep them secret and only
understandable by those initiated in their specific alchemic circle. The surrealist movement of the
twentieth century also created a symbolic, poetic and esoteric language compared to that of
alchemy and in some cases inspired on it. This passage refers to Andre Breton the founder of the
surrealist movement in Paris and creator of its manifest:
"He (Breton) also saw the study of alchemy as a means to reinvest poetic language with a sense of
mystery and a shroud of coding. Originally the symbolism of alchemy had been clear, but during
the Renaissance, these symbols were intentionally converted into a secret code intended to confuse
and frustrate casual or insincere practitioners. Sexual metaphors and symbols such as dragons,
kings, queens, and the mystical sister began to stand for alchemical procedures, materials, and
results. Breton desired to use this same ambiguity as an "alchemist of language," to transform
consciousness, life, and the world. The Surrealists were to discover the self through probing the
unconscious and the anti-rational. Breton's second manifesto emphasizes this point: "The idea of
Surrealism tends simply to the total recuperation of our psychic strength by a means which is none
other than the vertiginous descent into ourselves a perpetual walk in the forbidden zone1."
The surrealist movement was also deeply interested in psychology and psychoanalysis, especially in
the theories of Sigmund Freud about the unconscious mind. Is a curious fact also that Freud
believed that the existence of the unconscious was known by poets and philosophers since long
time. It stated that sexual desire and irrational impulses were decisive factors in the result of our
behavior. This new notion conceded the irrational dimension, that the surrealists depicted and used
in their work, scientific legitimacy, and at the same time, it provided them with new material to
explore and work with.
This abstract and symbolic language found in alchemical and magic literature has been object of
study of psychologists too. Two Prominent examples are Herbert Silberer and Carl Gustav Jung,
both once advocates of Freud that later became dissociated from him and his ideas. Silberer
published a work in 1914 connecting psychoanalysis and alchemy, a work that was strongly
rejected by Freud.
On the other side Jung was an important figure in the revival of alchemy in the twentieth century,
1 Hager, Lee, S. Surrealism, Alchemy, and the Northern Renaissance. On-line at
http://www.csuchico.edu/art/contrapposto/contrapposto97/pages/Lee1.htm

helping it to become again the object of study and interest of academic and popular inquiry:
In 1935, after years of intense study and inner transformations, Jung presented some of his
findings to the world for the first time. Needless to say this did not occur in some cold academic
setting, but at the beautiful Villa Eranos, in Ascona. Surrounded by a splendid garden, elegant
furnishings, fine wines and refreshments, the brilliant and distinguished guests of Madame Olga
Frbe-Kapteyn gathered to witness the unveiling of alchemy in its 20th Century psychological
embodiment. In a lecture entitled "Dream Symbols and the Individuation Process" Jung traced the
alchemical symbolism evident in the dreams of contemporary persons, thereby establishing that
alchemy still lives in modern minds even as it did in ancient Alexandria or medieval Europe. 2.
Art had also been influenced by Alchemy since so fas as the renaissance period, with figures like
Hyeronimus Bosch, a northern renaissance painter that has depicted in his works fantastic figures
and symbols that were also found in alchemical medieval drawings and literature. Bosch and many
artists of the Northern renaissance period were also important figures that influenced painters in
the surrealist movement:
Le Musee des sorciers, mages et alchimistes, by occultist E. A. Grillot de Givry, was a
compendium of hermetic and esoteric information, but more importantly, the book was illustrated
with ancient alchemical symbolism and by alchemically influenced Northern Renaissance artists
such as Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Lucas Cranach, and Hans Baldung Grien.
Author M. E. Warlick asserts that this book, "provided the Surrealists with a body of imagery as
well as evidence that previous artists had been interested in depicting occult [alchemical]
phenomenon." The alchemical books and experiences available to the Surrealists helped clarify
their modified view of alchemy as encompassing spirituality, the occult, psychology, and the idea
that love was a means to salvation3.
Processes of the alchemy practice and symbolism have been usually taken as a parallel and
inspiration for art processes. One example is the novel my the surrealist artist Max Ernst titled Une
Semaine de Bonte in 1933. Ernst divide this novel in five volumes, each volume relating to the
four basic elements and a fifth element symbolizing the quinta-essence, meaning the sum of all of
the elements in balance. For Ernst the goal of the alchemist in parallel with surrealism was to search
for the conscious and unconscious unite, like in the alchemical symbolism happens with the union
of the sun and the moon, philosophic sulphur and the androgynous union of the king and the queen4.
Alchemy in the kitchen is a sound installation that also uses an ambiguous terminology and
symbology inspired by alchemy. It is a piece also inspired by surrealist ideas in the way that it
superposes reality with fantasy and uses an specific imagery inspired on alchemy and the quest for
the union of the irrational and the rational, the visible with the invisible and fantasy with reality. It
is also divided like the Ernst novel in five parts, the first four representing a basic element, and the
fifth being also a kind of quinta-essence, that in this case is represented by the element of sound.
"The use of alchemical images served to reinforce the idea of an imagery covering a body of
ancient knowledge accessible only to the initiated. To enter the Surrealist world, one had only to
2 Stephan A. Hoeller, C.G Jung and the alchemical renewal,Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions, 1988,
page 1.
3 Hager, Lee, S. Surrealism, Alchemy, and the Northern Renaissance. On-line at
http://www.csuchico.edu/art/contrapposto/contrapposto97/pages/Lee1.htm
4 M.E Warlick, Max Ernst and alchemy: A magician in search of myth, University of Texas, 2001, page 214.

renounce the dictates of reason. To accept the existence of a new, and often codified language that
led the mind to make the leap from the communicable to the incommunicable5.
Transmutation is one of the pillars and objectives of the processes that take place in alchemy. As
theorized by Aristotle, it tells that matter is made by four basic elements: fire, air, water and earth,
and that these elements can be transmutable. With this belief in mind alchemists realized that they
can transform any metal, plant or substance into another one, and soon dreamed and searched for
the transmutation of metals into gold6. In the installation this transmutation is made by the act of
creation itself: the creation of a piece of art mediated by the specifically activity of cooking and the
use of alchemical imagery of the elements.
It is known as a fact that many alchemists lost their minds and possessions in investing all what
they have and their energy into the impossible quest of the gold transmutation. Nevertheless the
transmutation of gold was also seen and interpreted by many interested alchemists and scholars as
a metaphor of inner transformation of man himself. Some alchemists were prominent men occupied
in science, philosophy and other fields, who contributed important discoveries, in the fields of
chemistry, physics and medicine (to name a few). This is the case of Paracelsus, a swiss alchemist,
astrologer, physician and botanist of the renaissance, who contributed to the use of minerals and
chemicals in medicine treatment and also was object of the studies of Carl Gustav Jung. Jung
interpreted alchemy as a manifestation of the desire of man to transcend himself, considering it a
valuable spiritual practice worth of study and important for the future of man:
The cosmos, according to Paracelsus, contains the divine light or life, but this holy essence is
enmeshed in a mechanical trap, presided over by a kind of demiurge, named by Paracelsus
Hylaster (from hyle, "matter," and astrum, "star"). The cosmic spider-god has spun a web within
which the light, like an insect, is caught, until the alchemical process bursts the web. The web is
none other than the consensus reality composed of the four elements of earth, water, fire and air,
within which all creatures exist. The first operation of alchemy therefore addresses itself to the
breaking up (torturing, bleeding, dismembering) of this confining structure and reducing it to a
condition of creative chaos (massa confusa, prima materia). From this, in the process of
transformation, the true, creative binaries emerge and begin their interaction designed to bring
about the coniunctio or alchemical union. In this ultimate union, says Jung, the previously confined
light is redeemed and brought to the point of its ultimate and redemptive fulfillment7.
In conclusion Alchemy in the kitchen is an installation that aims to create an experience where
reality and fantasy, alchemical and culinary processes combine and superpose each other in
audiovisual stimulus, and at the same time an experience that maintains a coherent narrative
inspired in alchemy history and imagery.

5 Hager, Lee, S. Surrealism, Alchemy, and the Northern Renaissance. On-line at

http://www.csuchico.edu/art/contrapposto/contrapposto97/pages/Lee1.htm
6 William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy tried in the fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the fate of
Helmontian Chymistry, University of Chicgo, 2002, Page 70.
7 Stephan A. Hoeller, C.G Jung and the alchemical renewal,Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions, 1988,
page 4.

Bibliography:

Hager, Lee, S. Surrealism, Alchemy, and the Northern Renaissance. On-line at

http://www.csuchico.edu/art/contrapposto/contrapposto97/pages/Lee1.htm.

M.E Warlick, Max Ernst and alchemy: A magician in search of myth, University of Texas,
2001.

Stephan A. Hoeller, C.G Jung and the alchemical renewal,Gnosis: A Journal of Western
Inner Traditions, 1988.

William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy tried in the fire: Starkey, Boyle,
and the fate of Helmontian Chymistry, University of Chicgo, 2002

ALCHEMY IN THE KITCHEN

(MUSICA MUNDANA FOR FIVE ELEMENTS:

TERRA, AQUA, AER, IGNIS, SONUS)

In te cooking practce wonderfl favors tat delight or repel our tast are

contnualy creatd. Trough te combinaton of diferent ingredients and processes

is possible t creat intnded, varied and detailed results.
Cooking had come t a point where one can not only speak about chefs or

culinary artsts, but also about food scientsts, like for example observing te work
of people occupied in te feld of Molecular gastonomy.
In cooking ,each ingredient requires its right tme on fre t be perfectly cooked.
In Alchemy each element needs its proper tme on fre t be tansmut.

When te ingredients come fnaly tgeter in a plat is like when a composer

creats an orchestaton of a piece, giving each instument its right space on te
tmporary dimension.

It also happens tat cooking has its own sound, its own music, A carrot sound
diferent when fied tan when boiled. Tis combinaton of matrials, elements,
ingredients, molecular reactons, chemical processes, have teir own contnuos
dynamic life and sound.
Fire is a very important catalyst element for many of tis processes t happen.
Air is crucial for te igniton process t happen. Sound usualy propagats

on te air.

Watr is used as a medium and as an ingredient to sometmes.

.

Eart gives us most of te ingredients we use.

Sound is an invisible element tat constantly manifests in space and tme .

Wit Alchemy al tis processes can be tansformed int Music.

Recipe:
Multchannel audiovisual instalaton.
Ingredients:

Sound recordings of 5 diferent cooking processes when and where te

contnuos fow of te processes and elements can be clearly heard and
perceived.

Video recordings of tese cooking processes.

Directons:
Prepare an audiovisual instalaton divided in 5 moments, each moment is meant
t correspond t te elements involved in te alchemical process. It should be

cyclical in tme and distibutd in te spatal dimension using more tan two
speakers. (use as many speakers as your tast dictats but using few can sound

insipid). Using te recordings of te 5 cooking processes and adding any sound

and image you like and tink reinforces te charactr of te elements , ty t invoke
forces and propertes tat you tink are manifestd in te mentoned alchemical

elements and processes happening in te act of cooking. For tis you use sound and
image. You should give each element and associatd phenomena its proper tme in
space and tme in order t be properly perceived.
Remember tat te fft element, known as Sound , is even more invisible tan
Air . For tis specifc moment I suggest using an audiovisual stmula tat in

despit of using images suggest us te invisble ( F.E a very bright light surrounding
te room). For te oter audiovisual parts accompanying te alchemical elements,
be creatve capturing in te cooking processes suggestve images and sounds tat

remind us each of te fve elements t be invoked. Finaly, serve al tgeter in a

proper room, where te instalaton is meant t be hear, seen and tastd by te
public.

P otates
A lbahaca
R ice
A rtchoke
C eddar
E mentaler
l insen
S uppe
U va
S ugar