Chapters

I. Heliacal
II. Mortal
III. Collapse
IV. Performer


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(DEAD) MUTTER, 2017

13:33
HD Video, 4 channel audio
Language: English, Anglo Saxon





(Dead) Mutter observes the Anthropocene and questions our place in it. Ritual is presented in the form of an Old English/Anglo Saxon metrical charm, conjuring references of landscape and surveillance. Filmed in Suffolk, Essex and the English Channel.



Excerpt:











Photo: Jules Lister






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Photo: Jules Lister


                                                          



Photo: Jules Lister




        







When the sun dies, what will it look like standing here on earth looking out?  
Knowing that the movement we collectively share would be our final rotation.

A feeling that we are inexplicably tied to. A feeling you cannot un-feel.  
Every creature has shared this experience, since birth or even before – from their mother’s womb.


Coruscant timeless guiding
blinded seething murmur
heliacal movement radiance
mud bathed, honey soaked  
under mantle

lewd corpsing creature
blood flat fleece  
comprising human quality

Hysteria or community trauma - perhaps neither.

There is a divine beauty in unknowing. A duality.

Harvested plains

Let’s try together.

Pushing water uphill.

The relationship we hold is curious.

The demon sharpens their claws. A defined defiler.  
There is nothing in their mind. Nothing – perhaps a cobweb waiting for the breeze to blow it away.
A reset to default. 


The sun is a giver of life, it is our host. 

Humans – fleshy flow.
Animal underling

Sealed like a hot knife to an open wound.

Hidden in shadow breather

Flawed utopia imperfect

exponentially lay beneath the same open air.

Enter the chimera. A beautiful grotesque. Protected by a Six-legged dog. 

At once, uneasy

beautiful alliance.

The optimistic but unlikely six-legged dog—broken jawed.

At the end of the Anthropocene party, who’s going to be left to clear up?

Running milk river,  
slippery unknown groves.  
Surprised by cornered stares from serpents birthing
this is an ending


mis-en-scene is concluded,  

let the beauty take over.  


When everything is abnormal. 

Burn the bridge

Jump the void.

Shoot the wolf at your door

Find the fatal flaw

Beneath the cellar door.

A monastery, a place of refuge, protection, healing pool contained of alchemic honey and soil.

The structure is no longer a catalyst – a revivalist. 

Removed purely pious connotations, you are left with a new kind of Monastery:  


To be fortified by a belief system. A place that once housed static communities -
this was formerly a medieval rave. 

We’ve had the age of enlightenment.  
Now – what defines now?  
Perhaps, the age of unconsciousness or even the age of divine unfamiliarity.  

If it is divine unfamiliarity, then surely it is just collateral bliss.  

Unsubscribe from the old dogma. 

Realisation comes in many strange iterations. Some of them blinding.

Tripping on a step in your sleep, running through fog.
There is always something there - to catch you off-guard.

What would happen if these instances occurred no more?
What if they were to become absent?
To deactivate, decapitate and de-captivate.

Learn and unlearn both the primary and secondary functions. 

An earthly practice. Apiculture in its definitive form is tied to ancient practice. It cannot be unbound. 

Human protection becomes the architect of devotedness. 

Man tends to the creature before him to ultimately save himself. An anthropic reciprocity.  

Mankind shares and exploits the wealth of the hive. 

What you are experiencing is a kind of unrequited love.

- Not of mortals but of land and home.


The evening shade turns

Revealing a feigning appearance.


Benjamin Warner is a British artist based in London who has exhibited at Tate Modern, Firstsite and Leeds Art Gallery. He was one of the participating artists for the Zabludowicz Collection’s, Master Class 2020. He cut his teeth working for Jake & Dinos Chapman, Aitor Throup, Sam Belinfante, Nasir Mazhar, British Art Show 8 and Canon at London Fashion Week. Contact: hello@benjamin-warner.com. Copyright © 2023 Benjamin Warner. All rights reserved.