“Fire is a destructive and regenerative element. Sicily on fire on the installed screens and the live fire of the calcination in progress are opposites of the same process. The guardians of the plants are released and the oldest genetic heritage is unearthed, a contact is established with the mineral underlying all that is. The audacity in seeking the principle will be abandonment and listening, never presumption. The times will be decided by the plant, for this reason ritual songs, stasis and ardor that are not structured with precision before the event are modulated, it will be a relationship between the plants, the artists and all the participants in the ritual.”
Leonardo Leone
The collective Il Pavone, starting from a research path undertaken in the Sicilian countryside, creates an Elixir as a symbol of the process of transformation and permanence.
This research is also inspired by the life and works of Joseph Beuys. The German artist has always stressed that his own art must be understood in an evolutionary sense, the presupposition of which is to be found in the forms pre-existing to human consciousness.
The plants used are harvested in the woods of the Nebrodi and Sicani mountains under the guidance of the herbalist master Aldo Bongiovanni. Subsequently in the studio-laboratory of Il Pavone in Palermo the plants are dynamized and immersed daily in a hydroalcoholic dye according to alchemical processes freely interpreted by the artists.
The glass jars containing the macerating plants are placed inside hourglass-shaped wooden containers, functional to the transformation process. The jars with their contents will be transported by the artists to the place where the final performance takes place, which coincides with the completion of the Elixir.
During the performance in the space set up for the ritual, the fluids of the various jars are combined in a single "mother container" and honey and wine selected in the territory of the performance are added to them. The now dry plants are transformed through a calcination process that involves the extraction of minerals from the plant with fire. The elixir is completed by adding these mineral powders.
The performance continues over the next two days in which the elixir is shared on several occasions with the spectators and ends with the bottling in 42 200ml bottles.