MAYA ATTOUN

 

The Larva Society for Psychical Research is the result of the ongoing collaboration model created by Maya Attoun and Meital Katz Minerbo. Established in 2012, The Larva Society for Psychical Research aims to explore the cinematic and visual paraphernalia of Gothic pop culture, together with a Spiritualistic and social approach. The Larva Society for Psychical Research aims to address local aspects of gothic manifestations in relation to Israeli and Jewish Mythology.

 

Larva is the product of the work system developed by Attoun & Katz Minerbo, from which emerged a third entity in the form of a "young artist", experimenting in the realm of Gothic aesthetics through media like video and installation. The Artists merge themselves in this entity, exploring the politics of horror, in order to crawl into the darkest recesses of the human soul and touch the deepest fears and desires of the artist, the woman and the mother. The totality of merging or losing their individuality for this alter ego called Larva, is necessary for this collaboration and simultaneously for their practice as individual visual artists.

 

Larva is an intermediate immature phase in the life cycle of certain insects, occurring between their new born and adult form. In Latin the word also denotes evil spirit, a threatening mask and a skeleton. These two different definitions of the same term describe the two poles that hold the ground of LARVA's contextual references. The first definition specifies a scientific point of view and the second one marks out a less objective subject, an unexplained one. The dialogue between technological innovations from the past (Victorian era),  and the crafts related with the other world or the world of the dead, ghosts and spirits forms LARVA as a liminal entity giving relevance to contemporary Gothic; a rich subculture that was created out of the 19th century Neo-Gothic style. It combines the grotesque, the sublime and the industrial revolution and deals with the past, the mysterious and the supernatural along with the future and technological innovations. Goth is the dark side of Western culture, and as such it is the ghost of minorities that haunts the establishment.