Todx, 2021

This interdisciplinary installation was a part of When Things Get Back To Normal, the first year UC Berkeley MFA Art Practice Exhibition at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery. Todx was made in collaboration with three students from Professor David Shorter's UCLA class "Healing, Ritual, and Transformation”: Diana Castro, Jordan Goheen, and Brendan Thompson, who participated in a community learning experience with Edgar Fabián Frías from September to December, 2021.

In this project, Frías explores the potential of virtual spaces to create synergistic connections and encourage intergenerational wisdom exchange bolstered by Frías’ passion for utilizing animism and interspecies communication as tactical magick and political tools for transformation and creative expression.

Below, you will find documentation from the first community learning meeting between Frías, Castro, Goheen, and Munro. In this meeting, Frías shares a loose structure to their time together, which included the sharing of Frías’ passions and pedagogical practices, the creation of individual and collaborative art projects and the exploration of music as a healing practice.

As part of the community learning experience, the three students participated in Spontaneous Communion: Intro to Tactical Plant Magick Workshop and Quarter Moon Ceremony, which Frías developed as a public workshop in response to conversations had during the community learning experience. During this workshop, participants were invited to meditate with a plant of their choosing and were asked to collaborate with the plant in the medium(s) of their choice. The replay of the workshop experience is below.

Castro, Goheen, and Munro were encouraged to use their experiences as a catalyst to inspire their individual creative projects. Frías met with them individually to discuss their projects and provide feedback, questions, and support.

During their time together, the musician and artist Joshua Hill reached out to Frías and asked them if they would be interested in working on a song together. Seeing this as a moment of divine inspiration, Frías invited Hill to be a part of this project and shared this with the rest of the group. Above you will find the original score created in collaboration, with sound design and editing by Hill and visuals by Frías.

The installation included artworks created in response to this workshop made by both Frías and the three students. Frías also developed a website using code that was made with support from Chris Kubick.