HEAVENLY BODIES

What if there was a b-day celebration you couldn't leave… nor did you care to? We are immensely proud to present our freshest editorial to date in collaboration with Czech talents Shotby.us and Creative Embassy. The Endless Visit follows several partygoers caught in a web of flashy, vivid, slow-moving timelessness set in an opulent garden. How many days has it been? Does anyone know? Does anyone care?

Izraeli photographer and graphic designer Omer Ga'ash creates digitally manipulated composites that treat “the place and the body as a symbiotic system.” Omer's ten-year experience with professional dancing visibly reflects in his work, via a nearly tangible understanding of the possibilities and limits of the body.

Prague’s very own Olbram Pavlíček turns everyday objects and places into zones of intimate reflection. In his site-specific installation KORPSEPUNX he juxtaposed ergonomics and discomfort, the mundane and the aesthetic, and in this interview he even divulges the social implications of non-invasive body modifications.

Swiss photographer Roger Weiss manipulates our stereotypical perception of bodily beauty via unusual angles and digital distortion to create sculptural, clay-like figures with accentuated and distorted extremities that invite us to untangle and sort them out in our mind. With all redundancy and personality removed, Weiss sees the flesh revert to its ancient raw symbolism.

Jesse May Fisher employs the moving image and photography for the exploration of madness in her family history. In this interview she provides us with the interpretive context for her project Milk Fever (a folk term for post-natal depression) and touches on the questions of the body, femininity and herbal medicine passed down through generations.

Text by Alexander Lepianka captures the essence of Alexander Fahima’s audiovisual piece, The Rules of Attraction, which is a free-flowing series of real-time interactions, improvised snippets, and bodies. The use of a party as a medium sets the stage for opéra concrète – an amalgam of performance, livestream and excerpts from the libretto of Wagner's opera.

“I think we should all be asking questions we know we will never have the answers to, because thinking about them gets you as close to the truth as possible.” The Adelaide-based photographer Joseph Häxan tells us about his fascination with biological processes, nature and the photographic medium.

Based on the story of Adam and Eve, “nakedness became sinful the very moment it was first observed.” Latvian sculptor Miķelis Mūrnieks forged unyielding metal frames filled with malleable polyurethane foam, revealing abstract female nudes, intended to defy the male gaze – but can a male author achieve that?

Lotus Wash, aka David Herzig, is a prominent force on Prague’s music scene. Apart from working with Bert and Friends, Never Sol and Oliver Torr, among others, he is known for his captivating live modular synthesizer sets. He has recently released his debut album Field Theory on LBD Sounds, and in this interview he tells us about the debut release, his history with music, and creativity during pandemic times.

Czech digital artist and VR/AR format pioneer Michael Rosa is the talent behind our very first and incredible Instagram face filter titled, surprisingly, HEAVENLY BODIES. Rosa was kind enough to lift the curtain a little on his creative aims and processes in an exclusive interview. HEAVENLY BODIES available now for your pleasure, go play!

Czech poet Jan Jindřích Karásek and Finnish digital artist Lauri Renvall come together for an exclusive collaboration in this SWARM MAG entry. Delve into this unique intermedial play where text and digital art touch on the complex topics of today’s intimacy.

Series of paintings and stuffed sculptural objects featuring various fleshy apparitions by Polish artist Alexandra Liput aim to strip depictions of genitalia off taboos and cheap eroticsm and give them back their ancient status of fertility, wealth and luck symbols.

After witnessing first-hand the brutal conditions of forced child prostitution in Southeast Asia, Laura Limbourg creates an ethereal play of watercolor in memory of its victims. Today, the acclaimed artist shares her experiences and perspectives on art, wild animals and her other projects.

And human beings fashioned gods in their own image. Welcome to the newest editorial of House SWARM. Enter with ease, unsaddled by judgement and prejudice, and you too will be touched by the golden divine light – emanating from within.

In what is often dubbed a genre of the anti-still life, Kamil Kukla explores today’s global visual culture oversaturated with sex and maximalism on his own terms. In his works we encounter disjointed body parts, wide brush strokes and peculiar, colorful landscapes that provoke our all-too-desensitized frames of reference.

The newest collection by the international brand Sample-cm, The GrandBassin 2021 Club, embraces and destigmatizes female anger and bodily assertivity in traditionally male-dominated sports. With their 'full-contact' concept, they fly under the colours of confidence, sustainability, rebellion, expression and intersectional feminism.

Anya Miroshnichenko’s faceless female bodies challenge the typical “reading” of such “objects”. The Moscow-based artist shifts the question of representation into one of self-perception without losing the focus on family memory and intimacy.

Ann-Maj Risgaard, a fashion design student at the Swedish School of Textiles, creates debatably wearable objects that pose cumbersome burdens for their wearers. Their importance lies not in the aesthetic but in the somatic, bodily experience they cause.

BORA creates 3D artworks that seem to hang in the fragile balance between solidity and aether. These slippery bodies are like any other: unique, embodied, and craving intimacy. Let us explore Bora’s world to slow down and reconnect with our physicality.

Czech Jewellery maker Ondřej Stára takes us on a tongue-in-cheek, gamified journey of a stark naked hero searching for magic artifacts in the woods. These include a bejewelled jockstrap, a roman sword bearing emojis, a flippable ring with various phallic symbols and more. Follow the hero's journey in a video in the article and learn more about him in the interview with the artist.