Night Soil #1/ Fake Paradise, 2014 & Your Karma is Leaking, 2012 (Artefact re-production)

In the film Night Soil #1/ Fake Paradise by Dutch artist Melanie Bonajo, the viewer is introduced to the ritual of Ayahuasca, which originally springs from ancient Amazon traditions. During a ceremony, a psychedelic brew made of various plant infusions is being consumed often under the guidance of a shaman. Participants enter into an altered state of consciousness. Bonajo further explores the influence of alternate states of consciousness on a social, political and religious society and states that Ayahuasca could have the same effect on our contemporary society as LSD had in the sixties.
Night Soil #1/ Fake Paradise is the first film of the trilogy Night Soil, , a series of experimental semi-documentary films about cultural phenomena that contradict the linear progression of the capitalist system. Each film explores trends that move outside the sociological and political norms of consumer society, most of them illegal. Night Soil #2/ Economy of Love and Night Soil #3/ Nocturnal Gardening complete the series.

In addition to the film, Bonajo also presents the work Your Karma is Leaking, a print which is offered as a poster.

Melanie Bonajo (NL)
°1978, Heerlen

Melanie Bonajo is a Dutch artist working with film, performance, installations, music, event organizing, and photography. Her work examines feelings of alienation as a result of technological development and the consumer culture. Bonajo reacts to the loss of human, spiritual/religious and traditional values and the disappearance of connections between people. Spiritual emptiness, the complex relationship between human and nature, existential questions and ideas about classification, gender and values are central subjects in her oeuvre. Melanie Bonajo studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and completed residencies at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam (2009-10) and at ISCP in New York (2014). She lives and works in Amsterdam and New York, and is represented by Akinci, Amsterdam.