Animitas or the Music of Souls – a Poetic Sound Installation in Chile`s Atacama Desert by french sculptor, author & film maker Christian Boltanski
See and read how Christian Boltanski explains Animitas here
In the World’s Driest Desert, a Poetic Sound Installation by Christian Boltanski
Animitas is the most recent large scale outdoor installation by French sculptor Christian Boltanski. It is installed in Chile’s Atacama Desert. It is composed of eight hundred small Japanese bells attached to long stems planted in the ground. The bells, chiming to the wind, let out the “music of the souls”. They are placed as to reproduce the map of the stars on the night the artist was born on September 6th, 1944. The installation is located in the Atacama Desert, a pilgrimage site in memory of those who disappeared under the Pinochet regime. Due to the purity of the sky, it is also an outstanding location to gaze at the stars: it hosts some of the world’s largest astronomical observatories.
The planetary positions in the astrological birth chart calculated for Christian Boltanski saw a royal Sun -Jupiter conjunction in Virgo the sign of protection of health, psychology, yoga and monk culture, protection of nature, gardening, sustainability, mummification. Virgo indicates the resonance with topics related to preservation or conservation of memory and awareness. A second really fascinating constellation in Boltanski`s birth chart is the
Mars-Venus-Neptune conjunction in house 4 aka the center of the inner personality and individual emotional self experience. The constellation stands for the need for intense intense self – reflection and self-analysis through the a Neptune position which stands for self-doubts, experinece of insecurity and the need to question one`s own personality.
