The exhibit is a voyage to the inside of a Finnish monastery, a place which conceals an enigma. Just as in other works by this artist, the enigma comes in the form of a photo-essay, in this case, a critical review of religious fervor and superstition in today’s society.
Karelia: Miracles and Co. is composed of the photographs taken by Fontcuberta in the orthodox monastery of Valhamönde, in Karelia, the region of Finland that borders Russia. Isolated from the world by perpetual fog and by the labyrinth of the 13,710 islands of Lake Saimaa, the small monastic community of Valhamönde is inter-denominational and ecumenist, and monks from all the religions go to their secret spiritual center to learn how to do miracles.
For this particular occasion Joan Fontcuberta uses the strict resources of investigative journalism and documentary photography to confront this flagrant case of fraud.
The presentation of the exhibit was attended was the General Director of la Fundación Telefónica, Fernando Villalonga, its Coordinator General, Roberto Velásquez, the director of PhotoEspaña, Alberto Anaut, the artistic director of PhotoEspaña, Oliva María Rubio, and the artist himself, Joan Fontcuberta.
The artist has exhibited previously with la Fundación Telefónica, with Sputnik in 1997, parodying a distorted use of the photographic document in official versions of history; also, in 2001, with Securitas, showing the landscape of security through the reliefs found in the perspectives of a series of keys.
According to its creator and organizer, this new project is a humorous criticism, one which "reflects the drifting that has taken us to the present-day whirlpool of cults, rites, sects, creeds, superstitions and faiths which are the seed for confrontations and fanaticism. At a time when religious differences are at the root of serious international and global tensions, Karelia: Miracles and Co. aspires to de-dramatize the irrational force behind religious feelings, while exposing the accompanying economic commercialization and political manipulation."
PHOTO ESSAY, RESEARCH AND ENIGMA
To do this photo essay, Fontcuberta passed himself off as a novice, training to be an Orthodox priest, and took courses at Valhamönde along with the rest of the novices, practicing the cycle of miracles, those of earth, water, air and fire, while at the same time he was compiling photos and other pieces of evidence that would expose the immense fraud.
The idea came to him from an advertisement in a widely-read Finnish newspaper, the Helsingin Sanomat: Valhamönde, the Finnish monastery was offering a "an inter-denominational course on the study of miracles, "with both theory and practice".
Fontcuberta’s aim was to do a critical and humorous study of superstition. According to the artist, "the current that has brought us to this somewhat disguised fanaticism ("fanum" = temple), and the whirlpool of today’s cults, rites, sects, creeds, superstitions and faiths, far from leading us to love and peace, are in fact, the principle seed of confrontation, both at the international and global levels.
For the organizer, "just as the fall of Jerusalem meant the decline of the principal Judeo-Christian symbol, the collapse of the two World Trade Center towers, (holy places for the liberal capitalist system), also reflected the destruction of another Judeo-Christian symbol. Regressing almost ten centuries, the west has fallen into the same error of the crusades: punishment expeditions, holy wars, revenge and teaching "them" a lesson.
The new messiahs, -which are projections of collective yearnings onto false gurus- continue to closely tie themselves to the daily problems that people suffer, even within industrialized countries.
SCIENCE IN THE FACE OF THE OCCULT
Despite the fact that science has been gaining ground with respect to superstition, on many occasions the attempt to explain the supernatural has not gone beyond poetry and metaphysics. Sciences of the occult and of cults themselves have begun to substitute the big religions, while in the so-called western countries secular religions and value systems and promises that supposedly afford happiness to the individual have begun to proliferate.
These centuries-old phenomena worry Fontcuberta, who believes that its dimension are truly disturbing: "The occult, astrology, and parapsychology are becoming uncommonly widespread. The attraction to strange things and the paranormal, represented by these alternative paths, confirms the strong need arising from religious fervor that continues to impregnate the ethics of Western society, its moral values, legal system and bodies of laws, political organization, and international relations. There are no arguments more convincing or more seductive than those that provide us with a reason for our existence, curing the restlessness of spirit and offering hopes for a better life. The result is that religion remains a loaded weapon for the future. Indeed, control of weapons predisposes one to control the world, and many charlatans and false prophets are trying to take advantage of the irrational force of religious sentiment, in order to commercialize it and use it politically."
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Isolated by perpetual fog and the labyrinthine islands of Lake Saimaa, Valhamцnde is a small monastic community that is interdenominational and ecumenist. It is a place where monks from all walks of religions come to master miracles, from the "classics" like levitation and weeping blood to the newest postmodernist ones, like dolphin-surfing. Ran by the Esoteric Society of Karelia, Valhamцnde in the last millennium has produced "awakenings" in such notable students as Rasputin and L. Ron Hubbard.
In a sort of deliberate, cartoon-like visual language, Miracles & Co. is an ironic and critical exploration of a drifting theology that has spawned cults, rites, sects, creeds, superstitions, and faiths which are the seeds for confrontations and fanaticism. It is no secret in a world where tyranny masks religious faith why the idea of the "miracle" is relevant. The miracle "endorses a religion and exalts the individual endowed with the gift, making him or her a guide, a leader, a Messiah, a fьhrer." At a time when religious differences form the root of serious international and global tensions, Miracles & Co. aspires to de-dramatize the irrational force behind religious feelings and actions, while exposing the accompanying economic commercialization and political manipulation of believers.
Combining history and science with an understated, illustrative beauty, Fontcuberta's photographs comfortably incorporate traditional and new modes of making images that manipulate an already fragile "reality," resulting in an impression of the original that ultimately grasps closer to a definition of what really is or isn't real. In Miracles & Co., by making connections as wide as phenomenology, to Nordic mythology, to the spread of Nazism, to the "invention" of Osama Bin Laden, Fontcuberta opens dialogue with the political implications of spiritual faith as much as he makes whimsical photographs that use photography itself as a tool for sham that in turn investigates other forms of sham.
