Uriel Orlow

"Holy Precursor” is a meditation on the cycle of presence and absence, the after-life of traces, and nature as a solemn witness of history in the present. The video explores the juxtaposition of the rural everyday and fragments of ancient holy practices in the fabric of buildings in a village in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey. In "Holy Precursor” the eye touches and the ear sees: deciphering the palimpsest that is the physical world, moving between sediments of ancient and recent history in landscapes, stones and songs, immersed in a rhythm of visual and auditory hallucination.
"Holy Precursor” is set in and around Chengeli, a Kurdish village that was built on the site and using the remains of the ancient Armenian monastery of Surb Karapet, once one of the most important sites of Armenian pilgrimage. The monastery itself was built on the site of a Greek temple for Demeter the Mother-Goddess of harvest and the cycle of life and death.