Like so many people I arrived in London with a suitcase and it desire to have a completely different life

I first visited London during a summer break when I was at university . The formative experience I had was seeing an Alejandro Jodorowsky movie in the cinema. It blew me away so much that I decided I needed to have a different life than the one I had mapped out in front of me

I went back to Canada, but it became really clear to me that I wanted to be in London so I saved money and went as soon as I had the possibility I jumped on the plane and headed to London. Those were in the halcyon days of squatting and squat parties and I immediately jumped into making underground films –  VHS super 8-  whatever I can get my hands on. Hanging out with bands taking pictures of bands making videos for bands that kind of stuff. Camden was  a really cool place at the time and you could be creative and live as an artist with no money.

There were so many creative people it was just crazy. They were people from all walks of life as well so it was a real mix and really interesting. I talked my way into film school. This led me into some really astonishing experiences: working in Russia travelling around making lots and lots of artwork and films; started an artist collective where we travelled around exploring abandoned buildings and manifesting huge site specific projects in them.

LONDON has changed since those days. It has become very difficult to get space and the free open creative space that I was welcomed to is much more restricted now and I see it being so much more accessible only to people with money and that makes me very sad, but I do what I can to make things possible.

I’m now a PhD and author and infinitely respectable, but I like to keep as much of the wild side of myself alive as I can. I have stayed true to the principles that were presented to me by the great Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Jodorowsky sees life, art, creativity, and magic as a single continuum: life should be lived as a work of art, art must heal and transform, and creativity arises from the unconscious rather than from the calculating intellect. In his view, the aim of art is not “ success”  but “transformation” – to expand consciousness, confront trauma, and move toward a more lucid, poetic existence. Real art is that which changes your life, opens mind and heart, and offers new ways to perceive reality rather than merely entertaining or serving the market. Artistic creation comes from deep, irrational layers of the psyche; the image or gesture is primary, and through risk and excess the artist discovers meanings that cannot be planned in advance. What we call “magic” is the realm of charged, symbolic acts that speak directly to the unconscious and re-script inner narratives, so that ritualised, poetic gestures can genuinely alter how reality is experienced.