Thaumaturgos is an ancient Greek word meaning “man capable to perform miraculous healings”. It is composed by two roots: tauma, “miracle”, and turgos, “performer”. For example, Christ is often been given the appellation of thaumaturgos, because of his ability to heal people by merely touching them.
Traumaturgic is a wordplay between “trauma” and “thaumaturgic”, meaning “something capable to heal by means of a trauma”.
The basic idea behind Traumaturgic is that, between suffering and healing, between pain and self-awareness, a precise link exists. Any trauma encloses a certain thaumaturgic nature, any wound could become itself medication for some previous wound, in a recurring, never-ending cycle of growing grief and self-consciousness. There is a deep bond between Breathing Instructions and Traumaturgic: they represent two subsequent evolutive stages of a human being, photographed at a distance of a couple of years.In Breathing Instructions inner peace is an utopistic state, shrinking from suffering, while Traumaturgic manifests a higher grade of awareness: internal struggle remains without a solution, though rising to the role of necessary nourishment for a conscious human soul. Utopia becomes dystopia.Graphics have been conceived again by Dutch artist Erik Larkens, who developed the ambiguous relation between trauma and cure into a series of visionary and evocative “traumaturgic” devices.