January 4, 2024
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We had a talk with artist, @chantalbrocca .
Chantal’s passion for the arts has stretched into creative direction, styling, film photography, and production, as well as being a published writer, researcher and critic.
Her work focuses on the fabricated image.
Not to mention she is an advocate for sustainability and human rights in the fashion supply chain.
Today, you get to find out more about Chantal’s solo trips, through which she often meets creatives with whom she collaborates, as well as exclusive insights on the cosmic book she is currently working on, which is a fruit of a 4-year investigation and experimentation, that is meant to separate fact from fiction and endorse self-exploration.
She is a spirit, a beautiful one, that shares her wonderful take on life.
We are beyond lucky to have had this conversation with her.
We, from the heart, believe that everyone should experience the power her words and outlook hold at least once in a lifetime.
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​Chantal, what are some practices\ habits that keep your creative spark alive?
The absolute most important practice is play. I play like a child with everything that I do, and this keeps my energy levels, excitement, joy and curiosity high. Playing is an exercise in remembering your own freedom and in keeping a carefree heart - it is essential!
My best public speaking tip is…
Be transparent. What causes anxiety is the deceptive idea that you must curate your appearance in order to be taken seriously. Relax, keep you focus on the fact that everyone in the audience is your friend and is rooting for you and remember that you are speaking because there is something that you yourself find interesting enough to share: your words have value and you are the one deciding that value with the way you deliver them every time.
Where do you usually find inspiration for your projects?
Everywhere! Life is insanely beautiful and chaotic and within this big unified blob of everything, we can find an infinity of micro-verses. There is so much to learn and understand - we’ve barely scratched the surface to truly understanding ourselves, what this life is, why we are here, what everything is and why it took these shapes and not others and why certain things escape our focus and others speak straight to our soul. There are intricate details everywhere, in social interactions, in our own minds and in the way all the different forms and intentions mingle and align with each other.
Usually, I have trouble managing too many ideas - I am an idea machine! The best advice I ever received to guide me in the sea of everything that interests me is to follow your absolute joy, even if that thing looks completely counterproductive. For example - many times I was meant to work and create and instead I decided to go out and party with some random people I met crossing the street or something like this. What looked like procrastination was actually exactly what I needed, because in that rave I would come across the answers I was looking for, just in a completely different way than I thought it would receive them, either because I would meet exactly who I needed to meet to make something happen, or because in that free-flowing joy my mind was open and I get hit with a hurricane of eureka moments!
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What would have taken me days of work I was able to do in a few hours.
Trust the process!
What are some of your favorite sustainable fashion brands?
To be honest, my absolute favorite is still a good street vintage market. I don’t ascribe to the notion of brands in general, although there are many that I enjoy and really appreciate for the conscious and playful way that they approach commercial design. The vintage market is completely free of any ideas being sold to you - of a type of person, a type of lifestyle, an idea - it’s just you and piles of beautiful, unique clothes with life in them and a story and a lot of very interesting people with unconventional life paths. I just love the exchange and the journey of coming across items that really speak to me through the chaos. If nothing is between me and the item to guide my choice, then that choice is fully mine and there’s nothing more valuable to me.
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What are your tips for a successful, fun & fruitful solo trip?
Let go of any expectations, but keep some tentative reference points of what you would like to see and experience in your explorations. The reference points allow you to stay on track investigating that little itch in your soul that’s telling you there’s something there for you, while simultaneously letting go of those reference points and remaining free flowing and unattached allows the universe’s magic to reach you and take you exactly where you didn’t know that you needed to go. Stay open, stay loving and curious, remember that contrary to what the mainstream media has been polluting your mind with, people all over the world are absolutely incredible and friendly - you will always be helped when you need it. Most importantly, use this time to train your eyes in remembering how to See the beauty in everything - we expect that the beauty should attack our senses with its brilliance, whereas the reality is that we must choose to see it.
Changing your eyes is what will reveal true wonders on your trip.
What gets you out of bed every day? What is your driver?
Creation! I used to be very depressed and lethargic. It used to be quite impossible for me to get out of bed in the morning and I would torment myself all day with self-deprecating internal dialogue. The way I got out of that was to actually find my way back to the beauty of this life, remembering that the only one judging whether I am achieving things in the right way is me, and just when in the hell I got so damn pessimistic and serious?
I get out of bed every morning because I am excited to bathe in the light of the morning sun and ride this high while I direct my energies to whatever it is that I find interesting. If you get into the habit of waking up to things you don’t like or don’t feel like doing, you have nothing to look forward to. Why do that to yourself when you could actually feed your mind with the curiosities it needs to stay energized?
Your drive is your appreciation for life. Your appreciation for life grows when you give yourself permission to appreciate it - as in, you allow yourself to engage your mind and heart in the things that you love so much, that send your soul flying simply for the pure enjoyment of the thing. We do so much because someone told us to or we think we need to. We don’t need to do anything. We are free.
If you could send all freelancers one message, what would it say?
The rise of freelancers is a rising wave of independence - we are choosing what we want for ourselves, to build a life of passion and excitement.
However, this is just the beginning and the road there is unclear. We lack a cohesive understanding of how to navigate this new found freedom in our careers without repeating old work patterns or pulling each other down in the process by incorrectly assessing value and so falling prey to large corporations immense negotiating power, influencing directly the market rate for our craft.
My main message always is: We have been tricked into playing a zero-sum game, where for me to win you must lose. But in reality, in this way we both lose, dragging down the value of our work and art to mere scraps, or worst - free work for exposure. The escape route from this tunnel where we’re always chasing to have, is to realize that when you win, I win. When you build real value, you build it for me too, because now the market is informed by this new standard of collaboration, raising the bar for everyone. We maintain the value of independent work among ourselves, by how we relate to each other. There’s plenty of work out there for everyone, and we are all exquisitely unique agents - no other eye has your eye, hence no other hand can create what only you can see. There is no competition here! We must learn to see each other as a cohesive network made up of many independents that actively work to harmonize among each other. If the freelancers of the world spoke with each other and supported their independent path, we would have an army of powerful independent self-sufficient beings.
When did you decide you wanted to create your upcoming cosmic book?
I didn’t really decide it. It just started happening last summer in Bulgaria after a deep dive across its ancient sites following this urge to seek this something that was calling me to lots of places around the world the past few years. Last summer was like a culmination of my efforts - my consciousness was saturated with information and this book that I came across at a small festival was the drop that overflowed the cup: it was a catalogue of Neolithic pottery from Stara Zagora, a very ancient town with different strata of ancient civilizations preserved very well. Something in those images unlocked my mind and I just started vomiting all of this cosmic information out. It’s been a really crazy year - and I really did think I was crazy. However, it turns out this is simply what they call channeling - I am learning the ropes of how to manage this because once you open that door, it's a highway baby!
What do you hope this book helps your readers with?
Understanding the inner workings of the mind and the universe - or rather, unifying the internal and external experience. It’s sort of like a map, I like to think of it like another type of hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. I just want to honor what came through - nothing happens for nothing. Everything is meant, and when you accept it, everything becomes easier. I just know that I need to share this. Right now, when this big shift is occurring in the collective consciousness, it is important to learn how to discern. I grew up with what are now becoming mainstream spiritual practices - I didn’t go to doctors, my mother took me to energy healers, kinesiotherapists, gurus here and there, Qi gong practitioners…etc. I would sit in a room with other children and we would practice projecting our mind and heart energy externally to other people, that sort of thing. And as much as there was always so much magic, I ended up closing that door at the age of 12 because I met so many spiritual buffoons - liars and cheaters charging ridiculous sums of money to cleanse your home, feeding into people’s fears and making them dependent. If individuals learn how to be their own gurus, to heal themselves, channel themselves, do everything themselves, they will not be swayed by illusions. This is my main drive to be perfectly honest – it’s always about helping people to step into their own power. No-one can do this for you but you, however sometimes all that’s’ needed is a little guidance and a tip pointing you in a direction to go off and explore.
Why comic, rather than other genres & styles?
It simply came out this way!
I am not really here when I am sketching it - it’s like a dream state. I think it came out this way because a comic is just easier to digest; it’s more fun and relatable and just comical!
There is no reason for all of this seriousness - we are here to play! I did remember last summer however that I used to draw these cosmic comics when I was 6 years old - about dimension warping and time stopping and black holes. I guess I am just picking up what my child-self is here to do - but let’s see!
I’m still on this crazy ride.
What do those words make you think of: Past, limitless, subconscious beliefs, patterns?
The future creates the past. In this Now where everything hangs in the balance, your conceptualization of the past is what determines your exact state in this present. Draw a straight line from this state and you have your expected future outcome. So, how you perceive of yourself today, based on the conclusions you draw from your past experiences, determines where you go in the future - what you will create and experience. If you try to see clearly, you may be able to identify limiting beliefs that have ingrained themselves into your subconscious such that you are acting them out without even noticing. If you identify these limiting beliefs and shift your focus to see how they logically and objectively do not apply, you can release them - and enforce new patterns where your memory works to create this present sense of self that has the potential to walk straight towards a much better expected future outcome.
At the same time, you must have arrived at your destination to actually see the path that gets you there and walk it. You must be clear…to be clear!
Consciousness is a beautiful upside-down paradoxical maze and it is so beautiful that we are in this period of rediscovering so much knowledge with the power to bring us fully here, embodied and empowered. I say rediscover because, it emerges continually every so often in our history. The global channels of information distribution are really so great at lulling us all back into a state of amnesia.
How can we make the world a better place, in your opinion?
If everyone took the time to illumine themselves - to engage their individual critical thinking, to reject being spoon fed information by a regime built on fabricating illusions, to sell us help that we don’t need because knowing things from our own awakened eye is the only way to heal ourselves and find our inner Truth. If everyone took the time to work on themselves, to clean their prejudices, judgements, to clear the clouds of dust that obstruct their crystal-clear sight, to find their happiness from within, something which no place, situation, person, object or experience can satisfy, then they will automatically be true and happy with their external world. Reality is a mirror. If you love yourself so much, you forgive yourself, you are compassionate with yourself, you celebrate yourself - you will automatically extend these eyes to the world around you. If you are conscious, happy and aware of your own power - you spread that around you like a nuclear bomb. We wouldn’t need to organize a lake cleaning if every time that people walked by that lake they were empowered with initiative and a strong sense of self enough to take on some of the cleaning. If we see the whole world as our home, we would individually care for it better. That takes an illumined eye that sees through separation. In this scenario it would be really good news actually! Because it would mean that if we individually worked on ourselves, the world would automatically fix itself.
It would mean that we all have the power to change the world.
How does magic manifest in your day-to-day encounters with other human beings?
This one is a lot to answer - there’s a lot of details so I will keep it to a few words: almost instantaneous synchronicities, visions that bring greater creativity, guidance and clarity, real deep soul connections - the world just shifts and it feels as if the entire universe is conspiring to bring you on your true path for you to live your highest joy and self-actualization (the one your soul knows and needs, not the one dictated to you by all the glitzy things society parades in front of your eyes). When the mirror that separates your internal and external world becomes fully transparent, the magic can be a little overwhelming at first - but it is all incredibly beautiful, because you see very clearly how to transmute energies and so, situations into win-win scenarios. I did a lot of experiments to understand the mechanisms and it is really fascinating! I honestly have been struggling to find a clear way to share all of that I’ve learned
My favorite dish is I can’t decide! I love everything! The choice fatigue when looking at a restaurant menu is real.
You mentioned asking people what the most beautiful, harmonious world looked like.
What does this world look like to you?
One Big Festival!
A damn crazy good one, run by the raver’s motto: peace, love, unity and respect, where we are free to create the things we love, dress how we please, learn pure tolerance from each other and how to stand in our power while simultaneously allowing every single other to stand in theirs, divine soul standing with a level head and heart to divine soul; where through sound, movement and play we express our soul truths and keep the channel open with the subconscious universe, always transparent with ourselves and in alignment with the pendulum swings of the cosmos; where small localized businesses thrive built by conscious individuals driven by the desire to do things the harmonious and balanced way, in alignment with the beautiful natural wonders that we inhabit; a place where small communities focusing on preserving the knowledge of specific technologies and crafts keep open daily workshops spreading information of how to navigate life on this Earth in pure self-sufficiency. Advanced technologies allow each of us to learn and create anything that we desire and it is our inherent right to follow our heart’s creative pursuits and share it with the world to enjoy with us. Everything is crafted biomimetically - our homes, roads, food sourcing, our communication networks. In this festival we learn to be free while managing the power of influence and choice that comes with this freedom.
We learn to be free while allowing the freedom of everything around us to be its pure self without any prying judging eye. In this global festival we’d call home, our ancient past and the innovations of the future would find a way to be in balance with each other, and we would be organized across the Earth in perfect synchronization to the neural pathways that make up our brain - a network of small, local communities that branch to others in their immediate radial range, slowly integrating among each other like one big inter-independent complex molecule.
I can keep going, but I prefer to paint the picture! I’m working on it.
In simple terms, what is the “fabricated image”?
A curated image. What the industry of advertising (propaganda) is built on - and for that matter our entire modern world. We have brand image curators, copywriters, art directors - in university we are taught how to create the perfect image to sell the perfect idea which can conveniently be packaged into a commodity and purchased. Even the medical industry is rife with paid for propaganda - the practice of paying off doctors to push certain less than healthy treatments sold by large profit hungry corporations is a historic fact and is still going strong. Our eyes, minds and hearts are being influenced every second of every day.
This is why people disconnect from social media, switch off their phones and take time out in nature. It is a way to reconnect with your true self, your true eyes.
We live in a world of illusions and it is very important to tell the difference, because our energies thrive on authenticity and truth. Taking this agency from us is the biggest trick of the century.
Our free, uninfluenced choice is our power.
How do you manage to stand your ground, in terms of holding onto your values, beliefs, when cultural & societal pressures are, simply, on- some many molds and agendas to fit into…etc.?
It’s not always easy. I had to stand firm against everyone thinking I was either childish, flaky, not serious, crazy, you name it. And not only – it’s really hard with the work as well - I had to say no to a lot of collaborations, a lot of brands interests - a lot of time where I could have marketed my face and work a lot more, but I chose not to because it felt like selling out. I need to be the one who looks at myself in the mirror, deep in my eyes and loves the person that I am, with all of my choices. That is a power I cannot give away to anyone or anything, because when you give yourself away you have no Self to stand on to continue doing anything! One brand collaboration vs my integrity to keep exploring this life to its fullest from my point of pure truth - when we take a bird’s eye view, the answer becomes pretty clear.
What is your favorite mythical story?
The maze and the minotaur and Tiamat the dragon from the Sumerian creation myth. There are many, however there’s a few narratives that are played out across different myths in different countries around the world - same principles, same essence, just covered up in different make up.
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How can we make the world a better place, in your opinion?
If everyone took the time to illumine themselves - to engage their individual critical thinking, to reject being spoon fed information by a regime built on fabricating illusions, to sell us help that we don’t need because knowing things from our own awakened eye is the only way to heal ourselves and find our inner Truth. If everyone took the time to work on themselves, to clean their prejudices, judgements, to clear the clouds of dust that obstruct their crystal-clear sight, to find their happiness from within, something which no place, situation, person, object or experience can satisfy, then they will automatically be true and happy with their external world. Reality is a mirror. If you love yourself so much, you forgive yourself, you are compassionate with yourself, you celebrate yourself - you will automatically extend these eyes to the world around you. If you are conscious, happy and aware of your own power - you spread that around you like a nuclear bomb. We wouldn’t need to organize a lake cleaning if every time that people walked by that lake they were empowered with initiative and a strong sense of self enough to take on some of the cleaning. If we see the whole world as our home, we would individually care for it better. That takes an illumined eye that sees through separation. In this scenario it would be really good news actually! Because it would mean that if we individually worked on ourselves, the world would automatically fix itself.
It would mean that we all have the power to change the world.