Are you tired of feeling burnt out and grim? Are you sick of screens and scrolling?

Turn on, tune in and drop out to Keenan MacWilliam’s Salmon Skin Hypnosis, a completely serious and satirical guided meditation. Take a deep breath, exit the frenetically turbulent stream of the internet, and start swimming inward.

“But who is Salmon-Skin?” is the question on everybody’s lips. Salmon-Skin is a spiritual guru, an elusive performance artist and a suspected cult leader. She is the main character of a fantasy multiverse from the mind of Keenan MacWilliam, who says that “I can't really explain Salmon-Skin’s name, she just came to me exactly how she is. She felt slippery and elemental, warm and offbeat.” One thing is certain: Salmon-Skin has been around, and is here to stay. 

Salmon Skin Hypnosis is a call to action (well, some have called it propaganda, but we digress) released by Salmon-Skin in her early years. She invites us to slow down and try to access a nonhierarchical, collective plane of existence akin to the “magnetic vibrations” of hope and excitement felt by the Indigenous Karuk tribe when dams were removed from the Klamath River in Oregon, allowing dwindling salmon to finally swim upstream.

Find inspiration in a grain of sand, a sesame seed, a loved one’s eyes, while immersing yourself in a soothing aquatic soundscape akin to the one you were born out of. Hypnosis is a mix of ethereal mixed media shot by Keenan MacWilliam, animations by Matea Friend, and sound design by Joel Harrower. 

If you’re so tense that you need more than one meditation to loosen up, there are more immersive Salmon Skin Meditations that you can listen to here. The meditations are the result of an ongoing collaboration between MacWilliam and Joel In Blue, started in 2020. The process follows an exquisite corpse method, where MacWilliam improvises spoken words and Joel shapes the soundscapes around them. A companion mockumentary, At Home with Salmon Skin, also premiered at Company Gallery and is currently being expanded.

Salmon Skin Hypnosis is a portal, a sanctuary, and it’s only the beginning.