----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
HI Lissette, Lucia and everyone,
Lucia - your statement, "My rituals incorporate processes from the
scientific method as well as intuitive, embodied, and symbolic actions that
do not necessarily "make sense" but aim to "invite sensing," resonates very
strongly with me.
Recently I participated in a symposium in Paris called Useful Fictions that
was co-organized by UC Davis (Jiayi Young, PI) and Chaire arts + sciences
at the Ecole Polytechnique. The lab that I was part of focused on
collecting subjective data (as a complement to all of the scientific
sensing instruments around us) from a number of sites around the Ecole
Polytechnique. The Ecole Polytechnique presents visually and energetically
as a military industrial complex, its history tightly enmeshed with the
military history of France (having been founded by Napoleon I as a military
academy). Its motto is, "For the Homeland, Science and Glory." It was a
curious space, culturally and sensorially, in terms of its grounds. One of
the collective actions I led, as part of our lab work, was a sensing and
reciprocity ritual. This was performed to not only 'take' information from
the site, but also to ground ourselves in relationship with it, through
breath, smell, proprioception and emotional response, etc. The ritual site
was a former golf course reassigned as a horseback riding field, layers of
privilege forging a particular kind of wasteland or ruderal space, prickly
with the driest of groomed grasses and stubby, straggler weeds, windswept
and unprotected due to lack of any tree cover. It had very sad soil. The
ritual involved laying in a circle together, face down, and breathing in
deeply to collect a networked sensory profile of the ground, as well as
breathing out deeply to offer back some form of nurture, to the microbes,
ants and other life forms in the soil, through our CO2 and moisture from
our breath. This was one of a series of actions that transformed our
perceptions of the overall space, attuning us more deeply to the life
inherent onsite versus the initial alienation some of us felt: from
observing the army green marching lines of student soldiers, the
cyanobacteria green manmade lake, the vibrant plastic green astroturf
fields, etc and from the extremely restricted access we had to the indoor
spaces. This work was presented last week at SLSA as part of the conference
exhibition. I wonder if you saw it, Margarethe?
I am also thinking a lot lately of ruderal spaces that serve the global
(White) north, but are located in the global south or in indigenous-lived
regions in the north as well, particularly those land bases disrupted to
supply props for practices marketed as witchcraft. I want ruderal
witchcraft and spellcasting to call up/ grow on accountability for the
impacts of these kinds of (dis)located ruderal spaces that privilege one
biogeographical (and spiritual) reality over another, and to cultivate our
own refuse/refusal to participate in the commodity fetishism, as you
mention, Lissette.
I'm inspired in my thinking around this partly in reaction to the trappings
of capitalism-appropriated witchcraft I encounter online, and partly by
friend and plant-tech-witch artist, Aniara Rodado, whom I had the pleasure
to work with at Useful Fictions. Aniara recently introduced me to the
concept of Nepantla and I have been following her beautiful, "Against Witch
Washing" campaign/ research/ creative work. Thank you so much, Lisette, for
the further reference of Gloria Anzaldúa and Mariana Ortega.
As a final thought on soil remediation, I often wonder about the
relationship between emergency and emergence. It seems we, culturally,
governmentally, often hang out in the 'last ditch' of the ruderal with our
efforts. Is remediation simply a last ditch effort, much like surgery for
advanced disease, and should we focus more intently on activating
foresight? What might that look like and how could we magically construct
it? Is there where SF plays a critical role? I am answering to your
summons, Lissette, to collectively shapeshift and dream up new
methodologies, "in the midst of the extractive pain and in search of the
magic." I, too, desire work/action with deeper integrity and efficacy,
particularly regarding dislocated *rudera* (is there a plural (noun) for
the ruderal?).
WhiteFeather
On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 9:30 PM Lissette Olivares <
lioliva...@fulbrightmail.org> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> The sky was dark, illuminated only by yellow orange artificial light -
> snow and wind pierced through the air as my entire world threatened to fall
> apart on January 11th 2011, as mi amorcito Luk Kahlo underwent another
> surgery to try to save his life. It was that night, as we awaited a call
> from his surgeon, that the white rainbow came. In that spiral of snow and
> bitter cold, in the middle of NYC’s samsara, we looked at each other and
> death did not exist, and for a moment, we felt calm, and then exuberant.
>
> It is no coincidence that on November 11th, 2019, almost eight years
> later, we begin an incantatory series of conversations to reconnect with
> the enchantment of Terra as we dare death again in the midst of intense
> global wounding that is neither new, nor nearly at its endpoint yet.
>
> As I attempt to seduce you into this conversation I know that you are
> probably reeling from the bad news, the sadness, the suffering, which is
> ubiquitous everywhere, and maybe even in your own body. We hurt. We are
> taking care of others in pain. For me, each week the amount of time I have
> to work with seems to spiral further out of control, to be able to care not
> only for those I love, but also to offer the basic care I need for my own
> body. Nonetheless I resist wearing a watch to manage my time because I
> cannot help but trace its functionality back to the dawn of capitalism and
> affiliate its technological complicity in the invention and management of
> wage labor.
>
> It seems to me that capital and accumulation have bewitched us for at
> least five hundred years. I will never forget the fervor with which Peter
> Lamborn Wilson insisted that capitalism is evil, an evil possession, and
> that to try to approach it rationally would never allow us to exorcise its
> grip over our lives. Undoubtedly the insatiable hunger and drive for gold
> and silver and surplus and power and superiority and now metadata has cast
> its curse upon earth beings relentlessly. It is worthwhile to remember Marx
> and his theorization of commodity fetishism, where he reveals how strange
> the commodity is, with its “metaphysical subtleties and theological
> niceties.”
>
> Every time I am searching for a way to understand how to heal from
> colonial wounding, how to mobilize collectively while appreciating the
> pluralities each of us carries within and beyond, I turn to Gloria
> Anzaldúa. I am grateful to Katie King for giving me the trace to Anzaldúa’s
> theorizations of nepantla and nepantlera, Náhuatl terms that Anzaldúa
> activates for elaborating what she calls a new mestiza consciousness.
>
> “Nepantla is the Náhuatl word for an in-between state, that uncertain
> terrain one crosses when moving from one place to another, when changing
> from one class, race, or sexual position to another, when traveling from
> the present identity into a new identity.” (Anzaldúa 2009, 180) *[1]
>
> Mariana Ortega offers a nuanced study of the polysemy of Nepantla in
> Anzaldúa’s extensive work and argues that it is the tolerance for ambiguity
> and contradictions which Anzaldúa finds absolutely necessary for the new
> mestiza’s possibility of transformation and resistance. (Ortega 2016, 27)
> By calling out to Nepantla I also attempt to identify the middle world
> within each of us, the contradictions and complementarities that spin
> together from Coatlicue’s cosmic wind, breathing change and transformation
> through our bodies. After reading about this I am convinced that yesterday
> it was Coatlicue’s’ winds that anointed me with the new name I have been
> seeking, Ciclón, a windy storm that emerges from the naga’s loop.
>
> Let us then be intoxicated with Anzaldúa and practice from the middle
> world, what the jhankris of Nepal call Guru Gom, as I invite you to
> collectively naguahl, to shapeshift, with this group as we share
> methodologies.
>
> In the midst of the extractive pain and in search of the magic, which we
> cannot forget also abounds on Terra, I feel the need to call upon fellow
> practitioners who are devoted to technologies of consciousness, who will
> help us to decolonize mind and body with their own customized toolkits.
> More than just a conversation, I am confident that we will be mobilizing
> our shared breath, our prana, in an effort to heal one another, that we
> will join forces and leave a haunting on this technological platform.
>
> [1] Cited in Mariana Ortega in In Between: Latina, Feminist Phenomenology,
> Multiplicity, and the Self, NY: SUNY Press, 2016, pg 27.
>
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