Re: [-empyre-] Remembering the white rainbow
--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
Re: [-empyre-] Remembering the white rainbow
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hola todxs, I much appreciated last week’s discussion and I’m happy to join this week’s conversation, thank you Margaretha and Ciclón for the invitation. Making space to share rituals, methods for healing, and curses seems important to learning as a community and to making practices more sustainable in time. In my art practice, rituals are sometimes outspokenly part the project itself and sometimes part of a personal preparation. These do not come from any specific culture or historical tradition, I craft them (sometimes in collaboration with others) as ways to mourn and celebrate, to change perspectives, to connect or to heal (although last week’s conversation around remediation has productively complicated my thinking). 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". I strongly believe in the powers of the “what if” and I am motivated to know more and differently rather than proving an idea to be right and transferable. Recently, for *Fruiting Bodies*:* Creative Experiments in Fungal Inoculation & Mycoremediation* (a collaboration with Chloe Zimmerman, Chris Kennedy, and Pleurotus ostreatus) we invited human participants to choose a body part they wanted to heal or focus their attention on. Afterwards we made agar sculptures of these body parts and inoculated them with oyster mushrooms. We let them grow for some time before coming back together and holding a burying ritual where all the mycelium-growing body parts were buried in a tree-less tree pit in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. This is an ongoing project for us and we aim to adapt it in each iteration based on the site and the resources available. We describe it as "a creative experiment to consider the relationships between our bodies, fungi, the earth, and the potential of remediations of many kinds. Throughout, we document and learn with our fruiting bodies, allowing for a latent network of human and non-human relations to emerge." This project is based on mycoremediation experiments designed by Paul Stamets but incorporates movement, writing, setting intentions, asking, offering, and most importantly sharing process. Perhaps instead of being a remediation project we can think of it as a form of care from Nepantla given its in-betweenness of methods? Or perhaps it is just a mix of methods and I am confusing the hybrid with the in-between? A second project that I would like to share is a series of sculptures made to be used by groups of people, *Tools for Many Kinds of Selves*. These sculptures propose different ways of locating oneself in relationship to others (humans and more than humans) by temporarily preventing seeing, extending limbs, making physical connections, or providing diverse instruments for making contact. They come with initial prompts, but participants are invited to propose and invent alternative scores and configurations. Participants also document what they witnessed and experienced while the sculptures/tools were being used and the narrative of our time together is a compilation of these writings and drawings. This project is rooted in the belief that sculpture can be a physical manifestation of the space in between one and the other and also a means of transferring touch. I am hoping that if we can be in a situation in which we can re-perform or reinvent our usual configurations then we can re-think what we think of others, of ourselves, and of the way we are to relate. Not always so easy, however, and as my abuelita says, "el camino al infierno está empedrado de buenas intenciones." *...* http://luciamonge.com/ http://plantonmovil.org On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 6:28 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
[-empyre-] Remembering the white rainbow
--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. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
