(Un)Natural Familiars – Hellbenders – The Archetypal and the Personal

October 08, 2022 by Annett

(Un)Natural Familiars – Hellbenders – The Archetypal and the Personal
Sally Annett . Oct 2022

Versions anglaise et française combinées ; veuillez faire défiler la page pour la version française.

Screenshot : Hellbender, The Trailer. By kind permission of the Adams Family.

The 2022 film release by the Adams Family, (WonderWheel Productions, USA (1.)); ‘Hellbender’ is an extraordinarily brilliant combination of horror and familial relationships.

The Adams family, Toby Poser, John Adams and their daughters Lulu and Zelda Adams have been making films collaboratively for over a decade when John and Toby bought an old RV and headed off with their young children to make their first film ‘Rumblestrips’. They have been working and filming continuously, weaving their professional and family lives together and making some wonderful cinema.

Their last film, ‘The Deeper You Dig’; their first feature length horror film, released just before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was an exploration of the cost of trying to hide your errors and the accidental evil which ensues. It contained scenes equally horrific and beautiful, exploiting the gorgeously bleak winter landscapes of the Catskills in upstate New York alongside the grief of murder and the allure and snakeskin oil of selling the supernatural.
Watching their films, aware that it is a real family dynamic, creates an uncomfortable frisson, which does not impede the suspension of disbelief, but expands it. The scene where John Adams’ character murders Zelda’s, brutally and desperately is only heightened because you are aware that this is a father enacting the killing of his own child, uncomfortable viewing for the purposes of entertainment and therefore doubly horrific.
Yet as the actors describe it - also fun! These elements of fun and humour feed through all the Adam’s family works; a tremendously dark comedic vein, which at points make the audience belly laugh often at the moments of highest tension in the scene.
The pleasure and visuals offered in ‘The Deeper You Dig’ with its psychedelic scenes, classic body horror and unspoken interpersonal tensions are present and increased in ‘Hellbender’ and certain moments (which both audience and family can key into on a subtle level) such as the use of the word ‘cunt’ in exchanges between mother and daughter, wink at a longer term continuity (cinematically and in reality) developing and referencing each film, giving a nod not only to the media, but to the broader scope of the projects and the rawness of the work.

Made during lockdown, Hellbender once again features the Catskills in a major role, but also other remote and beautiful landscapes from all across North America, be it the Badlands or the Pacific coast, shot from the RV. The broken-down shack (in ‘The Deeper You Dig’) is now fully restored, immaculately so - and - by John Adams whose energy knows no bounds. It is not a set; it is a fully renovated family house. John is also an ace musically, cinematically and with set building and special effects.
The family acknowledges that Nature contributes as an actress and indeed directs at times, with the weather, seasons and its ‘gifts’ such as the deer carcass in the scenes when Zelda (Izzy) is grappling with who she is.
Zelda Adams playing teenage Izzy, (Isabelle, derivative of Jezebel) is the star of the show and works in a heavenly way within the landscape, leading the audience into and through its powerful presence, whilst Toby (her mother on screen and in life) attempts to guide her, protect her and keep her safe.
Safe from what?
Izzy thinks she is ill, isolated and homeschooled due to a rare autoimmune disease. Inherited matrilineally, she has had no contact with any other humans since the age of 5. The relationship between Izzy and her mother is intense, claustrophobic and their loving bond is maintained and demonstrated by their band. The musical band in the film, is also called ‘Hellbender’, again mirroring the real-life Adams family band ‘H6llb6nd6r’ and the entire film began as a music video, flowering into a full-length masterpiece of a coming-of-age movie, for occult humans and non-humans.

The score and soundscape are also astounding, family made, Zelda’s vocals compliment the imagery perfectly; haunting and open, with a tristesse which carries the sentiments underlying the action with such ease. There is a beautiful scene with two toy cars, which cruise in circles, achingly sad alongside the soundscape (Drive)(2.), which epitomizes the quality of the craft.

There are completely novel scenes which, leave the viewer stunned; spitting menstrual blood in the snow and casting smoke angels (both Toby and Zelda reference ‘Carrie’ as the first horror film they watched together – but the scene is nothing like this… it is an almost total inversion), and a bikini poolside drum solo, family hallucogenic ingestion which combine traditional hand made special effects with digital manipulation very satisfyingly. The only comparison I can make is to footage of 1970’s festival shots…or the Manson family.

There is a huge amount of research and history in the weft of the film, the writing, led by Poser after family discussions to create the bare bones of the story, allows for no clumsy narrative, just demonstrative action, paired down scripts with room for improvisation at all points and natural magical performances based in fact as well as fiction.
The Hellbenders reproduce via parthenogenesis, (3.) (route word/source of the Parthenon) they reproduce asexually, as did all mammals and marsupials up until (merely) 300 million years ago – when the first male creatures emerged on the planet; from the female (1.)
Toby researched Lilith, Lamia and a plethora of ancient female, self-reproducing and child or baby eating goddesses. Those whose powers Heracles and many of the later masculine heroes of Greek history acquire after murdering the older feminine deities and their children. In fact, most of these ‘evil’ goddesses, like the Hellbenders, have been demonized and persecuted out of living and written memory because of their femaleness – it is their reproductive power, their links with nature, night and sleep (the things that man cannot control) which has led to their demise/extermination. From this the Adams evolved their own, creatrix, a female creation myth which is struggling to exist in the modern world.
The mother Hellbender is desperate that her daughter is ‘good’ that she is a ‘lamb’ not a ‘wolf’ and “cuts her claws and cracks her teeth” in the hope that she will not discover her true nature. Poser also references the lost writings of women, so much burnt or attributed to ‘anonymous’ with the grimoire or spell book of the family and the magical link between text and corpus.
The film has everything you can wish for or expect in a horror – blood, guts, murder, tension, mystery and special effects. But it has so much more.

The meld of the archetype and the personal.

The film describes a mother daughter relationship, and is played by a mother and daughter which lends a natural authenticity to the performance but neither avoids or alleviates any of the problems so normally encountered. The intense single parent relationship is played quietly by Poser who oozes calm, self-control, power and beauty in every gesture and has the voice of a fairy godmother. You want her to be telling you stories, singing you lullabies, showing you magic; she offers profound safety and security, but at the price of her daughter’s conscious independence and liberty. The intention is ‘good’ but is it correct?
The deep hypocrisy and suppression of negative emotion, to create a cocoon for her child means Izzy loses trust and inevitably disobeys her parent.
This over-protection is experiential for Poser, who only discovered her true paternity when her mother was on her death bed. She was delivered the bombshell that she was a donor baby and then discovered she is one of (at least) 8 siblings. The ‘lie’ or the grand deception was made and kept for the protection of the daughter. In some respects, Hellbender is a cathartic process for Poser, who uses the film to explore the reasoning behind the withholding of personal narratives and the subsequent uncovering of true histories and magicoscientific lineages.

The womb is both life giving and death bringing, pregnancy and childbirth remain the biggest killers of girls and women in 2022 and women globally are still fighting for autonomy over their bodies and reproductive systems.
Hellbenders self-generate; they reproduce asexually. This theme of parthenogenesis is evident in nature, especially amongst reptiles, but remains a foundational tenet of many religions, not least the Annunciation legend of Christianity which we celebrate every Christmas (as the birth of a male) rather than the fatherless reproductive cycle of the feminine.
But Hellbenders are far from the demure representations of the Marian tradition, they are Kali, Lilith, the Whore of Babylon, their children cursed – betrayed, isolated, rejected, despised, for inhabiting their true natures, with and in Nature. Yet, they remain an aspect of her. The film flies you through a series of psychedelic parlances with Izzy’s ancestors, including her troubled, now deceased grandmother. Showing the line from which, she (we) has come. It should be noted that in the Jewish, female oral traditions Lilith is not the eater of babies, but the protectrice of mothers and infants and amulets are worn to invoke not deflect her presence. Her job is to test the purity of the Rabbi’s, to tempt them with the sins of the flesh, ensuring only the true of heart (very few it seems) reach the level of Messiah, whilst her ’husband’, Samael, traditionally, the angel of death stays at home and cares for their children. (4.) (Dr Sharonah Fredericks). The differences between the written word and folkloric and familial transmission, so often enormous. (5.) (Stephen Pope on Lilith).

There is a deliberate avoidance of sexual scenes within the movie (thankfully!), but not solely because of the ‘family’ team structure. Toby and Zelda were adamant that this was not going to be the traditional, Hollywood, ‘young woman coming of age’, flick, initiated by a young man, so normally a festival of make up with false everything, stuck on to hypersexualized children.
The coming into power here, describes a real power, not dependent on a beauty myth more fictional and unattainable for most than becoming a Hellbender.
Poser and her daughters are all beauties, they celebrate their naturalness, the only make up; chipped black nail varnish, stolen plastic hairclips and the heavily coded and tongue in cheekily references to the glam rock makeup of iconic seventies rock bands. As a woman watching it is such a relief to see this lack of artifice, normal women, bare-faced and bold.

The film holds echoes of both ancient myth, religious, or rather heretical, iconography and modern fairy tales; Izzy at times reminds us of Max from Maurice Sendaks ‘Where the Wild Things Are’,(6.) (a favourite for Gen X kids and their offspring); the shots of her wandering through the tall trees and the Crown (made again by John) which her mother gifts her, the symbol of her taking her burgeoning sovereignty a fitting symbol for this necessary rebellion. Izzy indeed kicks up a wild rumpus!

It cannot be stressed enough how good the soundtrack is – but also how minimal and poetic the script. The cinematography does its job – stunningly. Partly limited by COVID and the need for family bubbles, the cast numbers less than 20. Use of a drone provides enigmatic overheads as well as immense scenery and the inhabitants of the Adams family’s local town carry the cameo roles; the sheriff really is the sheriff. The women baying for blood in the opening scene are Zelda’s soccer team’s mums. All do a fabulous job.

John who is a dynamo of making, filming, recording, editing and being delivers a hilarious and understated performance, short but – again – perfect as a nerdy uncle to Zelda’s best (and only) friend who lives across the valley. He steps back allowing the women to take the lead in this work, but he has the eye of a painter and can make anything from a pulsing umbilical tunnel of flesh to hell, to a fully functioning house.
Lulu storms in and out of the scenes with a powerful, grounding and highly comic performance as the seemingly dominant, confident worldly friend, a perfect foil for Izzy’s innocence and for a time, her ideal.

The portrayal of magic within the movie is again that of natural magic, the magic of the mixing of blood and berries, feathers and frogs, maggots and worms, creating flying eyes, flying hair (Toby has the best hair) and flying daughters. But is refreshingly not the familiar trope of satanic, glittering robed ritual, uber staged in red and black lit by flickering candlelight. It is part of the colour palette – shot in natural light, on natural bodies, in autumn and winter hues, lichen greens, red berries, black bark and grey trees against grey snow filled skies.

The approach of fully embracing experienced, archetype through a personal, realist lens, takes the audience on a fully fleshed out, profound journey through the imaginal.
The film is brilliant.

But when you discover the stories which feed it, of COVID confinement, life changing information about who you are, universal interpersonal family protocols and behaviours. Things we all recognize and experience – but have never managed, nor perhaps even dreamed of articulating or creating a vivid mythology from - It takes it to another level.

The film is essentially about fear preventing life.
The difficulties of transitioning from child to adult to parent as a woman, and the mistakes we make.
About the powerlessness we have over our children.
“If you break my heart, I will devour you”.

“Winter eats fall, spring eats winter, summer eats spring, fall eats summer”
The endless cycles of family and societal lies, violence and co-dependence which can be broken ended and transformed by fearlessly acting upon truth and love is demonstrated to us all by those most devilish she creatures (over half the human population!) Hellbenders!

Above : Screenshot : Hellbender, The Trailer. By kind permission of the Adams Family.

Links/references:

1.Wonderwheel Productions main website.

https://www.wonderwheelproductions.com/pages/about.php

2. Hellebender Sound track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB6L5d5FWV4&list=PL_wA4CDejVA6hzUBAwQts9AOsyiujwqE4&index=6

3. Parthenogenesis.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0006

4. Dr Sharonah Fredericks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6iv2ZrFWAQ&t=2282s

5. Stephen Pope on the pre-masoretic Hebrew meaning of ‘Lilith’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2wzNgUE6Zo

6. ‘Where the wild things are’. Sendak.M.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2wzNgUE6Zo

Capture d'écran : Hellbender, la bande-annonce. Avec l'aimable autorisation de la famille Adams.

Les familiers (in)naturels - Hellbender (Les maîtres de l'enfer) - L'archétype et le personnel

Sally Annett . Oct 2022

La sortie du film 2022 par la famille Adams, (WonderWheel Productions, USA (1.)) ; 'Hellbender' est une combinaison extraordinairement brillante d'horreur et de relations familiales.

La famille Adams, Toby Poser, John Adams et leurs filles Lulu et Zelda Adams réalisent des films en collaboration depuis plus de dix ans, lorsque John et Toby ont acheté un vieux camping-car et sont partis avec leurs jeunes enfants pour réaliser leur premier film "Rumblestrips". Ils n'ont cessé de travailler et de filmer, tissant leurs vies professionnelles et familiales ensemble et réalisant des films merveilleux.

Leur dernier film, "The Deeper You Dig", leur premier long métrage d'horreur, sorti juste avant la pandémie de COVID-19 en 2020, était une exploration du coût de la dissimulation des erreurs et du mal accidentel qui en découle. Il contenait des scènes tout aussi horribles que belles, exploitant les paysages hivernaux magnifiques des Catskills, dans le nord de l'État de New York, ainsi que la douleur du meurtre et l'attrait et l'huile de serpent de la vente du surnaturel.

Regarder leurs films, en étant conscient qu'il s'agit d'une véritable dynamique familiale, crée un frisson inconfortable, qui n'entrave pas la suspension de l'incrédulité, mais l'élargit. La scène où le personnage de John Adams assassine celui de Zelda, de manière brutale et désespérée, est d'autant plus forte que vous êtes conscient qu'il s'agit d'un père qui tue son propre enfant, une vision inconfortable à des fins de divertissement et donc doublement horrible.

Mais, comme le décrivent les acteurs, c'est aussi amusant ! Ces éléments d'amusement et d'humour se retrouvent dans toutes les œuvres de la famille Adam ; une veine comique extrêmement sombre, qui fait parfois rire le public aux moments les plus tendus de la scène.

Le plaisir et les images offerts dans "The Deeper You Dig" avec ses scènes psychédéliques, l'horreur corporelle classique et les tensions interpersonnelles non exprimées sont présents et accrus dans "Hellbender" et certains moments (que le public et la famille peuvent saisir à un niveau subtil) comme l'utilisation du mot "cunt" dans les échanges entre mère et fille, sont un clin d'œil à une continuité à plus long terme (cinématographique et réelle) qui se développe et fait référence à chaque film, faisant un clin d'œil non seulement aux médias, mais aussi à la portée plus large des projets et à l'aspect brut de l'œuvre.

Réalisé pendant la période de confinement, ‘Hellbender’ met une fois de plus en scène les Catskills, mais aussi d'autres paysages isolés et magnifiques de toute l'Amérique du Nord, qu'il s'agisse des Badlands ou de la côte Pacifique, filmés depuis un camping-car. La cabane en ruine (dans "The Deeper You Dig") a été entièrement restaurée, de manière impeccable, par John Adams, dont l'énergie est sans limites. Ce n'est pas un décor, c'est une maison familiale entièrement rénovée. John est également un as de la musique, du cinéma, de la construction de décors et des effets spéciaux.

La famille reconnaît que la nature joue un rôle d'actrice et qu'elle dirige parfois le spectacle, avec le temps, les saisons et ses "cadeaux", comme la carcasse de cerf dans les scènes où Zelda (Izzy) se débat avec son identité.

Zelda Adams, qui joue le rôle de l'adolescente Izzy (Isabelle, dérivée de Jezebel), est la vedette du spectacle et travaille de manière céleste dans le paysage, conduisant le public vers et à travers sa puissante présence, tandis que Toby (sa mère à l'écran et dans la vie) tente de la guider, de la protéger et de la mettre en sécurité.

A l’arbri de quoi ?

Izzy pense qu'elle est malade, isolée et scolarisée à domicile en raison d'une maladie auto-immune rare. Héritée matrilinéaire, elle n'a eu aucun contact avec d'autres humains depuis l'âge de 5 ans. La relation entre Izzy et sa mère est intense, claustrophobe et leur lien d'amour est maintenu et démontré par leur groupe musical. Le groupe de musique du film s'appelle également "Hellbender", reflétant à nouveau le groupe familial réel des Adams, "H6llb6nd6r". Le film entier a commencé comme un clip vidéo et s'est transformé en un chef-d'œuvre de film sur le passage à l'âge adulte, pour les humains et les non-humains occultes.

La partition et l'ambiance sonore sont également stupéfiantes, de facture familiale, les voix de Zelda complètent parfaitement l'imagerie ; obsédantes et ouvertes, avec une tristesse qui porte les sentiments sous-jacents à l'action avec une telle facilité. Il y a une très belle scène avec deux petites voitures qui tournent en rond, d'une tristesse douloureuse, accompagnée de l'ambiance sonore (Drive)(2.), qui incarne la qualité de l'artisanat.

Il y a des scènes totalement inédites qui laissent le spectateur stupéfait : cracher du sang menstruel dans la neige et lancer des anges de fumée (Toby et Zelda font tous deux référence à " Carrie " comme étant le premier film d'horreur qu'ils ont regardé ensemble - mais la scène n'a rien à voir avec celle-ci... c'est une inversion presque totale), et un solo de batterie en bikini au bord d'une piscine, une ingestion hallucinogène familiale qui combine de manière très satisfaisante les effets spéciaux traditionnels faits à la main et la manipulation numérique. La seule comparaison que je puisse faire est celle de séquences de festivals des années 1970... ou de la famille Manson.

Il y a une énorme quantité de recherche et d'histoire dans la trame du film, l'écriture, dirigée par Poser après des discussions familiales pour créer les bases de l'histoire, ne permet aucune narration maladroite, juste de l'action démonstrative, des scripts appariés avec de la place pour l'improvisation à tout moment et des performances magiques naturelles basées sur des faits aussi bien que sur la fiction.

Les Hellbenders se reproduisent par parthénogenèse, (3.) (mot de parcours/source du Parthénon) ils se reproduisent de manière asexuée, comme tous les mammifères et marsupiaux jusqu'à il y a (seulement) 300 millions d'années - lorsque les premières créatures mâles sont apparues sur la planète ; à partir de la femelle (1.).

Toby a fait des recherches sur Lilith, Lamia et une pléthore d'anciennes déesses, autoreproductives et mangeuses d'enfants ou de bébés. Celles dont les pouvoirs ont été acquis par Héraclès et de nombreux héros masculins ultérieurs de l'histoire grecque après avoir assassiné les divinités féminines plus anciennes et leurs enfants. En fait, la plupart de ces déesses "maléfiques", comme les Hellbenders, ont été diabolisées et persécutées de mémoire d'homme et d'écriture à cause de leur féminité - c'est leur pouvoir de reproduction, leurs liens avec la nature, la nuit et le sommeil (les choses que l'homme ne peut pas contrôler) qui a conduit à leur disparition/extermination. C'est ainsi que les Adams ont développé leur propre créatrice, un mythe féminin de la création qui a du mal à exister dans le monde moderne.

La mère Hellbender est désespérée que sa fille soit "bonne", qu'elle soit un "agneau" et non un "loup" et "coupe ses griffes et fait craquer ses dents" dans l'espoir qu'elle ne découvre pas sa vraie nature. Poser fait également référence aux écrits perdus des femmes, tant brûlés ou attribués à des "anonymes", avec le grimoire ou livre de sorts de la famille et le lien magique entre texte et corpus.

Le film a tout ce que vous pouvez souhaiter ou attendre d'un film d'horreur - du sang, des tripes, des meurtres, de la tension, du mystère et des effets spéciaux. Mais il a bien plus encore.

Le mélange de l'archétype et du personnel.

Le film décrit une relation mère-fille et est joué par une mère et sa fille, ce qui confère une authenticité naturelle à l'interprétation, mais n'évite ni n'atténue aucun des problèmes habituellement rencontrés. L'intense relation monoparentale est jouée tranquillement par Poser qui respire le calme, la maîtrise de soi, la puissance et la beauté dans chacun de ses gestes et qui a la voix d'une marraine de fée. Vous voulez qu'elle vous raconte des histoires, qu'elle vous chante des berceuses, qu'elle vous montre la magie ; elle offre une sécurité profonde, mais au prix de l'indépendance et de la liberté conscientes de sa fille. L'intention est "bonne", mais est-elle correcte ?

La profonde hypocrisie et la suppression des émotions négatives, pour créer un cocon pour son enfant, font qu'Izzy perd la confiance et désobéit inévitablement à ses parents.

Cette surprotection est expérientielle pour Poser, qui n'a découvert sa véritable paternité que lorsque sa mère était sur son lit de mort. On lui a annoncé qu'elle était issue d'un don et elle a ensuite découvert qu'elle faisait partie d'une fratrie de huit enfants (au moins). Le "mensonge" ou la grande déception a été fait et gardé pour la protection de la fille. À certains égards, ‘Hellbender’ est un processus cathartique pour Poser, qui utilise le film pour explorer le raisonnement derrière la rétention de récits personnels et la découverte ultérieure de véritables histoires et lignées magicoscientifiques.

L'utérus est à la fois source de vie et de mort, la grossesse et l'accouchement restent les principales causes de mortalité des filles et des femmes en 2022 et les femmes du monde entier luttent toujours pour l'autonomie de leur corps et de leur système reproductif.

Les Hellbenders s'auto-génèrent ; ils se reproduisent de manière asexuée. Ce thème de la parthénogenèse est évident dans la nature, en particulier chez les reptiles, mais reste un principe fondamental de nombreuses religions, notamment la légende de l'Annonciation du christianisme que nous célébrons chaque année à Noël (comme la naissance d'un homme) plutôt que le cycle de reproduction sans père du féminin.

Mais les maîtres de l'enfer sont loin des représentations pudiques de la tradition mariale, ils sont Kali, Lilith, la Prostituée de Babylone, leurs enfants maudits - trahis, isolés, rejetés, méprisés, pour avoir habité leur véritable nature, avec et dans la Nature. Pourtant, ils restent un aspect d'elle. Le film vous emmène à travers une série de conversations psychédéliques avec les ancêtres d'Izzy, y compris sa grand-mère troublée, aujourd'hui décédée. Il montre la lignée dont elle (nous) est issue. Il convient de noter que, dans les traditions orales féminines juives, Lilith n'est pas la mangeuse de bébés, mais la protectrice des mères et des enfants, et que l'on porte des amulettes pour invoquer sa présence et non la détourner. Son travail consiste à tester la pureté des rabbins, à les tenter avec les péchés de la chair, en s'assurant que seuls les vrais cœurs (très peu, semble-t-il) atteignent le niveau du Messie, tandis que son "mari", Samaël, traditionnellement l'ange de la mort, reste à la maison et s'occupe de leurs enfants. (4.) (Dr Sharonah Fredericks). Les différences entre l'écrit et la transmission folklorique et familiale, si souvent énormes. (5.) (Stephen Pope sur Lilith).

Les scènes sexuelles sont délibérément évitées dans le film (heureusement !), mais pas uniquement en raison de la structure de l'équipe " familiale ". Toby et Zelda tenaient à ce que ce film ne soit pas le traditionnel film hollywoodien sur le passage à l'âge adulte d'une jeune femme, initié par un jeune homme, qui est normalement un festival de maquillage avec tout ce qui est faux, collé sur des enfants hypersexualisés.

Ici, l'accession au pouvoir décrit un pouvoir réel, qui ne dépend pas d'un mythe de beauté plus fictif et inatteignable pour la plupart des gens que de devenir un Hellbender.

Poser et ses filles sont toutes des beautés, elles célèbrent leur naturel, avec pour seul maquillage du vernis à ongles noir écaillé, des pinces à cheveux en plastique volées et des références fortement codées et impertinentes au maquillage glam rock des groupes de rock emblématiques des années 70. En tant que femme, c'est un tel soulagement de voir cette absence d'artifice, des femmes normales, à visage découvert et audacieuses.

Le film fait écho à la fois aux mythes anciens, à l'iconographie religieuse, ou plutôt hérétique, et aux contes de fées modernes ; Izzy nous rappelle parfois Max, de Maurice Sendak, dans "Where the Wild Things Are" (6) (un des films préférés des enfants de la génération X et de leur progéniture) ; les plans où elle erre dans les grands arbres et la couronne (fabriquée à nouveau par John) que sa mère lui offre, symbole de sa prise de souveraineté naissante, symbolisent bien cette rébellion nécessaire. Izzy fait vraiment du bruit !

On ne soulignera jamais assez la qualité de la bande-son, mais aussi le caractère minimal et poétique du scénario. La cinématographie fait son travail - de manière stupéfiante. En partie limitée par le COVID et le besoin de bulles familiales, la distribution compte moins de 20 personnes. L'utilisation d'un drone permet d'obtenir des vues aériennes énigmatiques ainsi que des paysages immenses, et les habitants de la ville locale de la famille Adams jouent les rôles secondaires ; le shérif est vraiment le shérif. Les femmes qui réclament du sang dans la scène d'ouverture sont les mamans de l'équipe de football de Zelda. Toutes font un travail fabuleux.

John, qui est une dynamo de la réalisation, du tournage, de l'enregistrement, du montage et de l'être, livre une performance hilarante et discrète, courte mais - encore une fois - parfaite en tant qu'oncle ringard de la meilleure (et seule) amie de Zelda qui vit de l'autre côté de la vallée. Il se met en retrait, permettant aux femmes de prendre la tête de ce travail, mais il a l'œil d'un peintre et peut faire n'importe quoi, d'un tunnel ombilical pulsant de chair vers l'enfer, à une maison entièrement fonctionnelle.

Lulu entre et sort des scènes avec une performance puissante, solide et très comique dans le rôle de l'amie mondaine apparemment dominante et sûre d'elle, un contrepoids parfait pour l'innocence d'Izzy et pour un temps, son idéal.

La représentation de la magie dans le film est à nouveau celle de la magie naturelle, celle du mélange de sang et de baies, de plumes et de grenouilles, d'asticots et de vers, créant des yeux volants, des cheveux volants (Toby a les plus beaux cheveux) et des filles volantes. Mais il est rafraîchissant de constater qu'il ne s'agit pas du trope familier du rituel satanique en robe scintillante, mis en scène en rouge et noir, éclairé par la lumière vacillante des bougies. Elle fait partie de la palette de couleurs - filmée en lumière naturelle, sur des corps naturels, dans des teintes automnales et hivernales, des verts lichens, des baies rouges, des écorces noires et des arbres gris sur fond de ciel gris et enneigé.

L'approche consistant à embrasser pleinement l'expérience, l'archétype à travers un objectif personnel et réaliste, entraîne le public dans un voyage profond et complet à travers l'imaginaire.

Le film est brillant.

Mais quand vous découvrez les histoires qui le nourrissent, de l'enfermement dans le COVID, des informations qui changent la vie sur qui vous êtes, des protocoles et comportements familiaux interpersonnels universels. Des choses que nous reconnaissons et vivons tous - mais que nous n'avons jamais réussi, ni peut-être même rêvé d'articuler ou de créer une mythologie vivante à partir de ces éléments - cela le fait passer à un autre niveau.

Le film traite essentiellement de la peur d'empêcher la vie.

Les difficultés de la transition de l'enfant à l'adulte puis au parent en tant que femme, et les erreurs que nous commettons.

De l'impuissance que nous avons sur nos enfants.

"Si tu me brises le cœur, je te dévore".

"L'hiver mange l'automne, le printemps mange l'hiver, l'été mange le printemps, l'automne mange l'été".

Les cycles sans fin de mensonges familiaux et sociétaux, de violence et de co-dépendance qui peuvent être brisés, terminés et transformés en agissant sans crainte sur la vérité et l'amour nous sont démontrés par ces créatures les plus diaboliques (plus de la moitié de la population humaine !) que sont les Hellbenders !

Sally Annett Octobre 2022

Sally Annett : recent interview and article for Be-Coming Tree : Daniéle Imara, Jatun Risba and O.Pen.Be

June 09, 2021 by Annett

https://ecoartspace.org/Blog/10597688

Be-coming Tree
Interview by Sally Annett

April 30, 2020 in the forest of Panovec, Nova Gorica, Slovenia, an unrobed body lies face down, on the fallen trunk of an ancient tree. Arms stretched out in front, hair falling across wood and flesh. Jatun Risba (ki/kin) is performing the first act of Be-coming Tree. Instantly reminiscent of the work by Ana Mendieta’s ‘Corazón de Roca con Sangre’ (Rock Heart with Blood) from the 1975 Silhouette series, it is a piece which also involves a ritual, shamanistic, animist style of art practice which embeds and enmeshes the human body with natural landscape in a beautiful, contemplative yet slightly distanced or abstracted way.

This was a solitary live-streaming: a meditative, immersive hour where viewers were transported to this remote natural setting, with Risba. I interviewed Risba and the co-facilitators of the expanding Be-coming Tree events, Danielle Imara and O. Pen Be, exactly one year later, just after the fourth collective ‘Be-coming Tree’, now a quarterly annual event. This most recent Be-coming Tree took place on 24/04/2021 and simultaneously broadcast 36 ecoart performances across 6 continents and 22 countries and was a glorious celebratory ritual of humanity’s potential to co-create and connect with itself and Nature. Be-coming Tree makes this connection through a series of live, digitally transmitted, collective performances which occur seasonally. It is a real-time, simultaneously performed, cinematic/ moving image work; each cycle of the performances matching the seasons of the year; spring, summer, autumn and winter. It unites artists globally to experience a close entanglement with trees and be witnessed by a globally disseminated audience. It was led and created in 2020 by Risba, Imara and O. Pen Be, co-created with in excess of 71 artists in 32 countries over 6 continents at the point of writing.

As Elizabeth McTernan writes in her recent review of ‘Future Assembly’ for the Venice Biennale Architecture, “ future imaginaries must include the more-than-human – that which both includes and exceeds humanity. The more-than-human is the many entanglements of human existence with living and nonliving entities, all of which have a stake in the planet’s future”. Risba’s work ‘Be-coming Cow,’ a dialogical moving image piece, expresses this intention loudly, along with the sense of be-ing and be-coming a single, unifying fragment of an elemental background field.

Risba (age 34) describes kin practice as being that of a “ transmedia artist, sower of kinship and parrhesiast exploring beyond human paradigms … Risba re-pairs Nature and Culture.” There is a freedom in kin work which expresses this ethos very boldly. Imara (age 58) and O. Pen Be (age 73) both have backgrounds in combined arts practice with a focus on body work, dance and performing arts which pulls in strands of social, therapeutic, transgressive and devotional praxis. This body-centric practice has profound philosophical roots, which have evolved through study, personal crisis and extraordinary life experience. Imara, like Risba, has what Ghislaine Boddingtoncalls a “Long-term focus on the blending of our virtual and physical bodies”. Both are engaged in fluid temporalities and future digital and socio-psychological issues, including telematic and neuro-technical interfaces, and through which all our somatic forms and languages function, as part of an ‘entanglement’ full future. Connecting ourselves into a network, (Boddington again) a “ ‘multi-self,’ an ‘Internet of Bodies’ enabled by hyper-enhancement of the senses and tele-intuition.” Be-coming Tree expands this idea to include relation with all ‘kin’, human, animal, vegetable, mineral and spiritual, operating on a multitude of levels of ‘be-ing’ or supposed consciousness, but crucially interconnected. O. Pen Be works with the idea of the moving body as connector and witness and that these actions contain the possibilities for both sacred/ receptive and active/performative and roles and the sense of self, and that belief and identity can be scrutinized and developed for restorative purposes. All three facilitators are highly disciplined, exploratory and reflective in their approaches, using their corporeal structures as the most effective, vital and liberating medium in public and private space. Previous works like Risba’s trance dance interventions in urban spaces ‘Interesse’ (2015), Imara’s ‘Nina Silvert’s Tube’ (2011) and O. Pen Be’s startling response to COVID, ‘Touch Outlaws’ (2021) as part of IJAD’s Open OnlineTheatre hybrid performance festival (2021) all challenge nominan behavior in broad urban and domestic environs. Be-coming Tree invites participants and audience alike to work directly with the natural world, selecting a specific object/subject; in this case ‘Tree’ as co-performer.

These three ‘kin’; Risba, Imara and O. Pen Be, together have produced what they describe as a “Grass roots community, sharing and documenting close entanglement with trees and barefoot technology through collective, global, live-streamed events,” which, describes exactly the practical and logistical aspects of Be-coming Tree. What it does not capture is the intimacy and magic of the piece, the melding of differing forms of corporeality and technology to create a hybrid chimeric being, a ‘hive’ or collective, single act. It is a digital ritual, evolving hypnotically before your eyes and ears, yet just beyond your touch. Discussing the evolution of Be-coming Tree, in the current cultural zeitgeist(s), which is in some sense being driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, the desire to be in communion with others and with the natural world is clear, and also that the public manifestation of this desire is being met, currently, through the Internet. It seems that enclaves and generations across the globe who have been steady but slow in their engagement with the digital world, perhaps only through a Skybox or Facebook, have realized that their domestic technologies can far exceed their utilitarian functions; that they are not passive screens, but connective, interactive portals to the whole of reality; physical, psychological, spiritual and divine.

Within the various silos of the art world this slow burn catch up is levelling out while people explore the new materials at hand and then focus back on another contemporary, arguably the most pressing, the environment. Particularly in the world of body-centred performance art and dance there has been a 180 degree rotation away from solely live, somatically present performance to generating sustainable, interactive, on-line ‘theatres’. Whilst there is still a sadness at the loss of close bodily proximity to an audience, the potential and reach of the web is vitalizing and developing existing genres of work for those of us privileged enough to have regular and high quality access to the internet. Never have human communications been so vast and encompassing.

There is an association with generational difference in the embracing of this new media, with the young’s usage of new digital knowledge (for those able globally to afford it) seemingly effortless, along with the realization that this new knowledge is process led and ever changing. For those that struggle with the TV remote control this can seem a hopeless wilderness, for which there is no time to learn the new. COVID-19 has changed this, there has been both the time and the necessity to upskill, and the Be-coming Tree facilitators, live artists and audiences are a model of intergenerational practice spanning 3 generational intervals. Our previous ease of geographical movement and physical contact has been removed and replaced by digital freedom and mainframe intercourse. Those who had not engaged in the hundreds of thousands of on-line communities out there in the webs, have begun to do so with a great deal of excitement and energy. Artists and collectives have been working ‘on-line’ for five decades, the first (arguably) telematic work ‘The Satellite Arts Project’ was developed , delivered and documented in 1977 by artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz although the phrase Telematics was initially used by Simon Nora and Alain Minc in The Computerization of Society. (1)

In 2020 Annie Abrahams and Susan Fucks produced, as a digital meme, an archive, which documents the history of online performance and the hard and software which supported it from the early 1980’s. It includes their work and that of artists like Boddington and Anne Bean, with scientifically, magically, socially and environmentally fused lived works, such as Bean’s ‘Come Hell or High Water,’ 2020, which also looks at a ‘calendar’ of collective events which comprise an annual whole and who have been pushing the boundaries of human techno and eco interactive performance since the 1908’s. The canon of female performance artists that includes Laurie Anderson, Adrian Piper and Marina Abramovic challenge stereotype and oppression through the use of archetypal form and (the) word. In the 1980’s and 90’s Starr Goode archived and recorded a series called, ‘The Goddess in Art’, which chronicled work by environmental, philosophical, theosophical and performance artists/activists such as StarHawk, Vicki Noble, Cheri Gaulke, Mayumi Oda and Barbara T.Smith (1960’s/70’s) as part of the early 1990’s revival of academic interest in their works.

These artists ride on the wave of permission to take up public space negotiated by women like Marjory Cameron and Ursula Le Guin in the post WW2 years, who hark back to female figures in history who feature only largely in literature and comparative religion from the perspective of empire and enlightenment. This is not to dismiss the work of the Land Art Movements; the symbiotic pieces and dialogical works of artists like Nancy Holt, Andy Goldsworthy or Richard Long, or politically affiliated organisations such as Greenpeace and X-tinction Rebellion, nor to continue to focus on gender and sex-based divides in contemporary practice. The work of Be-coming a Tree is part of a continuum which includes ecofeminists/ecoartists such as Marta Soriano and radical social artists like SpiderAlex, and which is ever broadening, ever ‘entangling’. However, a certain public/media unease or suspicion is evident when a female artist like Abramovic is pilloried in social media (2020) as a witch and/or Satanist (whatever that may be) for deeply spiritual, ecological, science and technology based work; the fear of the antinomian feminine remains clear.

These ‘silos’ of body and nature-related art works have historically been entirely bound up with the usage, barriers and luxuries of public and private space. COVID-19’s limitation of access to shared space and intimacy with others has been a fascinating experiment in social engineering where – by necessity – gathering in public places has been largely forbidden, movement of peoples constrained, loved ones lost and buried in separation. The intrusion into our private spaces is also unprecedented, and our ways of being, our personal and collective protocols and thinking radically altered. We have been largely compliant but only, possibly, because we have been supported by an ethernet of connectivity.

In Be-coming Tree we are witnessing a quiet new collaboration which is a commixture of land-art, performance art, dance and digital art which acknowledges the posthuman and transhuman and addresses our critical environmental tragedy head on, with each small step it takes towards creating a ritual for unity; it is eco-magical, socio-scientific and deeply sincere.

Risba, locked down in rural Slovenia, unable to return to London, was aware of those millions of people in flats, tower blocks and cities around the world who were in effect imprisoned and who had had their vital, if minimal connections with Nature severed. That the physical and psychological impacts on health and spirit are enormous, especially for young children is clear, and all three artists work with a schema of healing and therapeutic benefit through performance, movement and the physical senses. The Be-coming Tree team acknowledge having worked through health and spiritual crises and hold a depth of knowledge of meditative and philosophical traditions. This regenerative practice is developed further by the project to embrace the natural world; all ticket sales from the Be-coming Tree events go to the Tree Sisters organisation, each ticket equating to a tree planted in the Amazon Tropical forests. This internet collaboration is a form of environmental and health activism. It again shares the zeitgeist with the growing number of companies and collectives, like ‘Effective Altruism’, ’80,000 Hours’ and ‘Othernetworks.org’, who are working in very different manners but with the shared ambition to enhance global connectivity and community, and improve the efficacy of collaboration through the internet.

I was connected to the project by artist curator Rob La Frenais, (who also introduced Imara and Risba) as a performer in the second collective Be-coming Tree, and (with La Frenais) acted as the live blog respondent to the most recent, fourth ‘hive’ performance. The experience of viewer, performer and respondent is each completely different and immersive; as a performer you are almost introspective, engrossed in your own activity. As an audience member you can drift through and sit with pinned or multi-screens selecting what you view, knowing you will miss certain elements and allowing yourself to be led by individuals through the maze of panels, or hypnotized by the faceted screen. As respondent, engaging; trying to comprehend and describe the event and each actor within the whole was overwhelming.

The work is so rich in content, meaning and hope, additionally it would be almost impossible to watch the over 120 hours of performance footage in an analogue sitting. It is a fantastical myriad of international players, each interacting with and ‘Be-coming Tree’ bringing a particular body, a vital energy and weaving a particularly soulful imagining towards the futurtopia we must build.

To see the performances and discover more about Be-coming Tree go to : https://becomingtree.live/

The entire live response to Be-coming Tree 4 part 1 can be read here :
www.atelierdemelusine.com/new-blog/2021/5/16/be-coming-tree-4-240421

Endnotes

1) Simon Nora and Alain Minc, The Computerization of Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980): 4-5.

Ascott, Roy. (2003). Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness. (Ed.) Edward A. Shanken. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-21803-1

Carl Eugene Loeffler and Roy Ascott, Chronology and Working Survey of Select Communications Activity in Leonardo (Journal of Leonardo/ISAST, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology), vol. 24, N° 2 , 1991, p. 236.

Glossary
Parrhesiast : a person who speaks freely and boldly.

Be-Coming Tree 4 : 24/04/21

May 18, 2021 by Annett

Be-Coming Tree 4
A real-time blogged response by Sally Annett moderated by Rob La Frenais to the live streamed, multi-channel performances of Be-Coming Tree 4.

Séance 1.

We gather in the visual auditorium with ambient jangling techno music (slightly).
I am logged in - and logged out as the interweb does its thing.
The music becomes more sci-fi, as I join, multi screens shared with performers and audience as we gather for this multi-channel rite.

And we are off! Following Ali Masoudi through semi-desert - scrub land open savannah. Who knows where O.Pen B leads us to : her red clad back unravelling scarlet twine as she heads down a labyrinth style track - the gallery view (see here) isa living being.

Dimple B Shah stares back at us, bright yellow sari against yellow clothes and curtains

In contrastT.J.Thorne is plaited? melded? Woven? into tree and then cling wrapped like a chrysalis – it is not clear where her hair ends and the trees tubules which could be alien suction tubes (seem to be) ‘force-growing' the plastic wrapped fetus. The Art Couple too bind a tree - round and round - winding green and red striped - whilst just below left Dimple plunges her face into a bowl of what? Paper leaves? Bamboo?

Night is only present in Janaina Morse’s screen - in their world it is night - torch lit tangles and semi urban landscapes, looking slightly grubby half lit – flitting.
Just above Thorne has obscured her performance with a brown paper sign - written in black marker it says ‘Poetry’ and the shadow of her hand plays across it - and falls away - someone else is with her - the illusion of solitude is broken - she winds on.
Just above her head floats Elizabeth Damur - so much to look at - the music I now realize is live - the Talking Trees are playing the sound track - seamlessly - bringing a very different quality to all the performances - and creating a unity - not present in the previous ‘Be-Coming Trees: it is an aural curation.

Oh! I see a naked bottom - it just caught my eye - and is gone again - no there it is Kajoli Ilojak is crawling through an endless green corridor - I can’t tell with the screen size if it is real or CGI ? It is a beautiful shot - and perhaps why the audience is asking for individual screens - intriguing.
Dimple throws her bamboo - white with drought across her yellow space.

I want to see it all - I can’t.
I sit back and try to take in a bit more - a bit more slowly - it is a lovely thing.
It is absolutely ritual - and the music carries it for the viewer in an unwavering way.
I am not aware that the performers can hear it - are all very separate - but they too are joined by the same platform - so they must. Is it affecting what they are doing - the rhythm of the work - which ones can hear it? I need to know!

JasmineCederquist’s hand slowly strokes the tree, dragging fingers lightly down its trunk - how would this look without the music? This audio contemplation has me. The hand appears gentle, eerie - and the steady sky scape perfect against the spinning blue sky.
I watch Andrea Isa - the screen so small - barely and inch by 2 - I cannot see a figure - a form - through the briars, through the brambles to the beheaded tree .The sound fairytale continues.(Talking Trees). O.Pen raises her hands aloof in the well-trodden circular land work she is traveling - invoking (to/with) the single tree in front of her - I think I know where she is - to the right of the A6 - facing west - I may be wrong - in the sheep meadows. Damour is dancing - in clearing legs apart, black skirt flowing as she bends and twirls - it looks like the dance of a warrior. A child is spraying Ali Masoudi in the desert - with a blue aerosol. Is it blue for water? Thistles sticks and twigs are planted in his hair - is it a plea for water in this tree less place?

Damour commences or continues to bind her tree - it is reminiscent of a Barbara Hepworth. Blue and white yarn - Baba Yaga, Hansel and Gretel . The threads in the woods - Anancy or witch. Weaving.

I am completely tricked - he is the beheaded tree! Well played (Andrea Isa) - the costume/sculpture seemed entirely natural through the gallery screen.

O Pen. B is back and she is seated under the tree - I pin her - she is weeping into the red yarn - it is pressed to her face - she stands and gathers - and again I am wrong - it is not yarn at the root - it is a red cloth, a sail, a tent, a tabernacle in the bark chips. Now I know where she is .The peace pagoda. By the lakes. She leans back - like TJ Thorne - the tree is connected to but bears her weight.

Slow down, slow down. So much to see and the time is flying. T.J.Thorne - sat facing and in silent dialogue with the tree she is becoming - the ivy sweeping her into it . Elizabeth Damour - her blue fringe not quite brighter than the blue twine resting under her chin, dangling off the fallen tree which she has draped herself along - becoming one with its limbs in the sunlight, her skirt, now I see it is sparkled with stars - she is in repose.
Gallery view back - and Dimple – is now completely submerged embraces the pile of leaves which she is currently inhabiting - in her yellow nest - imbibing also contemplating, I wonder how it smells? The musical tone has changed - it is sharper, has an Indonesian, Gamelan feel to it - Kajoli Ilijok at the waterside is shaking visibly. Shuddering with cold - a plastic bottle and a bowl containing the eggs she has broken - trailed with ivy - how cold she must be - my spine feels it - the green slime walls make the stone or concrete seem softer than they surely are. She trembles - her right leg is bound or cut - I cannot quite see - she stands painfully and walks - then we cut to the sea - or shore - where are we? Fascinating and beautiful. Above and equally dramatically Thorne has pulled forward away from the trunk of her tree and the Ivy braided into it streams out behind her - taken her full weight as she leans forward - she is tree. She has become one with tree.

Illojak is now kneeling - extending arms forward as if in benediction to the damp green walls and floor in front of her - an image of penance. The sound track keeps inserting sounds similar to my phone and computer, and fire - I keep having micro second anxieties that something is ‘going off’ an alarm a call. Pen and the Art Couple have/are binding their trees in red thread - O.Pen’s is at the root - the place where above and below ground join.

Art Couple’s is a waist band, a birthing belt .The Afroceltic rhythm has me now - heart beat drum carrying me along, hypnotic. The camera has turned - Ilojak is by the sea.
Or a lake. In my mind a sea. She has become a siren - barefoot in this liminal, space - a Melusine.
The active contemplation continues, the winding, the kneeling the weaving, the burying the petitioning - can we all make a petition now? Can we petition collectively - mimetically for …what? For the trees. Dimple is buried like a panda - stripping. Her nest. Thorne is prone like dryad, Masoudi and his adept continue across their wilderness with crowns of thistles - searching for water. And the band plays on.

Seance 2

In the waiting room (again) - feeling almost greedy - certainly that this is a luxury communion.A triple part programme - of live theatre - of eco-artistry - of global ritual - in your own home, performance artists from 22 countries gather together, to form a vessel of arboreal performance - it is a great pleasure.
The becoming tree band is back.
My soul soars - the sound now a welcome / necessary element I approach the gallery - the movement of Lucy Stockton Smiths tiny screen draws my attention, then the flicker of light on Gina Ben David as she performs a series of body movements, Qi Gong or Tai Chi - I am unsure - perhaps some Gurdjieff in there too (or the other way around). For art to be Art it has to be…????? The screen is rushing over ground, to tree roots and pine cones, candles and feet - ever moving.

Monica Tobel and Peter Purg are both bending over, palms down in yoga positions, each on their screens hands and feet in close proximity to the earth , Purg is chopping wood, Tobel is scraping and then listening to the ground, with an especially fashioned ‘eartube’ (ear trumpet), an expression of bliss on her face.

The sound is gone. Maria Bitnik applies scarlet lipstick and firmly kisses the trunk of the tree - my screen connection is gone - and glitching - I watch the circle spin. Caroline Gregory’s screen has captured my thoughts whilst I am locked out of the performance - her body against the body of the tree with a bright light behind, making it almost impossible to separate spatially, the two forms.

In the distance Lauren Lewis has the appearance of a flower fairy, gracefully dancing barefoot with a tree, matching Ben Davies more intimate, camera close gestures.

Beech tree bark sticks to the red lips of Bitkin as she religiously applies layer after layer and imprints it on to the tree - her direct eye contact with the camera disturbing and disassociated The music throbs forward…

Suraya Tüchler is embedded into the muddy roots of a tree - covered in earth and leaves, part camouflaged, part ready to plant, she squeezes into an impossibly small place and then is rejected by the structure of the be-ing and lies face down and rolls in angst or sorrow at the refusal.
Tobel remains still - listening absorbing.
Ben David has a companion, (she) recommences the movements - stretching and interlocking fingers and thought patterns together - whilst Stockton Smith whirls unceasingly.

It is powerful ritual - the music takes it up - accelerating bringing sudden joy and energy to the ‘place’. My pin takes me to Corbett who like Thorne in the earlier seance has become physically as well as energetically one with the tree - costumed in bark and moss with a lichen and leaf hat - she again evokes the 19thC Rackham like images but with a 21st sensibility - this work is not romantic. It is perhaps nostalgic, futuristic and pragmatic - but it is magic and tragic elements (loss of environment) - seem unavoidable.

Purg continues to hack out the roots of his dead tree - so many metaphors are possible with this work - the soundtrack is doing something amazing again - never letting your inner ear settle. Ben David waves heart flags and can be seen speaking an invocation - to what we don’t know - the hum over the sound makes it feel like old movies footage - perhaps taken by explorers from another century - anthropologists coming across a new cultural artefact. Tüchler carries tree, Tobel too commences to kiss the tree root long and hard - (there is a devotion and perhaps even an eroticism in this gesture - as her hands writhe and caress as she continues her blessing,) Corbet is tree, as is Gregory - Bitten has been lost to the internet. Purg puts on black gloves - I wonder how much the soundtrack is influencing my impressions as it has turned darker.

Stockton still spins and Lewis stretches and navigates fallen logs. I have hidden the non-video participants - a little late - the difference is extraordinary - the triple split screen an entirely altered and the result a painterly feel - The sun has moved on and Gregory is now visible, next to Ben David - and their movements and exhalations mirror and complement whilst Tüchler to their right drags herself and a gnarled branch up (camera tilt perhaps?) a grassy bank - Still Stockton Smith spins on - like the world. Tobel pats her arboreal companion she continues her intimate conversation with it. Corbet appears to have found an unequivocal balance with the tree she is working with.
I am missing Bitkin and her flaming mouth.

Corbet exits her tree - so dramatically it shocks me awake - she walks off - Lucy Stockton Smiths trees whorl with the beat. My head is bobbing to the techno which now rolls over us all - and I sit back to watch - and learn.

Seance 3

Reflecting in the intermission on the intention of the work.

What are the intentions of a) the artists and b)the organizers - physically, psychologically, intellectually and spiritually?
In what manner and methodology are these intentions being fulfilled?
As an audience we are watching the manifestation of what?

Off again - led in by sounds from Talking Trees, and happy that ‘For Art to be Art it has to Cure’ are able to join live from South Africa Sitting back and watching the gallery I try to watch the players as a single cast - there is more overall movement - hands and feet in action, Lisa Sang, LRA, Lara Buffard, Miranda Whall , Deej Fabycc and MJ Newell, Veronica Cordova de la Rose, Collective EnHebra all moving together in isolation in my computer screen.

Disconnected again - I wish the scale was different - I want to see this on a screen where all the players/actors are life size, full immersion into the ritual - rather than the tiny voyerism we are enjoying. Whall is crawling around the wooden floor of an empty, old Edwardian timber floored room, with a plant pot containing a tree strapped to her back – (forbidden to leave by COVID-19 restrictions. Talking Trees have reached a contemplative sunny afternoon vibe - sleepy almost. Heavy. Subtly altering the whole nature of the gathered works – again - I zoom in onto the natural elements - they seem more present in this session - or perhaps my perception has shifted as well.

Daisy Black whirls a hoola hoop, Cordova De La Rose is anointing herself cross legged on her floor with candles and markings - another esoteric set of practices being overtly used.

Many of the other performers are literally becoming tree - becoming, earth - either contained or hidden in their environs - ' For art to be Art it has to cure’ are masked and adorned in full shamanic ritual around and within their tree - a blurred bright red and green straw wispy figure peers through glaring light - the sound track once again bringing a different quality to the shared audience percipience - the effects must be so different to each actor and viewer?

EnHebra and Laura Buffard and partner are all using wooden or bark, freeform prosthetics and masks - this union again of human and wood - flesh and spirit.

Scale again - At the macro and micro Lisa Lotte Giebal is swallowed by her wide, many trucked tree, we see a hand flick in and out from behind a branch occasionally, we realize how small we are, then to L4R whose lens zooms into bright chroma - magnified, giving a Kirilian or infra-red close up view - again the scale and the magic is evident.

And as I am led through a grove by Pagganwala I realized I am being hypnotized, lulled.

I do not really understand what is happening.

But it is beautiful.

The time is going too fast - it is hard to do each performer justice in this devotional event, to spend enough time with each, individual gift.

The performers and audiences all constrained by limits.
Whall by being forbidden to go outside to create the piece - confined

Continually, confinement - by COVID, of our bodies, our desires, of the frame, the screen, our audio-visual range and its marvelous digital sibling - which allows this ritual - because ritual it surely is?

I am thinking of varied formats, of wishing to see the pieces individually, as well as collectively. The whirls and static screens of colour and the music, which has flowed through the days' events like and enchanted stream, linking and bringing a sense of coherence - though entirely improvised - and still I want to know - can the actors here the music? And if they can is it in real time - or just slightly behind, slightly out of sync.?

I have the sense again of the inherited traditions and ritual practices we all hold within us - how these come out and how the archetype of the tree is universal.

Not knowing who to watch - I return to EnHebra - the masked figure now seated in darkness in front of a fire - wicker sistrum in hand, encircled in rock or weaving I cannot tell and I decide to spend the final moments, in contemplation, with this figure.

My intention for todays ritual is (without sounding like a Miss World Contestant) is healing.”

THE INCIDENT / SYM-BI-O/ Living together at the limits of Science - 1995 - 2021

April 11, 2021 by Annett

THE INCIDENT
1995/1996

An informal response to the symposia:
Sym-bi-o/living together at the limits of Science
Thursday, March 18th 12.00 - 16.00 2021

Rob La Frenais and James Turrell at The Incident 1995. Photograph © Eliane Laubscher.

University for the Creative Arts, UK

‘Revisiting The Incident (‘sur internet’, as it was described in a photograph by the original project photographer Eliane Laubscher); exhibitions and symposia held in 1995 & 1996 to consider (their) inter-generational themes concerning artistic and political questions of our time.’

We recommend watching the conference via the link below - it is three hours in duration but a tremendous source, resource and starting point for artists, historians of art, media, science philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists and those generally involved in ‘world making’.

https://youtu.be/MMymq0Up08Q

I was delighted to be invited to attend the 2021 conference which was, “Convened by Kathleen Rogers, UCA Professor of Media Art and Sciences, with moderator and international curator Rob La Frenais, renowned anthropologist, writer and activist for the rights of Amazonian peoples, Jeremy Narby and Birgitta Hosea, UCA Professor of Moving Image as the respondent.” It took the format of a zoom event over the course of an afternoon, (re)uniting global participants with an audience of artists and students re-visiting these works from 25 years ago.

I have been reflecting for over a week, on how the conference has impacted me. It is an example of a best-practice, international arts symposium, with celebrity and established artists, writers and activists from my lifetime, a fascinating body of works and engagements which, is still fresh and relevant in its explorations today and emphasises the size of the pre-existing canon of works out there, if canon it is. It has continued to help me address what is important in the practice of art; its devotional nature. It also reminded me that we work in silos, in worlds constructed from and in a web of interconnected structures, subjects and objects, bound by stereotype, anchored by archetype trying to swim in a torrent of every changing language trying to find islands of meaning. It is a state of perpetual motion.

2020 has been a year when we have been gifted time to reflect. The events ‘Sym-bi-o/Living together at the Limits of Science’ and The Incident combined, represent an attempt to create, across a timespan of 25 years, a reflective and reflexive structure to document and name the work made in a professional context, but also the principles of existence. Not solely name them but to seek the unknown and the ‘great unknowable’ going forward.

The language we use to describe and understand the world around us has evolved as rapidly as the technology alongside, both seep and creep into our living. Throughout his career, La Frenais has worked tirelessly to create art structures for the documentation of the exploration of the unknowable and to points of adventures to leap from. Rogers too has framed her art and life to formalize, document and shine an artistic and a media lens on them. Both continue to support and create artworks, and the same can be said for the other players in The Incident.

Images above – Kathleen Rogers

Hosea, as respondent throughout, brings the discussion back to the accessibility of the work, the event itself limited to only those directly connected to the artists and conveners who additionally have the time, resources and internet equipment to attend. The gap between haves and have-nots widens as novel trans-humanist technology begins to become the norm.

What then makes The Incident so brilliant? As well as using the current and emergent technology, it invokes profound natural laws, principles, archetypes, technologies for divination and time travel : true mysteries. It centres the work on testing and proving boundaries which, we are conditioned to accept unquestioningly, from external sources. It also gathers together, experts, who once drawn together as companions, can co-create a working where the collective is the greater than the sum of the whole. The architects of the work are needed to select the participants and hold the space. It is a ritual, convened for unknown purposes. This parallel to religious ritual, performance and pagan spectacle is self-evident.
La Frenais spoke of his embarrassment at certain public points during the Swiss Incident event; a gift of an ‘Alf the alien’ stuffed toy at the opening carried a hint of the nervousness of funders and media alike. Laughing at what they did not (yet) understand. Rob’s sincerity held him steady and emphasised the different styles and approaches used by art as a serious research practice. The Incident’s impact in Switzerland was big and travelled internationally. The ICA representatives who saw the work in Fribourg, asked that they travel as an entire body of works to London, where new works and fresh curation expanded the body of work further.

Above Marko Pelijhan

Predictive texts and technologies of the future
I was reminded to recommend, again, Jeff Kripal’s ‘Authors of the Impossible’ (1) a book about the study of paranormal activity. Kripal is a historian of religion and his expounding of the inscription of the future is something which has been evidenced over the past century by media like Metropolis, Star Trek and many other sci-fi and fantasy authors, not least Ron L Hubbard whose presence is felt on the fringes of this work. Kripal submits that the technology written and performed about the future has an observed tendency to come into being around 50 years later. This is a view which I appreciate and also see present in the writings of Marina Warner and Donna Haraway; a call to start writing those positive narratives, now; to write ourselves a better future. In conversation with Anne Bean, who I have had the privilege to meet through Rob recently, she suggested, that once the intention is created the act is done, similarly as the word hits its support, the future is written, Kripal emphasises that once a concept is, literally, put into the printed work and image and then into the collective (and now can of course include web, moving image formats) it becomes our future.

Personal reflections
I wanted to ask Jeremy Narby about the language used around science. Lucky enough to speak (as a stand-in) at Breaking Convention 2015 I heard his keynote address. Breaking Convention is one of my favourite conferences, although my work is about non-drug related states of consciousness so I can be considered a little square for the venue. That year it was noticeable that the adjectives used, by scientists when speaking, had moved from formal, clean if rugged language, which favoured words like ‘robust, thorough, rigorous, evidenced’ to being more esoteric in tone; ‘magical, mysterious, otherworldly, ethereal and fairytale’ language had seeped in.

Previously to mention consciousness outside of a biochemical and neuro-scientific set of linguistics was something which would exclude you from serious circles unless your choice of words was very ‘clean’. Suddenly it had transformed to a positively spellbinding vocabulary. Have Jeremy and others noticed this? It would seem that scientific thinking and openness has blossomed, from exchanges and events like The Incident, which formally asks the questions they have not been permitted to and it has had a reflexive effect. It, along with other events and pioneers has had a real impact in the validation of art practice as research.

Time is one of the principles at play in The Incident, real tick-tock time, as well as spacetime, future time and environmental time. Unseen connectivities, human symbionts and chimera’s, telepathic and psychic ability as well as UFOs in all their potential forms; so hugely discussed and experienced but rarely validated. Challenging of the limits of the capabilities of human body, exploring consciousness in varieties of altered states and how subjectivities are known, recorded and witnessed.

Rob La Frenais with the ‘Alien’ stuffed toy gift. The Incident 1995. Photograph © Eliane Laubscher.

To paraphrase Rogers, The Incident events were some of the few occasions that speculative/introspective science, the arts and spirituality examined and exchanged goods, a ‘marketplace’ … It brought together early ideas around the connective consciousness of the internet, ethno-pharmacology, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, alternative systems of knowledge and mind, psychedelics and potential futures. McKenna presented work on mycelia and alien intelligences and another thread of The Incident dwelt in the imaginary spaces around alien life hypothesis and UFO’s as well as plant medicines, symbiosis and prompting the active creation of new paradigms for future generations.”

Screen Shot of the server built by Homer Flynn and The Residents

Some of those who spoke at Sym-bi-o/Living Together at the Limits of Science:
Rogers is a life-long educator and communicator as well as an artist/curator, like La Frenais, working with an intentional, multidisciplinary awareness. She specialises in bio-art, integrative systems which include but do not always centre the human body and is a Professor of Media Art and Sciences at the University for the Creative Arts. Her work is elegant and functional, incorporating beautiful observations of the natural world and exploring reciprocal biomimicry.

Activist and author Jeremy Narby works with indigenous Amazonian peoples, as a fund raiser and an activist for these communities and wishes to make their language and knowledge available to the rest /west of the world. Listening to the voices of the people of the rainforest, he co-explores ways of knowing very differently to that of reductive science.

Image above ‘Black Lace’ by Kathleen Rogers

Rob La Frenais is an independent curator and writer, who worked with Action Space, Performance Magazine, Edge Biennale Trust and The Arts Catalyst. He has additionally worked on projects with artists including Marina Abramovic, Stelarc, James Turrell, The Otolith Group, Tania Candiani and HeHe. He is currently developing his own performance piece ‘On The Water’, engaging rowing clubs around Europe.

Another Incident participant present again in 2021 was Rod Dickinson; a personal hero and legend. He is the original maker and instigator of the ‘Crop Circles’ hoaxes of the 1990’s. His work has become fact for many believers in extraterrestrial life forms visiting earth. His complex, giant, wheat -based works were sited in a multitude of farm fields, and which have had many subsequent emulators and have intriguingly become science-fact rather than science -fiction. Only recently whilst watching a Boston University lecture on Biblical women I was amazed to see that the 153 (number of gematria) was being compared to both Da-Vinci’s last supper, the name of the Magdalena, the divine feminine and ‘left-hand path’ – and to Rod’s crop circles! This impact is time-full and in the following decades has perhaps parallels with Orson Wells ‘War of the Worlds’ radio invasion. Despite global success and the creation of a cult like following, the work was not a monetary success, as the documentation and physical works remain in the hands of others.

All members of The Incident warrant a paper or blog on each of their practice, their presence and work at the events as well as the legacies and impact they have generated, globally. The themes of the conferences and exhibitions all remain fundamental to our experience of human be-ing.

The original projects remain as inspired and challenging today as they were at their inception. They tackle Fortean ideas, some of which remain on the fringes of society and others which, whilst considered folkloric and or magical, remain at the core of common socio-political legend and language. We are perhaps all more familiar with the precise meaning and use of the term UFO than the word epigenetics.

The Incident artworks include conceptualised processes of telepathy, telekinesis, self-immolation without harm, totemic and ritual works, many centred on the non-material senses of sight and sound. An elemental investigation into the non-material nature of the world with a material starting point and inevitably, consciousness, the ‘mind-body problem’.

Image; From the Swiss Press. Bruce Gilchrist photographed by Eliane Laubscher during his ‘Day Sleeper’ performance.

Image above, Kathleen Rogers

This is still as prominent a problem in the early 21C as it was in the late 1990’s; thinking in physics and neuroscience has been as imaginative and fairytale like throughout these times as it ever was (If bound by different languages). The ‘religious’ influences and potentialities of science have been a fascinating underpinning destabiliser of the political power systems play since Plato, Socrates, Copernicus and Galileo – the stereotypes, archetypes and language around scientific imaginings as influential as its commodification. Almost always there are the huge gaps between the adepts and the punters, those who play with and manipulate the sciences and those who buy into the commodification of them, without any comprehension of their machinations. And above them their paylords.

A brief description of the background to the Incident
The project started in 1993 with La Frenais visiting Flagstaff USA. He was sent by Northern Arts in the UK to track down James Turrell and create a Northern Skyspace. In his aircraft hangar studio, where they drank fine malt whiskey in his extraordinary library of UFO literature Turrell explained his personal experience of a UFO encounter whilst flying as a U2 spy-pilot. These planes were flying over China and a typical saucer flew alongside his plane for over half an hour. Turrell himself questioned his own psychological space around this event. He agreed, generously, to help organise the event in Switzerland.

Above, still from Kathleen Rogers ‘Earthwire’ 1993

Rob also describes the previous ‘Earthwire’ event where he, Rogers and Gilchrist began their working relationships. Kathleen had been investigating the Ganzfeld technique for telepathy, and created an event called ‘Psi Net’, around Skelton Pit (UK) with Audrey Watson the medium. Infra-red cameras, BBC live broadcast teams and remote audiences were used. Gilchrist’s piece was a ‘sleep based’ piece, where the artist had reversed their sleep patterns and attempted to send code, from a lucid dream state to an audience, again at a distance. From a media perspective this event’s name ‘Psi Net; resonates with the Sky Net of the popular Terminator films current at the time. It set about opening up linguistic and symbolic undercurrent and tapping into collective visual and narrative consciousnesses. From ‘Earthwire’ the collaboration of The Incident grew.

By 1995, La Frenais and Rogers had established reputations both as curators and artists, then as writers, editors and facilitators, collaborating with and supporting cutting edge practice, with an anthropological and vital research interest in performance art and the esoteric, with its ongoing historical, complex accord.
As mentioned, they received the influential support of James Turrell, bringing together contemporary artists, activists and thinkers to create a public, international ‘Incident’. It was at first received slightly suspiciously by a conservative and nervous Swiss audience as both breaking new ground and wasting public money but then went on to great success at the ICA (London) where it was able to excite audiences and reviewers alike. It was a stellar list of participants, all who are remembered in 2021 as being great-hearted, open and active in their support, despite debate and differences of opinion they offered a collaborative practice which was genuine and generous.

Water Maps from Rogers research in Fribourg

From the Sym-bi-o/Living together at the Limits of Science text:
Rob La Frenais directed these two radical events; at the Belluard Bollwerk Festival, Fribourg, Switzerland (1995) and at the ICA London (1996). Each sought to chart radical paradigm shifts in human evolution and featured artists, scientists, musicians, visionaries, philosophers, psychologists and critical theorists. In the '90s Rob La Frenais and Kathleen Rogers worked closely in producing their intellectual framework and themes.

Kathleen Rogers at The Incident 1995. Photograph © Eliane Laubscher.

Rob La Frenais directed these two radical events; at the Belluard Bollwerk, Fribourg, Switzerland (1995) and at the ICA London (1996). Each sought to chart radical paradigm shifts in human evolution and featured artists, scientists, musicians, visionaries, philosophers, psychologists and critical theorists. In the '90s Rob La Frenais and Kathleen Rogers worked closely in producing their intellectual framework and themes.
The ‘Sym-bi-o/ living together at the limits of Science’ study day reunites them as intellectual conveners alongside previous Incident participants, with the anthropologist and activist for the rights of Amazonian peoples, Jeremy Narby.
Former Incident participants included - Terence McKenna, Roy Ascott, Rod Dickinson, Kathleen Rogers, Anne Bean, James Turrell, Marko Pelihan, Linda Montano, Minnette Lehmann, Erik Hobijn, Connie Samaras, Bruce Gilchrist, David Peat, Beata Bishop, Eduardo Luis Luna, HR Giger, Robert Fischer, Homer Flynn (The Residents) , Jacque Vallee, Jeremy Narby, Ulrike Rosenbach, Kristine Stiles, Michael Lindeman, Keiko Sei, Michael Lindeman and The Shamen.”

Present together with La Frenais and Rogers at the event in 2021 were original participants Rod Dickinson, Anne Bean and Marko Pelijhan who contributed their personal memories and perceptions of the event.

Anne Bean assisting Ansuman Biswas in the construction of works at The Incident 1995. Photograph © Eliane Laubscher

The original Incident in Switzerland in 1995 happened in a world where the internet was only just present, artists like Ghislaine Boddington were creating telematic and server based events, what we now call STEAM was developing slowly with the influence of film and TV as aides to the public reception of new tec. is apparent throughout. Even though the internet had been invented at CERN, only 100 kms away, computer technology was not yet a domestic mainstay in Switzerland. La Frenais had the only modem in Fribourg at the time and uniquely used the internet to contact some of the invitees, like Jacques Vallee and Roy Ascott. For the convening of the event they set up a basic Mosaic site on a big screen which integrated live performance and web surfing and live streaming for the hundreds gathered at the opening, with a live event by then legendary and mysterious US West Coast group The Residents, represented at The Incident by anonymous member Homer Flynn.

Rogers’ work at The Incident was inspired by the river running through the city, titled, ‘Water consciousness and the memory of Water’. This involved dowsing, map making and searching for water sources, filling bottles with gathered water and making vast installations in some of the medieval sites around Fribourg.

Anne Bean, refused all documentation of her work as part of the process during the incident and is photographed assisting others, she remembers the energy and conviviality of it. Her 2020 works have been based on the River Thames and its waters, the piece comprised a year of monthly performances based on the lunar and tidal systems and was called ‘From Hell or High Water’. The themes of elementals, environment, interconnectivity and the solar system still continue to the present in their works.

A sketch of Anne Bean’s piece at The Incident by her son Ezra Rubenstein. 1995

Reflections on research contexts, personal and public events
COVID 19 has seen a burgeoning of online events, and of new pieces of digital/performance work, including a more serious attempt to archive and contextualise it. ‘Before the First’ by Susan Fuks, which has spread as an infomeme throughout social media. It tracks performance artists asking, ‘when was their first internet performance?’ simultaneously tracking the evolving technology(2).
A cyber bestiary for the modern age.

Thinking hard about my own experiences: working with European feminist cyber-artists/activists like SpiderAlex, (Spain) media artists,Doplgenger (Serbia) and on my own projects ‘The Atavist Tarot’ : tracking back my own history engaging with digital and satellite technology and realising that the two key memories I have of technology and performance/public spectacle are, the 1981 British Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana, which, incredibly, was broadcast live around the world to millions. I remember sitting in a tent at the Royal Norfolk Showground not enjoying it but aware that this was a huge, novel, collective experience.
The same can be said for the second, Live Aid, 1987 (which was also using the patronage of the royal family as well) and although I enjoyed this event far more, both represented civic ceremonial ritual at the highest level.

These were simultaneously the most mainstream and most technically challenging spectacles of the time. Using NASA and Silicon Valley-developed equipment, but at the time driven by sports coverage, there is also the third memorable event - the live streaming of the tragic last moments and explosion of the space shuttle ‘Challenger’ in 1986. These were the most widely viewed, real-time ‘performance’ events of my generation, using its technical cutting-edge capabilities which have morphed seamlessly into our current digital internet world in the domestic environment.

Above, Rod Dickinson in a crop-circle.

Richard Barbrook was mentioned by Dickinson as one of his tutors during the conference, Barbrook writes and speaks with extraordinary clarity on the link between European occult and esoteric practices, Silicon Valley and the Women’s movement, clearly showing their connected evolution and concussions. But, the availability of these technologies is almost always driven by corporate or state directives and by individual personal wealth (access). Not by the Caractacus Potts style fictional inventor in ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ who must (to me) have inspired Elon Musk with dreams of flying cars. My exposure to this new meta narrative in the 1980’s was from the dominant social paradigm – TV, giant media corporations and heavily endorsed celebrities and pop stars. We sensed the potential power of the collective, something long gone from the pulpit and went for the full baptism, away from individuation, handing over control to media giants like Sky and the Murdoch Empire, to be spoon-fed our information, to be receivers, passive gobbling individuals.

And on the subject of Disney… see ‘Vinyl Leaves’ by S.M. Fjellman where he surmises that its utopian world is ‘postmodern’- a place where the distinction between real and fake is no longer important, a potent legacy. (3)

We have been groomed for this slide into ‘Yetziratic’ (from the Kabbalah) psychological space, virtual reality, faux contact and we are, always, an adaptive species. A peak example of the absorbance of counter-cultural social ritual being the spectacles created by Cirque de Soleil, masterful ‘high catholic’ performance! In contrast the actors of ‘The Incident’ seem like the stylist monks and saints from the first millennia whose work was devotional and who stood on rocks and contemplated in caves for years at a time and whose reach was arguably more influential.
Late 20C artists, activists and thinkers however, did not follow this route into the mainstream media current – they were active and investigative full of ideas around the (im)possible and (im)probable with new means to work collaboratively and inquisitively in a broader, more individual manner, in relation to the self the human.
In the early 20C the links between science, technology and magic were still very strong, with the workings of Jack Parsons and Frank Malina being well known, as was their relationship with Crowley and his magical organisations. These ideas went on to influence American cinema and counter-culture with film makers like Kenneth Anger, the great American poets and writers of the 1960’s, thinkers and philosophers like the late Terence McKenna, who was in The Incident. The Incident is a reminder that we are part of a chain of history, that we also inhabit a silo in time and that we are just grist to the mill.

In 2020/21 the internet is suddenly full of environmentally-based, nature-based, techno-magical performances, group practices and performances led, on zoom, many by younger artists, often, women, like Jatun Risba who, are evoking/echoing the natural/nature/magical practices of the late 19th Century, with some extraordinary performances and films – see the link to ‘Be-coming Cow’ below.

Still from the ‘Earthwire’ performance 1993. Skelton Pit. UK.

This canon of post-disciplinary and performance art has hovered in many liminal public and private space for the past century and its relationship with technology is ever present and older. Science and technology having replaced the millennia- old formats of ritual and initiation through human performative rites for health, religio-magical and philosophical inauguration. The relationships between religious and cultural spaces have moved from pulpit to cinema, sacred space or reliquary to gallery and with real-time and performance or site specific works into a variety of unused, unusual municipal, natural and abandoned spaces. The ‘artist’ can thus assume the role of alchemist, hedge priest, magician, bard or fool, a personage who can transcend the nomian boundaries of society in the public domain. One is reminded of the illusions and great public spectacles in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and the alchemy of the Squire’s and Canon Yeoman’s Tales (4)(5).

I have a copy of the January – February Issue of ‘Performance Magazine’ from 1982, borrowed from La Frenais who was both editor and contributor. In it there is an article called ‘Magic and Performance’ in which he addresses the difference between (performance) art and magic, citing intention and freedom of interpretation as two of the main differentiators, but acknowledging, “ Occult material has always been a tempting source for experimental theatre”. There is an underlying suspicion of the un- or partially known, and modern science and technology (and its marketing) has exploited this ignorance and lust for spectacle just as well as any snake oil salesman or woman burnt for being wise. This ‘trust’ in technological advance, has already positioned its audience into a space of being awed, and an anticipation expectation of the ‘next marvel’.

Humanity and Reality – back to The Incident
The Incident viewed through a time gap of 25 years allows us to see clearly where real or assumed advances have been made. Not least advances which have cost us our living environment. Haraway’s seminal work ‘Staying With The Trouble’, (2016) (6), is cited several times as an influence on Rogers’ work. The older participants appear less concerned with human cyborg-enhancements and prosthetics than environmental impacts, advances and symbiosis with Nature and for my part, I am happy with that. I have had the privilege to sit through the British Neuroscience Association Conference meeting on ethics in the early twenteens’s and was terrified and horrified equally.

As previously suggested, The Incident pulls us back to archetype and away from stereotype, bringing us back to the interconnectedness of the human being/human body and Nature/the natural world. Worlds bound by laws which we seemed destined to pick apart and command. Rogers’ pieces demonstrate this fragility and complexity exquisitely. The technology is of course important, but for La Frenais, it is the live, physical presence, the human contact and interaction with others which remains a priority, perhaps even more so through the pandemic.

Jeremy Narby in his presentation grounds the work solidly in the pragmatic engagement and activism he undertakes and talks cautiously about the dangers of taking psychedelics, however, all the works and working practices of these artists, which continue to balance contemplation, devotion and action as the triune basis of their practices have a political content. The nature of being a performance artist, is one of taking up public space, bringing your ‘goods’ to market, out of the silos and exchanging them, be they practical, nourishing or genetic. The fluid acumen of media studies is not often publicly valued, but as a critical tool it is the most broad and current and in a world of changing mediascapes it especially valuable.

To End:
The work around the revisiting of The Incident raises possible futures. Not least a broader and deeper documentation of it than currently exists – a book? a film? a website? The wonderful images taken by the event photographer Image of The Incident 1995, Eliane Laubscher hold the potential for a wonderful publication.

Or perhaps another Incident? (Sur ’internet or en realité?).
The Incident is perhaps a misnomer as it implies a brief, time-bound event, complete in itself. The Incident remains an unhurried, time-full piece that, reaches forward in time and of which this Symposia is just one element. May it long continue.

Michael Heim’s classic book Virtual Realism – has a chapter on The Incident

References

1.     Kripal. J. (2010) Authors of the Impossible – The Paranormal and the Sacred.
University of Chicago Press.
2. Fuks. S . (2021) Before the First. Available on line @ https://vimeo.com/503467731?fbclid=IwAR2j09imOYoAW9sCxVr7ZGZjVG4l0pdAp98RdgoxPRSYQDqic6Y4vEp7xXo
3.     Fjellman. S.M. (1992) Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and America (Institutional Structures of Feeling). Routledge.
4.    Bussiere.M (2009) Angelic Demons: Witchcraft and Sorcery in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Seton Hall University. Available on line @ https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1731&context=dissertations
5.     Lionarons.J.T. (1998). The Chaucer Review. Vol.27,No.4 pp. 377-386 Published By: Penn State University Press
6.     Harraway. D. J. (2016) Staying With the Trouble. Duke University Press.

Links
7.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0bmGTLrAhY The Royal Wedding
8.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a1ZF6gJ3fk&list=PL2bek2h-pjmTJ8HgRHX8_iTR6IlwX7aC6
Live Aid
9.     https://www.space.com/18084-space-shuttle-challenger.html Space Shuttle Challenger
10.   Chitty Chitty Bang Bang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitty_Chitty_Bang_Bang
11.  https://jatunrisba.com/be-coming-cow-2020/
12.   https://www.foto-ch.ch/?a=fotograph&id=24160&lang=fr Eliane Laubscher
https://www.archivesdufuturanterieur.net/fr/agenda-afa/
3.   https://www.kathleenrogers.org
14.   http://roblafrenais.info
15.   https://annebeanarchive.com
16.   http://www.birgittahosea.co.uk/pages/photosonic2.htm1
17.   https://londonfieldworks.com/About
18.  https://www.roddickinson.net/pages/index.php
19.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle
20.   http://www.circlemakers.org/new_documents.html
21.   https://v2.nl/archive/works/delusions-of-self-immolation2
22.   https://greatmystery.org/jeremynarby/
23.   https://jamesturrell.com
24.   https://www.ica.art
25.   https://www.westminster.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/directory/barbrook-richar
26. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)

Handmade Glass Bead and Textile Gift Card from the shop at Atelier Quinze.

ATELIER QUINZE - Beautiful Handwoven Textiles in a New Gallery/Studio La Trimouille

October 03, 2020 by Annett

https://www.atelierquinze.com/?fbclid=IwAR3BeWuiMLKbNvLyRgdQIrbG_iBYdg22A02CeoSLwhUZwOZihHdT8ngQDz8T

The Loom set and strung ready to weave. Photographs Annett.

Glorious textures and colours - hand woven

Textile Artist Beverley Hicklin BA has opened her stunning new studio Atelier Quinze in La Trimouille, 86290. Fr., in the midst of and despite, the pandemic. The three storey building has been beautifully restored and offers space for artists and visitors to come to see the traditional process of making woven textiles, enroll on a course or class, or book space to work alongside Hicklin.
There is a boutique attached to the atelier where it is possible to buy fine craft works, clothes, scarves, jewellry and various, gorgeous bags, wallets, cushions and more exquisite bijouterie.

https://www.atelierquinze.com/?fbclid=IwAR3BeWuiMLKbNvLyRgdQIrbG_iBYdg22A02CeoSLwhUZwOZihHdT8ngQDz8T

Details of Hicklin’s multicoloured woven cloth.

One of the two looms in the atelier with skeins of yarns behind.

Examples of Hicklin’s hand woven textiles; felted and embroidered.

Hicklin has two looms with which she creates her glorious textiles, but she is also a seamstress and designer so can be commissioned to develop fabrics, soft furnishings, clothes, bags and additionally uses marbling and glass making techiques and creates delicate, colourful jewellry and accessories.

It is wonderful that more artisanal and creative life has been breathed back into the small town of La Trimouille, once the key staging post on the River Benaize; the only major crossing point between Le Blanc (Indre) and Le Dorat (Haute Vienne/Limousin). It now boasts three fine contemporary arts and craft venues, which offer courses in painting, textiles, printmaking, jewellry and paper making.
Our next Balades des Artistes will take place in November 2020, watch this space…

For more information please got to the Atelier Quinze website
https://www.atelierquinze.com/?fbclid=IwAR3BeWuiMLKbNvLyRgdQIrbG_iBYdg22A02CeoSLwhUZwOZihHdT8ngQDz8T

Tour de France 2020 - Lathus (Chauvigny - Sarran) 10/09/2020

September 10, 2020 by Annett

The first four - Peloton leading for more information go to : https://www.letour.fr/en/media-area
https://netstorage.lequipe.fr/ASO/cycling_tdf/tdf-2020-dossier-de-presse.pdf

To view the highlights with France TV go to :
https://www.france.tv/sport/cyclisme/tour-de-france/1964267-tour-de-france-2020-le-resume-de-la-12e-etape.html

The next and main body of riders - super high energy after waiting for 90 minutes in baking sun - gone in a blur, Morgan asked me why there were no women…

Last riders through and the choppers overhead

We have lived in France for four summers now and have never seen or been part of the Tour de France.
It was a completely awesome and exciting as well as (obtusely) calm and celebratory experience - with acres of anticipation, baking heat and intense bursts of crowd and community spirit. We watched the cavalcade from the small town of Lathus which is only 15 km from our home and were lucky to have perfect roadside views of the event. I am profoundly happy that we went.

Observations.
Several things; turning up to the Tour on your bike, in your lycra is akin to bringing your horse to Ascott and wearing your jodphurs and riding outfit - it could be percieved as a little over keen.

The main safety element it seems is to keep out of the road, yet there was (seemingly) a team of middle aged women/demon road crossers as well as fish and chip eating gendarmes who were very laid back. There were no injuires I am glad to say.
Most however had brought practical seating and sunprotection and everyone thankfully had their masks.

I think letting your children sit in the road is perhaps not a good idea either, but there was lots of carnivalesque stuff to enjoy and (unhand sanitised) free gifts a plenty being thrown from passing floats - I only caught one; a minature wooden spoon - which is very cute.

The delay this year due to COVID-19 meant a smaller turnout as the children were back at school and many could not come out of work. The cyclists themselves evidently had not lacked in any training or determination.

Some of the worst road crossing and free gift snatching culprits as well as the UK contingent with Union flags and glasses of wine - and the race itself.

Also, if you wear a white open face motobike helmet and a white face mask, you look exactly like a federation storm trooper from ‘star wars’ - I was too gobsmacked to take a photo - but it looked awesome!

I reflected that a British event of this nature, there would be streakers, but luckily this was not the case in Lathus today.
All images copyright : Annett

Hermetic, art-historic symbols alongside contemporary political images as part of the graffiti/realism which packs out the ‘demure’

La demure du chaos - the abode of chaos - a pilgrimage to Amsterdam part 2

June 23, 2020 by Annett

Postmodernist Realist Icon Graveyard

Helicopter and panel - entrance - demure de chaos

After leaving the gloriously sun drenched Palais Ideal we headed north to Lyon and drove the sprawling motorway which carves a swathe right through its middle, crossed the bridge from east to west and wiggled up a little through a shady suburb to park in a tiny, scorched, car-park. We ate a bad, over priced meal, in what was called a Tapas Bar - but the food was tomatoe pureé on toast. It was near the end of service and our plates were clearly, in part, constructed from the left overs of other customers meals. We were annoyed, it was too hot, everyone was too hot and the demure du chaos was shut for lunch, so we sat and sweltered under plastic sheets, with plastic plants.
But it was worth the poor food, uncomfortable heat and pack horse venture. We were carrying our laptops, because it had reached 47 degrees centigrade in the parked car and we trying to balance hats and reapply sunscreen as we skirted the graffiti covered security wall of the abode.
Through the big industrial gates, where a platinum blonde sat smoking, in the gift shop, the only shade available and we were inside the fortress, the (tres belle) demure of chaos.

The entrance alone is overwhelming with a huge decorated helicopter tilting at you as you walk through the door. The epxerience is perhaps one of a postapocalyptic art-school with (mad) Max as senior lecturer and Harraway and Marx as lead tutors. It is marvellous, even in 40 degree heat.
Morgan had just finished his ‘Black Door’ series and was confronted with duplicate forms, in metal and paint of the same device - it was beyond thought provoking, the mix of realism, graffiti, post-pink theatre and brutalism is intoxicating and no one can leave without finding something to make them go ‘wow’.
What is even better is the secrecy, the wizard of oz-ness around the space and its directors - ‘we’ll be back’!

https://www.petitfute.com/v36213-saint-romain-au-mont-d-or-69270/c1173-visites-points-d-interet/c958-musee/23260-la-demeure-du-chaos.html

Historical and political portraiture on the walls and objects

Cimetière des icônes du réalisme postmoderniste

La Demure du Chaos

Après avoir quitté le Palais Idéal, glorieusement inondé de soleil, nous nous sommes dirigés vers le nord de Lyon et avons emprunté l'autoroute tentaculaire qui se découpe en son milieu, traversé le pont d'est en ouest et remonté un peu à travers une banlieue ombragée pour nous garer dans un minuscule parking brûlé. Nous avons mangé un mauvais repas, trop cher, dans ce qu'on appelait un bar à tapas - mais la nourriture était de la purée de tomates sur des toasts. C'était vers la fin du service et nos assiettes étaient clairement, en partie, construites à partir des restes des repas des autres clients. Nous étions ennuyés, il faisait trop chaud, tout le monde avait trop chaud et la demure du chaos était fermée pour le déjeuner, alors nous nous sommes assis et nous nous sommes engouffrés sous des feuilles de plastique, avec des plantes en plastique. Mais cela valait la peine de manger de la mauvaise nourriture, la chaleur inconfortable et l'aventure du cheval de bât. Nous transportions nos ordinateurs portables, car il avait atteint 47 degrés centigrades dans la voiture garée et nous essayions d'équilibrer nos chapeaux et de réappliquer de la crème solaire en longeant le mur de sécurité de la maison, recouvert de graffitis. À travers les grandes portes industrielles, où une blonde platine était assise en train de fumer, dans la boutique de cadeaux, la seule ombre disponible et nous étions à l'intérieur de la forteresse, la (très belle) sobriété du chaos.

Rien que l'entrée est écrasante, avec un énorme hélicoptère décoré qui s'incline vers vous lorsque vous passez la porte. L'expérience est peut-être celle d'une école d'art post-apocalyptique avec Max (le fou) comme maître de conférences et Harraway et Marx comme tuteurs principaux. C'est merveilleux, même par une chaleur de 40 degrés. Morgan venait de terminer sa série "Black Door" et a été confronté à des formes dupliquées, en métal et en peinture du même dispositif.
C'était au-delà de la réflexion, le mélange de réalisme, de graffitis, de théâtre post-punk et de brutalité est enivrant et personne ne peut partir sans avoir trouvé quelque chose qui le fasse "wow". Ce qui est encore mieux, c'est le secret, ‘le magicien de l'oz’ autour de l'espace et ses directeurs - "nous reviendrons" !

https://www.petitfute.com/v36213-saint-romain-au-mont-d-or-69270/c1173-visites-points-d-interet/c958-musee/23260-la-demeure-du-chaos.html

Exernal View of the demure de chaos - June 2019

Le Facteur Cheval - Le Palais Ideal - a pilgrimage to Amsterdam Part 1

June 21, 2020 by Annett

At the very beginning of June in 2019, after a series of illnesses and tragedies in our extended family, we decided to drive to Amsterdam for the ESSWE conference and make a road trip to visit two sites; la demeure du chaos - the abode of chaos in Lyons and the Palais Ideal, just east of St Etienne where my grandfather was born. It turned into a 1000 mile trip in 40 degrees heat during the 2019 canicule.
We stared with the Palais Ideal.
http://www.facteurcheval.com/en/index.html

We had taken a group of students to see the film http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm=261959.html as part of the residential kabbalistic residency we were hosting at the ATELIER and whilst out that day on a field trip has come across, shockingly the carcass of a horse in the road, only an hour before the viewing in our wonderful Cinema Etoile (La Trimouille), so were still a little shaken. This was one of the most beautiful and moving films I have ever seen. The whole cinema was weeping - I was passing tissues along the rows of seats to all the men and we were, as an audience not just crying quietly but bodily, holding back chest sobs. At one point a young woman started crying out for her mother. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of the year. I had determined to see the physical ‘Palais Ideal’, the work of Facteur Cheval over half a century in tribute to his lost wife, daughter and stolen son. Our journey to the ‘dam became a pilgrimage.

We stayed at a wonderful air bnb where we sang and played games around the campfire after eating stone baked pizza and fresh picked cherries and drove off the terrifying roadhell of dual carrigeway into an impressively severe and forested landscape, with drops and inclines which we in the Poitou Charente are not used to.

The little town of Hauterives (Drôme) has been built up around this shrine, for that is what it is and it is nestled by the river at the foot of the gorge, with ice-cream shops, supermarkets and garages somewhat suffocating it. It is a little sanctuary, from this modernity. You come through the cool, modern glass, right-angled marble, concrete foyer and airport architecture gift shop out into the grounds of a building with almost no regular structure. It is organic, incredibly intricate and seems like a huge wedding cake, based on the amlagation of 19th C concepts of the seven ancient wonders of the world. Its creamy, bobbly, towers where stones become trunks, roots and fruits hide tunnels and oubliettes, balconies and Escher like stairways. Huge figures, like the old icons of Afghanistan or Petra, there carved out of sheer rock face, here carried daily home, from a postround. Then at night, with buckets of hand mixed cement and chaux, and with every ounce of love in his soul, moulded and forced into the visible expression of a man’s love for his family. It is a magical mausoleum.
It is wonderful, and curious and tender.

We took our photos, fighting for space in the murderous heat and had to leave, the temperature making it unbearable, we wandered down the river to look at the stones, and perhaps rock hop, but all we found was human excrement and the water so low it was beginning stagnate. We walked a little further - trying to imagine Cheval’s route and gatherings, but were blocked by a rally of not quite ‘super cars’; a barrage of Subarus, Porches and BMWs revving their multi-exhausted engines driven by men in tight vests and even shorter shorts and women with real tans but fake boobs, all wearing a lot of gold, mirrored sunglasses and sweating - a lot.
We left and took the ‘A’ roads back towards the many lanes of traffic in Lyon.

Le Facteur Cheval - Le Palais Ideal - un pèlerinage à Amsterdam Partie 1

Fin Mai 2019, après une série de maladies et de tragédies dans notre famille élargie, nous avons décidé de nous rendre à Amsterdam pour la conférence ESSWE et de faire un voyage en voiture pour visiter deux sites : la demeure du chaos - the abode of chaos in Lyons et le Palais Ideal, juste à l'est de St Etienne où mon grand-père est né. Ce voyage s'est transformé en un voyage de 1000 miles par 40 degrés de chaleur lors de la canicule de 2019.
Nous avons regardé avec le Palais Idéal.
http://www.facteurcheval.com/en/index.html

Nous avions emmené un groupe d'étudiants voir le film http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm=261959.html dans le cadre de la résidence kabbalistique que nous hébergeons à l'ATELIER et, alors que nous étions en excursion ce jour-là, nous avons croisé, de façon choquante, la carcasse d'un cheval sur la route, seulement une heure avant la projection dans notre merveilleux Cinéma Etoile (La Trimouille), alors nous étions encore un peu secoués. C'est l'un des films les plus beaux et les plus émouvants que j'ai jamais vus. Tout le cinéma pleurait - je passais des mouchoirs le long des rangées de sièges à tous les hommes et nous étions, en tant que public, non seulement en train de pleurer tranquillement mais aussi physiquement, en retenant nos sanglots de poitrine. À un moment donné, une jeune femme s'est mise à pleurer sa mère. Ce fut l'une des plus belles expériences de l'année. J'avais décidé de voir le "Palais Idéal", l'œuvre du Facteur Cheval qui a été réalisée pendant un demi-siècle en hommage à sa femme, sa fille et son fils volé. Notre voyage vers le "barrage" est devenu un pèlerinage.

Nous avons séjourné dans un merveilleux air-bnb où nous avons chanté et joué autour du feu de camp après avoir mangé une pizza cuite sur pierre et des cerises fraîchement cueillies. Nous avons quitté le terrifiant carrosse de la route à deux voies pour nous rendre dans un paysage impressionnant de sévérité et de forêt, avec des dénivellations et des pentes auxquelles nous ne sommes pas habitués en Poitou-Charente.

La petite ville d'Hauterives (Drôme) s'est construite autour de ce sanctuaire, car c'est bien de cela qu'il s'agit et elle est nichée au bord de la rivière, au pied de la gorge, avec des magasin, des supermarchés et des garages qui l'étouffent quelque peu. C'est un petit sanctuaire, de cette modernité. On passe par le verre frais et moderne, le marbre à angle droit, le foyer en béton et la boutique de cadeaux de l'architecture de l'aéroport pour arriver sur le terrain d'un bâtiment qui n'a presque pas de structure régulière. Il est organique, incroyablement complexe et ressemble à un énorme gâteau de mariage, basé sur l'amlagation des concepts du 19ème siècle des sept anciennes merveilles du monde. Ses tours crémeuses et ondulantes où les pierres deviennent des troncs, les racines et les fruits cachent des tunnels et des oubliettes, des balcons et des escaliers à la Escher. Des figures gigantesques, comme les anciennes icônes d'Afghanistan ou de Pétra, là taillées dans la roche, ici transportées quotidiennement chez elles, d'un poste à l'autre. Puis la nuit, avec des seaux de ciment et de chaux mélangés à la main, et avec chaque once d'amour dans son âme, moulés et forcés dans l'expression visible de l'amour d'un homme pour sa famille. C'est un mausolée magique.
Il est merveilleux, curieux et tendre.

Nous avons pris nos photos, luttant pour l'espace dans la chaleur meurtrière et avons dû partir, la température le rendant insupportable, nous avons erré le long de la rivière pour regarder les pierres, et peut-être le houblon de roche, mais tout ce que nous avons trouvé, ce sont des excréments humains et l'eau si basse qu'elle commençait à stagner. Nous avons marché un peu plus loin - en essayant d'imaginer la route et les rassemblements de Cheval, mais nous avons été bloqués par un rassemblement de voitures pas tout à fait "super" ; un barrage de Subaru, de Porches et de BMW faisant tourner leurs moteurs à plusieurs étages, conduits par des hommes en vestes serrées et des femmes encore plus courtes, avec de vrais bronzages mais de faux seins, portant toutes beaucoup d'or, des lunettes de soleil à verres réfléchissants et transpirant - beaucoup.
Nous sommes partis et avons repris les routes "A" vers les nombreuses voies de circulation de Lyon.

Astronaut Playing the Saxphone - Space Station 2017 3D IMX Cinema Experience

Futuropolis - Empty Spaces Public Absences

June 14, 2020 by Annett

Places of Power

Empty Public Spaces
Techo-entertainment
Day Out - Futuroscope Fr. February 2020 - Study Notes For Bella
My last field trip out of the atelier before Lockdown.
Futuroscope Theme Park. Poitiers. France. The photos were/are intended research notes for ‘Places of Power’ and at the back of my mind provide the basis for a loose collaboration with artist Annabelle Shelton.
Sorry they are so late Bella.

Les lieux de pouvoir

Empty Public SpacesTecho-entertainmentDay Out - Futuroscope Fr. February 2020 - Study Notes For BellaMa dernière sortie de l'atelier avant Lockdown.Futuroscope Theme Park. Poitiers. Poitiers. France. Les photos étaient / sont des notes de recherche pour "Places of Power" et, au fond de mon esprit, elles constituent la base d'une collaboration informelle avec l'artiste Annabelle Shelton. Désolé qu'ils soient si en retard Bella.

Not in the right head space - notes on Deep Third Space - Pandemic Encounters 24 05 2020 (please do it again)

May 28, 2020 by Annett

Not in the right head space…
Saturday 23 May 2020
Pandemic Encounters ::: being[ together] in the deep third space
A Networked Performance Installation by Paul Sermon
in collaboration with Randall Packer, Gregory Kuhn & the Third Space Network
(English and French version)

Artists, performers and thinkers who participated: Annie Abrahams (France), Clarissa Ribeiro (Brazil), Roberta Buiani (Canada), Andrew Denton (New Zealand), Tania Fraga (Brazil), Satinder Gill (US), Birgitta Hosea (UK), Charles Lane (US), Ng Wen Lei (Singapore), Marilene Oliver (Canada), Serena Pang (Singapore), Daniel Pinheiro (Portugal), Olga Remneva (Russia), Toni Sant (UK), Rejane Spitz (Brazil), Atau Tanaka (UK)

COVID-19
I have been ill for over two months now and the only time I have left the house, briefly, has been to be hasmatted away to CHU Poitiers COVID 19 Unit. I was really looking forward to this event, as a past London LASER speaker. I am still unwell and being in a unit where I could hear people dying around me, where the nurses and interns, younger than my daughters looked in terror over their masks and tried to open the windows in between newcomers. Where you are shut into the equivalent of a cell – with a huge hazard sign hung on the outside but can still hear people coughing and drowning in their own lungs. You cannot just leave, it is militarized and ritualized totally. This means that every experience or journey to the outside world is magnified and its value increased exponentially.

I have been involved in zoom, skype, YouTube and multi-platform events during the past two weeks, participating in research hubs, book reviews, live interviews, panel discussions and film screenings as well as meditations and ritual work. It has been wonderful, incredible.
The technology is not new but its adaptation, on mass, to link me, include me and develop conversations I would otherwise be ignorant of and excluded from through physical absence has been brilliant : the true democratization of information age that we have been told about, but has never happened – has happened - partially. Of course, you have to be in a position of wealth and privilege enough to have internet connectivity, and then to be in the correct circles, to know where to find the links, the social introductions. The links and password, ritualized access and protocol once in the ‘chatroom’.
If the doors to this truly collaborative method of sharing information swing shut post lockdown, I shall be very disappointed. It will be a deliberate act of exclusion.

Annett (me) watching the live event in recovery (France)

Pandemic Encounters ::: being[ together] in the deep third space
The text for this event read:
“Pandemic Encounters is a networked performance installation inhabited by the live chroma-figure of Paul Sermon. Participants are invited to enter into the deep third space to engage & perform a ritual action as a reflection on the Covid-19 state of being[together] remotely. Each action has its own form: an artistic expression, a scientific analysis, a poetic rendering, a political manifesto, a social critique, a dystopic cry of distress, a subtle movement, a moment of catharsis, or a call in the night from some distant corner of the world. Pandemic Encounters is a collective/creative response to a global pandemic that has triggered an unfolding metamorphosis of the human condition.”

My ears pricked up – not just at the COVID -19 - which is consuming and transforming me currently. But the language. I still cannot physically speak, lack of breath does not allow me and words have become more precious and pertinent, each one has such great weight and import.
I think it was at the 2016 ‘Breaking Convention’ that I noticed that the language in the neuroscientific and related communities was changing. The narratives were suddenly using magical words and references, something which only two years before had been avoided. It was as if we had all suddenly arrived at Hogwarts with quotes from Le Guin and Rumi tripping off everyone’s tongues. Verbs that I had been chided for using (when working with Peterhouse College or interviewing scientists for my research on the intersections between art, science and religion) and which had been rejected vehemently and continually by the scientific community were popping up all over, in public space. Suddenly the language of awe and wonder was very present. It has been very evident the ritual practice of lab and church, as well as scientist and priest, if viewed from a social science or philosophical perspective, fulfill very similar structures and roles; magical implements and robes, special words and glyphs, but from both spaces magical terminology is rejected. The myth of the war between them is not so much about systems of belief but visible performance and control of power (wealth).
In 2018 I had the joy of being part of an online event in Bourges (Fr) with Spideralex and Radio CAArgo where we performed a ritual, live on a server and syncronised radio broadcast, writing fairytale digital applications; cyber feminists and activists all over the world are using ethernet magic to manifest real world events and changes as we speak, on hidden software with obscured platforms. The need for ‘magic’ was evident there and the role of the artist within that, undefined.

In his article published in Makery online yesterday, ‘‘Art as We Don’t Know It’: Against the Unbearable Whiteness of Bioart,’ Rob La Frenais breaks down the use of terms like bioart or sciart as potentially misleading and suggests a very specific set of ontologies are really required to describe arts practice which is informed by science. Yet time and technology wait for no human and the rate of change and obsolescence is very fast.
He writes and quotes; “Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr of SymbioticA rail against the view of art within this new field “Some may say that the inclusion of artists, within the field of synthetic biology for example, served as, if not an explicit promotion of the field, at least as a force of superficial “debate” around the social and biopolitical issues raised through the new technologies that will eventually lead to the domestication of the technology. The artist was traditionally allowed to act as a provocateur or contester, or (to) put it bluntly, in this context, the role of the artist might be like that of a medieval court jester.” They ask: What kind of provocation can an artist make that cannot be utilised or capitalised by other, opposing, propagandist agendas, can make an active and lasting change in society, can make sense of the new-found relationship with matter (in this case life)?”

This term ‘domestication’ of a technology is perhaps what artists do best, they tame it and break it and then put it to use, but it requires, skill, patience, resources and risk-taking (to be labelled a fool). But science, especially contemporary physics which, is essentially an immaterial faith system for ‘normal’ humans, has conceded that it needs help to communicates its laws and gifts to society, to write its mythology. And the links between mythology and ritual are long established (Eliade, Harrison…)

Perhaps a more useful description is that artists always embrace new technologies and writers especially have a role in “writing the future” (Kripal 2010) , Harraway, Braidotti and Jones all agree. So, to see it there – a call to ‘ritual’ in the Leonardo online space was very wonderful thing for me this week – awesome, in religious terms! Definite, intentional, magical terminology in a science art collaboration, or perhaps more correctly termed, ‘performed technology’ based context.

Above : Roberta Buiani (Canada) and the ‘demon’ chatline!

So, as I watched I really did not know what to think or feel.
Perhaps I didn’t know what to expect and should have been more prepared for my own sensitivity. This is a familiar and high profile organization, with fellow artists and practitioners whose work I know and respect. Perhaps it was too soon for me.

(I have been making work around the subject, constantly, drawing and writing on my walls, filling sketchbooks, documenting the hallucinations which are still with me waking and sleeping. My team have been filming, printing, squashing the life out of things which grow in the studio as well as painting, and journaling. We are still on 100%. I do not know if my lungs will every recover their full capacity. I still can speak very little.
I am over stating my personal predicament.
Why?
Because it was the subject of the event.
Because I turned off and dropped out – I exited the ritual

The Art works.
I want to see them again.
I want to know their subtleties again.

The artwork was brilliant and sincere. Poetry and performed text by Abrahams, Ribeiro, Remneva, and Denton, beautiful sounds and images by Oliver which transported me back into safe internal spaces made surreal by low oxygen and high DMT1 levels. It opened with a film by Abrahams (UK)’ of a room where a figure under a blanket with no face struggled for breath – my body responded with fear and tension in the same way as it did to the bare back Daniel Pinheiro. Tanakas human frisson sound and digital performance equally entrancing. It was excellent.
The co-curator and MC of the event, Paul Sermon, awkwardly interacted with the majority of the pieces which were being green screened and skyped in from around the world. The technology was stretched to the maximum and understandably and systematically wayward and this made the whole effect somewhat comical and monty-pythonesque.
This alone, with clumsy and charming sound problems would have been ok – in places – except for the context; ‘COVID’.
The subject, when I was both subject and subject/object literally was too much for me.
Should it be a comi-tragedy?
It felt too jovial. Was I witnessing catharsis? I certainly wasn’t experiencing it.
But why?

From my experience ritual requires certain things, a structure, a script, actors /agents with roles, who follow a prescribed structure, it is about the collective not the individual , and it has a clear intention the outcome of which may be immediate and may not be seen for years. Ritual can be anything from high mass, to cleaning your teeth. Rituals can be frightening, compelling, sexually charged and or joyous and this is why Art, especially performance art and film is so expert art ritual, but rituals have a purpose (and this purpose can be wildness and mayhem too.)
The purpose was clearly stated in the invitation, and most of the intent, if not all was fulfilled. As with the apprehension of language, rituals are honed and made more powerful and efficient with repetition and practice
But, there was an extra element which distracted and disrupted.

Above all else the physical and psychological spaces of ritual are traditionally ‘held’ or ‘contained’, from megaliths to cathedrals the formal containment of physical space and the roles played with in them have been a priority.

What, for me, made it uncomfortable, was to be a part of was the timeline, the live chat, which became silly. The audience was largely familiar with each other and naturally pleased and happy for the contact. Excitable and lighthearted, almost celebratory.
I commented twice, once asking if it was (an episode of) the “Goodies’, and found I had to leave before the completion of the event. The chatline seemed (to me) unsafe, inappropriate; it distracted from the work and broke (my perceived )notions of ‘politeness’ and protocol, in their formal senses, which have become normative to such online ‘events’. In all the other events I have attended, the safety of the space and speakers is held or kept safe by the timeline being deactivated, or by other speakers being held on mute, whilst the key actor ‘performs’. I have clearly become accustomed to this, very fast. It is ‘normally’ a very tightly, sometimes overcontrolled space. I wanted it policed! In ritual participants sacrifice individual liberty for the collective. They also have learnt patience and to wait with the technology or tools of the ritual to function. Glitches are to be expected and become private even contemplative pauses.
In the future will the altar be a screen, will you have a ‘ritual’ computer, only used for ceremony and will we an avatar instead of a robe?

The attempts to lead a narrative through the work, connecting it, by Serman would have been hilarious and comic, in another context and some of the most poignant pieces, which had clearly been developed with huge sincerity and deep reflection, were altered in their delivery and reception by the platform.
I started to feel upset.

Paul Serman as the avatar/host/connector in front of work by Toni Sant (UK)

The comments in this live chat feed which at first appeared light hearted and were evidently intended to support performers when the platform glitched and Serman when his tec failed, then took on a life of their own. A ‘demon’ had entered the sacred space!
I felt nauseous and my breathing became difficult. I still cannot laugh either (physically).

I had wanted to stay, but the photograph ; the image of the woman on the ventilator (does her family know her image is in this performance?), with no name (and to my mind probably dead) kept haunting me. Was this a real still, or a staged image? Context is everything. The plague mask intended to represent macabre and carnivalesque was what? I don’t know – a trope – a lazy prop ?– we are not through this plague, those who have had it are not yet ready to perform it; the does ‘does her family know’? woman live, is she/was she someone’s mum? that could have been me by a whisker…

I didn’t and don’t want to sound negative, I wanted to engage.
I worry I am being too negative now, it is the operation of the technology not the work I am critiquing. Partly because I want to see the work, again, uninterrupted, as it was made and to contemplate what on some levels is a devotional act. With another subject, less grave, the light-hearted playful segways clunkily sewn together by Serman’s chroma persona and the interactive, multi-national audience would have made it a wonderful event. For others it may have been.

Perhaps for the majority it was?
For those who have not suffered? Who are not in it, it could be cathartic a release from the weight and fear of the suffering of others?
For me it felt sad, unintentionally disrespectful and suffocating.
The context for the ‘chat’ felt all wrong.

I know this was not the intention
And the works, if left alone by sideline, ‘online heckling’ (my second comment) were as I have said brilliant and sensitive.
Profound and uncontrived, the curation wonderful.
It was successful for me because film, performance and animations are the perfect medium to express the experiences of this plague.

It was not at all what I expected
I did not feel it was a safe space, and that is what I need right now.
I felt that there was a gulf of respect, created solely and separately by the technology, for those with COVID 19, for those suffering deeply because of it and for the work of the artists – created entirely by the presence of an active timeline – not because the chattee’s were badly behaved, just because it distracted and had not been structured or instructed. The power of the word.

I said goodbye before it finished.
I lay on my bed, pain in my lungs and back, Vicks rubbed on my face to help my breath and I was left a little numb.

This meant that I missed the final pieces/performances and missed the analysis of the chat and the feedback from the community. I am sure they addressed some of the issues I raise here – the technology is difficult (but not brand new) the format exciting, lively, experimental and fun – perhaps not so appropriate for this situation.
Perhaps my mind is too fuzzy still and I am feeling angry, dislocated and my usually thin filters have gone to nothing, I was too tired to present any rational critique apart from “I am too tired for this to be fun – it feels as if it trivializes the people in it – is it too soon to be reflecting/reflexing – many more people are going to die – why is everyone enjoying it so much?”.
So, my experience and account of the Pandemic Encounter is not complete – I am not providing a full account – but I am providing an account of someone invested in COVID. A witness.

I go back to the statement of purpose to check and yes “Participants are invited to enter into the deep third space to engage & perform a ritual action as a reflection on the Covid-19 state of being[together] remotely” – this was achieved beautifully.

Mircea Eliade asks you to decide between either everything and all spaces or nothing and no spaces being sacred – and the CORONA outbreak highlights access to space, and all space can be sacred, it can also be desacralized. The honing of online performance and unification of disparate international parties is part of our future and we cannot deny it is highly ritualized. We are, I think developing new interactive languages and here the grammar and the syntax needed a little correction! But no doubt so does this text.

Because we entered remotely and there were no instructions; and normally a ritual follows a familiar pattern (in fact familiarity is crucial, like repetition and duplication to ritual – it defines it) we collectively felt for the structure and intuited that there was an order, a sequence of performative experiences, through and over which Serman hosted/performed, although the technology meant that this was a freefall experience.
Serman came across as a lovely soul, and clearly there was a tremendous, nay a HUGE amount of work behind the piece, but the distraction of format made this appear somehow less so.
And the numbers; up to 400, including makers and technicians, many not entirely focused on the glitched performances, but enjoying the interpersonal plays and relational aspects of the group, made this a completely bizarre experience to a dazed viewer – and felt time people rustling their crisp packets and talking loudly in the cinema.

Am I still being too harsh? Yes; in reality had the comments been turned off, had the audience participants participated visually, oral/aurally only at the end, in a post-performance discussion and had we just watched the artists and their work, the impact would have been very different. It would have been stunning. Some of the pieces were sublime and touched me viscerally. Then, I would have been carried on a truly reflective journey, uncomfortable and sorrowful at times, the power of ritual would have been allowed the space to work its magic.
The sacred space being the internet itself (something I believe it desperately needs),
the glitches and pauses, the frustrations and fragmentation would have mirrored the processes and errors of the pandemic in society.
Serman then would have embodied the virus, entering, into an alien paradigm with every host (artist) and affecting the outcome – altering it , disrupting it in an inappropriate and unwanted collaboration
Then it would have been a wonderful and contained set of works
It would have been a positively profound experience for me.

I send out a request now – to Paul Serman, Greg Kuhn, Randall Packer and all the artists involved to please compile a video or film of the event, in sequence, unavatared/chromed; just the work, no audience chatter.
It is a great set of works and fabulously curated.
I would like to be able to watch it as an uninterrupted work, it will truly then be a timeless, ritual piece and carry the potential for the viewer to reflect and provide a deeper third space, for contemplation which the piece so requires and justifies.

I realise I am hypersensitive and one of the ‘COVID possessed’ and that this was the first venture into DEEP THIRD SPACE, and I will definitely be returning (if they will have me). It can become a truly sacred and unifying space to share and develop ideas, languages and technologies of many kinds.

Thank you for being brave and doing the work.

https://www.makery.info/en/2020/05/27/against-the-unbearable-whiteness-of-bioart/?fbclid=IwAR2dAByyMr75evP3XQ8b0sBk6PJudqlvRLYxvJwpRsvIs0hrSTCS80vKVRg

https://randallpacker.com/our-first-plunge-into-the-deep-third-space/?fbclid=IwAR2sxRfVrShAEmyuL9PkIk-RdbjGjlw2_JMS1OdcBUSke3brhjKVuMwKD9Q

http://www.bandits-mages.com/blog/2018/10/03/ondes-sauvages-futurotopies-feministes-r%e2%88%86%e2%88%86dio-c%e2%88%86%e2%88%86rgo-bandits-mages-12-16-novembre-2018-bourges/

Kripal.J. 2010 Authors of the Impossible : The Paranormal and the Sacred . University of Chicago Press

Pas dans le bon espace de tête...
Samedi 23 mai 2020
Rencontres pandémiques :: : être [ensemble] dans le troisième espace profond
Une installation de performance en réseau par Paul Sermon
en collaboration avec Randall Packer, Gregory Kuhn et le troisième réseau spatial

Les artistes, les interprètes et les penseurs qui ont participé : Annie Abrahams (France), Clarissa Ribeiro (Brésil), Roberta Buiani (Canada), Andrew Denton (Nouvelle-Zélande), Bhavani Esapathi (Royaume-Uni), Tania Fraga (Brésil), Satinder Gill (États-Unis), Birgitta Hosea (Royaume-Uni), Charles Lane (États-Unis), Ng Wen Lei (Singapour), Marilene Oliver (Canada), Serena Pang (Singapour), Daniel Pinheiro (Portugal), Olga Remneva (Russie), Toni Sant (Royaume-Uni), Rejane Spitz (Brésil), Atau Tanaka (Royaume-Uni)

COVID-19
Je suis malade depuis plus de deux mois maintenant et la seule fois où j'ai quitté la maison, brièvement, c'est pour me rendre au CHU de Poitiers, unité COVID 19. J'attendais vraiment cet événement avec impatience, en tant qu'ancien intervenant du LASER de Londres. Je suis toujours malade et je me trouve dans une unité où je pouvais entendre des gens mourir autour de moi, où les infirmières et les internes, plus jeunes que mes filles, regardaient avec terreur par-dessus leurs masques et essayaient d'ouvrir les fenêtres entre les nouveaux arrivants. On est enfermé dans l'équivalent d'une cellule - avec un énorme panneau de danger accroché à l'extérieur, mais on peut encore entendre des gens tousser et se noyer dans leurs propres poumons. Vous ne pouvez pas simplement partir, c'est totalement militarisé et ritualisé. Cela signifie que chaque expérience ou voyage vers le monde extérieur est amplifié et que sa valeur augmente de manière exponentielle.

Au cours des deux dernières semaines, j'ai participé à des événements zoom, skype, YouTube et multi-plateformes. J'ai pris part à des centres de recherche, des critiques de livres, des interviews en direct, des discussions de groupe et des projections de films, ainsi qu'à des méditations et des travaux rituels. Ce fut merveilleux, incroyable.
La technologie n'est pas nouvelle mais son adaptation, en masse, pour me relier, m'inclure et développer des conversations que j'aurais autrement ignorées et dont je serais exclu par mon absence physique a été brillante : la véritable démocratisation de l'ère de l'information dont on nous a parlé, mais qui ne s'est jamais produite - s'est produite - partiellement. Bien sûr, il faut être dans une position de richesse et de privilège suffisante pour avoir une connexion Internet, et ensuite être dans les bons cercles, savoir où trouver les liens, les introductions sociales. Les liens et le mot de passe, l'accès ritualisé et le protocole une fois dans le "chatroom".
Si les portes de cette méthode véritablement collaborative de partage d'informations se ferment, je serai très déçu. Ce sera un acte d'exclusion délibéré.

Pandemic Encounters :: : être [ensemble] dans le troisième espace profond
Le texte de cet événement a été lu :
"Pandemic Encounters" est une installation de performance en réseau habitée par la figure chromatique vivante de Paul Sermon. Les participants sont invités à entrer dans le troisième espace profond pour engager et exécuter une action rituelle comme une réflexion sur l'état d'être [ensemble] à distance de Covid-19. Chaque action a sa propre forme : une expression artistique, une analyse scientifique, une interprétation poétique, un manifeste politique, une critique sociale, un cri de détresse dystopique, un mouvement subtil, un moment de catharsis, ou un appel dans la nuit provenant d'un coin éloigné du monde. Pandemic Encounters est une réponse collective/créative à une pandémie mondiale qui a déclenché une métamorphose de la condition humaine".

Mes oreilles se sont dressées - pas seulement au COVID -19 qui me consomme et me transforme actuellement. Mais la langue. Je ne peux toujours pas parler physiquement, le manque de souffle ne me le permet pas et les mots sont devenus plus précieux et plus pertinents, chacun d'eux ayant un poids et une importance si importants.
Je pense que c'est lors de la "Breaking Convention" de 2016 que j'ai remarqué que le langage dans les communautés neuroscientifiques et connexes était en train de changer. Les récits utilisaient soudain des mots et des références magiques, ce qui avait été évité seulement deux ans auparavant. C'était comme si nous étions tous soudainement arrivés à Poudlard avec des citations de Le Guin et Rumi qui faisaient parler tout le monde. Les verbes que l'on m'avait reproché d'utiliser (lors de mon travail au Peterhouse College ou lors d'entretiens avec des scientifiques pour mes recherches sur les intersections entre l'art, la science et la religion) et qui avaient été rejetés avec véhémence et de façon continue par la communauté scientifique surgissaient partout, dans l'espace public. Soudain, le langage de l'émerveillement et de l'émerveillement était très présent. Il est apparu très clairement que la pratique rituelle du laboratoire et de l'église, ainsi que celle du scientifique et du prêtre, si on les considère sous l'angle des sciences sociales ou de la philosophie, remplissent des structures et des rôles très similaires, des instruments et des vêtements magiques, des mots spéciaux et des glyphes, mais dans les deux espaces, la terminologie magique est rejetée. Le mythe de la guerre entre eux ne concerne pas tant les systèmes de croyance que les performances visibles et le contrôle du pouvoir (la richesse).
En 2018, j'ai eu la joie de participer à un rituel en ligne à Bourges avec Spideralex et Radio CAArgo où nous avons effectué un rituel, en direct sur un serveur et une émission de radio synchronisée, en écrivant des applications numériques féeriques ; les cyberféministes et les activistes du monde entier utilisent la magie d'ethernet pour manifester des événements et des changements réels au moment où nous parlons, sur des logiciels cachés avec des plateformes obscures.

Dans son article publié hier dans Makery online, "L'art tel que nous ne le connaissons pas" : Against the Unbearable Whiteness of Bioart", Rob La Frenais analyse l'utilisation de termes comme bioart ou sciart comme potentiellement trompeurs et suggère qu'un ensemble très spécifique d'ontologies est réellement nécessaire pour décrire la pratique artistique qui est informée par la science. Pourtant, le temps et la technologie n'attendent aucun humain et le rythme des changements et de l'obsolescence est très rapide.
Il écrit en citant : "" Oron Catts et Ionat Zurr de SymbioticA s'insurgent contre la vision de l'art dans ce nouveau domaine "Certains diront que l'inclusion des artistes, dans le domaine de la biologie synthétique par exemple, a servi, sinon de promotion explicite du domaine, du moins de force de "débat" superficiel autour des questions sociales et biopolitiques soulevées par les nouvelles technologies qui conduiront finalement à la domestication de la technologie. L'artiste était traditionnellement autorisé à agir comme un provocateur ou un contestataire, ou pour le dire crûment, dans ce contexte, le rôle de l'artiste pourrait être comme celui d'un bouffon de cour médiéval". Ils demandent : "Quel genre de provocation peut faire un artiste qui ne peut être utilisé ou capitalisé par d'autres programmes propagandistes opposés, qui peut apporter un changement actif et durable dans la société, qui peut donner un sens à la nouvelle relation avec la matière (dans ce cas la vie) ?

Ce terme de "domestication" d'une technologie est peut-être ce que les artistes font le mieux, ils l'apprivoisent et la cassent, puis l'utilisent, mais cela demande de l'habileté, de la patience, des ressources et une prise de risque (pour être qualifié d'idiot). Mais la science, en particulier la physique contemporaine qui est essentiellement un système de croyance immatériel pour les humains "normaux", a concédé qu'elle a besoin d'aide pour communiquer ses lois et ses dons à la société, pour écrire sa mythologie. Et les liens entre la mythologie et les rituels sont établis depuis longtemps (Eliade, Harrison...). Une description plus utile est peut-être que les artistes adoptent toujours les nouvelles technologies et que les écrivains, en particulier, ont un rôle à jouer dans "l'écriture du futur" (Kripal 2010), Harraway, Braidotti et Jones sont tous d'accord. Donc, le voir là - un appel au "rituel" dans l'espace en ligne Leonardo - était une chose merveilleuse pour moi cette semaine - génial, en termes religieux ! Une terminologie précise, intentionnelle et magique dans un contexte de collaboration science-art, ou peut-être plus exactement dans un contexte basé sur la "technologie exécutée".

Donc, en regardant, je ne savais vraiment pas quoi penser ou ressentir.
Peut-être que je ne savais pas à quoi m'attendre et que j'aurais dû être mieux préparé à ma propre sensibilité. C'est une organisation familière et très en vue, avec des collègues artistes et praticiens dont je connais et respecte le travail. Peut-être était-il trop tôt pour moi.

J'ai travaillé sur le sujet, constamment, en dessinant et en écrivant sur mes murs, en remplissant des carnets de croquis, en documentant les hallucinations qui m'accompagnent encore dans mon sommeil et mon éveil. Mon équipe a filmé, imprimé, écrasé la vie des choses qui poussent dans l'atelier, ainsi que la peinture et le journal intime. Nous sommes toujours à 100%. Je ne sais pas si mes poumons vont tous retrouver leur pleine capacité. Je ne peux encore que très peu parler.
J'en ai trop dit sur ma situation personnelle.
Pourquoi ?
Parce que c'était le sujet de l'événement.
Parce que je me suis éteinte et que j'ai abandonné - je suis sortie du rituel

L'art fonctionne.
Je veux les revoir.
Je veux connaître à nouveau leurs subtilités.

L'œuvre d'art était brillante et sincère. De la poésie et des textes interprétés par Abrahams, Ribeiro, Remneva et Denton, de beaux sons et images d'Oliver qui m'ont transporté dans des espaces intérieurs sûrs rendus surréalistes par un faible taux d'oxygène et un taux élevé de DMT1. Le spectacle s'est ouvert sur un film d'Abrahams (UK)" d'une pièce où une silhouette sous une couverture sans visage luttait pour respirer - mon corps réagissait avec peur et tension de la même manière qu'il le faisait avec le dos nu de Daniel Pinheiro. Tanakas, son frisson humain et performance numérique tout aussi envoûtante. C'était excellent.
Le co-commissaire et MC de l'événement, Paul Sermon, a maladroitement interagi avec la majorité des morceaux qui étaient projetés en vert et écoutés du monde entier. La technologie a été utilisée au maximum et de manière compréhensible et systématique, ce qui a rendu l'effet quelque peu comique et monty-pythoniste.
Rien que cela, avec des problèmes sonores maladroits et charmants, aurait été acceptable - par endroits - sauf pour le contexte : "COVID".
Le sujet, quand j'étais à la fois sujet et sujet/objet, était littéralement trop pour moi.
Devrait-il s'agir d'une comi-tragédie ?
C'était trop jovial. Étais-je témoin d'une catharsis ? Je n'en faisais certainement pas l'expérience.
Mais pourquoi ?

D'après mon expérience, le rituel nécessite certaines choses, une structure, un scénario, des acteurs / agents avec des rôles, qui suivent une structure prescrite, il s'agit du collectif et non de l'individu, et il a une intention claire dont le résultat peut être immédiat et ne pas être vu avant des années. Le rituel peut être n'importe quoi, de la grande masse au nettoyage des dents. C'est pourquoi l'art, en particulier les arts du spectacle et le cinéma, est un rituel artistique si expert, mais les rituels ont un but (et ce but peut être la sauvagerie et le chaos).
L'objectif était clairement énoncé dans l'invitation, et la plupart des intentions, sinon toutes, ont été satisfaites. Comme pour l'appréhension du langage, les rituels sont affinés et rendus plus puissants et efficaces par la répétition et la pratique
Mais, il y avait un élément supplémentaire qui distrayait et perturbait.

Par-dessus tout, les espaces physiques et psychologiques du rituel sont traditionnellement "tenus" ou "contenus", des mégalithes aux cathédrales : le confinement formel de l'espace physique et les rôles qui y sont joués ont été une priorité.

Ce qui, pour moi, rendait la situation inconfortable, c'était de faire partie de la ligne de temps, du chat en direct, qui est devenu idiot. Le public se connaissait bien et était naturellement heureux de ce contact. J'ai commenté deux fois, une fois en demandant si c'était (un épisode des) "Goodies", et j'ai découvert que je devais partir avant la fin de l'événement. La ligne de discussion m'a semblé peu sûre et inappropriée ; elle a détourné l'attention du travail et a brisé les notions de "politesse" et de protocole, dans leur sens formel, qui sont devenues normatives pour de tels "événements" en ligne. Dans tous les autres événements auxquels j'ai participé, la sécurité de l'espace et des orateurs est assurée ou maintenue par la désactivation de la ligne de temps ou par le fait que les autres orateurs sont tenus en silence, tandis que l'acteur principal "joue". Je me suis clairement habitué à cela, très rapidement. Il s'agit "normalement" d'un espace très étroit, parfois surcontrôlé. Je voulais qu'il soit contrôlé ! Dans le rituel, les participants sacrifient la liberté individuelle pour le collectif. Ils ont également appris à être patients et à attendre avec la technologie ou les outils du rituel pour fonctionner. Dans le futur, l'autel sera-t-il un écran, aura-t-on un ordinateur "rituel", utilisé uniquement pour la cérémonie, et aurons-nous un avatar au lieu d'une robe ? Les tentatives de Serman de mener une narration à travers l'œuvre, en la reliant, auraient été hilarantes et comiques, dans un autre contexte et certaines des pièces les plus poignantes, qui avaient clairement été développées avec une énorme sincérité et une profonde réflexion, ont été altérées dans leur livraison et leur réception par la plateforme.

Les commentaires de ce flux de discussion en direct qui, au début, semblaient légers et visiblement destinés à soutenir les interprètes lorsque la plateforme a connu des problèmes et que Serman, lorsque son système technique a échoué, a pris sa propre vie. Un "démon" était entré dans l'espace sacré !
J'ai eu la nausée et ma respiration est devenue difficile. Je n'arrive toujours pas à rire non plus (physiquement).

J'avais voulu rester, mais la photographie ; l'image de la femme sur le ventilateur (sa famille sait-elle que son image est dans cette représentation ?), sans nom, (et à mon avis probablement morte) continuait de me hanter. Était-ce une vraie photo ou une image mise en scène ? Le contexte, c'est tout. Le masque de la peste destiné à représenter le macabre et le carnavalesque était quoi ? Je ne sais pas - un trope - un accessoire paresseux ? nous ne sommes pas encore débarrassés de cette peste, ceux qui l'ont eue ne sont pas encore prêts à la pratiquer ; la femme "sa famille le sait-elle" ? vit, est-elle/était-elle la mère de quelqu'un ? cela aurait pu être moi d'un seul coup...

Je ne voulais pas avoir l'air négatif, je voulais m'engager.
J'ai peur d'être trop négatif maintenant, c'est le fonctionnement de la technologie et non le travail que je critique. En partie parce que je veux voir l'œuvre, encore une fois, ininterrompue, telle qu'elle a été réalisée et envisager ce qui, à certains niveaux, est un acte de dévotion.
Avec un autre sujet, moins grave, les segways enjoués et enjoués, cousus ensemble par le personnage chromatique de Serman, et le public interactif et multinational en auraient fait un événement merveilleux. Pour d'autres, cela aurait pu être le cas.

Peut-être pour la majorité ?
Pour ceux qui n'ont pas souffert ? Pour ceux qui n'en font pas partie, cela pourrait être une libération cathartique ?
Pour moi, c'était triste, involontairement irrespectueux et étouffant.
Le contexte de la "discussion" n'était pas du tout le bon

Je sais que ce n'était pas l'intention
Et les œuvres, si on les laissait tranquilles grâce aux clowneries et à la ligne de touche, le "chahut en ligne" (mon deuxième commentaire) était, comme je l'ai dit, brillant et sensible.
Profond et sans artifice, la cure est merveilleuse.
Elle a été un succès pour moi car le film, la performance et les animations sont le moyen parfait pour exprimer les expériences de ce fléau.

Ce n'était pas du tout ce à quoi je m'attendais
Je n'avais pas le sentiment que c'était un espace sûr, et c'est ce dont j'ai besoin en ce moment.
Je sentais qu'il y avait un fossé de respect, créé uniquement et séparément par la technologie, pour ceux qui avaient COVID 19, pour ceux qui en souffraient profondément et pour le travail des artistes - créé entièrement par la présence d'une ligne de temps active - non pas parce que les bavards se comportaient mal, mais simplement parce qu'ils étaient distraits et n'avaient pas été structurés ou instruits. Le pouvoir de la parole.

Je lui ai dit au revoir avant qu'il ne soit terminé.
Je me suis couché sur mon lit, j'avais mal aux poumons et au dos, Vicks m'a frotté le visage pour m'aider à respirer et je suis resté un peu engourdi.

Cela signifie que j'ai manqué les dernières pièces/performances et que j'ai raté l'analyse du chat et les réactions de la communauté. Je suis sûr qu'ils ont répondu à certaines des questions que je soulève ici - la technologie est difficile (mais pas nouvelle) ; le format est passionnant, vivant, expérimental et amusant - peut-être pas si approprié dans cette situation.
Peut-être que mon esprit est encore trop flou et que je me sens en colère, disloqué et que mes filtres habituellement minces n'ont rien donné, j'étais trop fatigué pour présenter une critique rationnelle autre que "je suis trop fatigué pour que ce soit amusant - j'ai l'impression que cela banalise les gens qui s'y trouvent - il est trop tôt pour réfléchir - beaucoup plus de gens vont mourir - pourquoi tout le monde s'amuse autant ?
Ainsi, mon expérience et mon récit de la rencontre sur la pandémie ne sont pas complets - je ne fournis pas un récit complet - mais je fournis le récit de quelqu'un qui a investi dans COVID. Un témoin.

Je reviens à la déclaration d'intention pour vérifier et oui "Les participants sont invités à entrer dans le troisième espace profond pour s'engager & effectuer une action rituelle comme réflexion sur l'état d'être Covid-19 [ensemble] à distance" - cela a été réalisé de manière magnifique.

Mircea Eliade vous demande de choisir entre tout et tous les espaces ou rien et aucun espace n'étant sacré - et l'épidémie de CORONA met en évidence l'accès à l'espace, et tout espace peut être sacré, il peut aussi être désacralisé. Le perfectionnement des performances en ligne et l'unification de partis internationaux disparates font partie de notre avenir et nous ne pouvons pas nier qu'il est hautement ritualisé. Nous sommes, je pense, en train de développer de nouveaux langages interactifs et ici la grammaire et la syntaxe avaient besoin d'une petite correction !

Comme nous sommes entrés à distance et qu'il n'y avait pas d'instructions, et que normalement un rituel suit un schéma familier (en fait, la familiarité est cruciale, comme la répétition et la duplication d'un rituel - elle le définit), nous avons collectivement ressenti la structure et avons eu l'intuition qu'il y avait un ordre, une séquence d'expériences performatives, par et sur lesquelles Serman a hébergé/performé, bien que la technologie ait fait de cette expérience une chute libre
Serman est apparu comme une âme charmante, et il est clair qu'il y avait un travail énorme, une énorme quantité de travail derrière le morceau, mais la distraction du format a fait que cela semblait moins évident.
Et les chiffres, jusqu'à 400, y compris les réalisateurs et les techniciens, dont beaucoup ne se sont pas entièrement concentrés sur les performances ratées, mais ont apprécié les jeux interpersonnels et les aspects relationnels du groupe, ont fait de cette expérience une expérience complètement bizarre pour un spectateur étourdi - et ont senti le temps que les gens bruissent leurs paquets croustillants et parlent fort au cinéma.

Suis-je encore trop sévère ? Oui ; en réalité, si les commentaires avaient été éteints, si les participants du public n'avaient participé visuellement, oralement ou culturellement qu'à la fin, dans une discussion post-performance et si nous avions simplement regardé les artistes et leur travail, l'impact aurait été très différent. Cela aurait été stupéfiant. Certaines des pièces étaient sublimes et m'ont touché viscéralement. Ensuite, j'aurais été transporté dans un véritable voyage de réflexion, parfois inconfortable et douloureux, le pouvoir du rituel aurait permis à l'espace d'opérer sa magie.
L'espace sacré étant l'internet lui-même (ce dont je crois qu'il a désespérément besoin),
les pépins et les pauses, les frustrations et la fragmentation auraient reflété les processus et les erreurs de la société pandémique
Serman aurait alors incarné le virus, entrant dans un paradigme étranger avec chaque hôte (artiste) et affectant le résultat - le modifiant, le perturbant dans une collaboration inappropriée et non désirée
Il aurait alors constitué un ensemble d'œuvres merveilleuses et contenues
Cela aurait été une expérience sacrée pour moi

J'envoie une demande maintenant - à Paul Serman, Greg Kuhn, Randall Packer et à tous les artistes impliqués - pour qu'ils compilent une vidéo ou un film de l'événement, dans l'ordre, sans données ni chromes ; juste l'œuvre, pas de bavardage du public.
Il s'agit d'un grand ensemble d'œuvres et d'un commissariat fabuleux
J'aimerais pouvoir la regarder comme un ensemble ininterrompu d'œuvres, elle sera alors vraiment une pièce rituelle et intemporelle et portera le potentiel pour le spectateur à réfléchir et à fournir un troisième espace plus profond, pour la contemplation que la pièce exige et justifie ainsi.

C'était la première fois que je m'aventurais dans le DEEP THIRD SPACE, et j'y retournerai certainement (si on m'y invite). Il peut devenir un espace véritablement sacré et unificateur pour partager et développer des idées, des langues et des technologies de toutes sortes.

Merci d'avoir été courageux et d'avoir fait ce travail.

https://www.makery.info/en/2020/05/27/against-the-unbearable-whiteness-of-bioart/?fbclid=IwAR2dAByyMr75evP3XQ8b0sBk6PJudqlvRLYxvJwpRsvIs0hrSTCS80vKVRg

https://randallpacker.com/our-first-plunge-into-the-deep-third-space/?fbclid=IwAR2sxRfVrShAEmyuL9PkIk-RdbjGjlw2_JMS1OdcBUSke3brhjKVuMwKD9Q

http://www.bandits-mages.com/blog/2018/10/03/ondes-sauvages-futurotopies-feministes-r%e2%88%86%e2%88%86dio-c%e2%88%86%e2%88%86rgo-bandits-mages-12-16-novembre-2018-bourges/

Kripal.J. 2010 Les auteurs de l'impossible : le paranormal et le sacré . University of Chicago Press

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator (version gratuite)

COVID-19 - on being Ill in 2020

May 09, 2020 by Annett

I wrote this several nights and did not post it - for fear of becoming a COVID bore.
But I have been in a COVID-19 unit and been hasmatted away and people are not understanding why we need to be a 100% lockdown household until my breathing is better and until the crisis has passed.
If I catch anything else, even a cold my system is too stressed and weak to cope with anything more.

We cannot therefore have visitors much as we would love them.

This : my max oxygen levels in hospital were 57% and falling saturation (this transpired infact to be 31% - I am now well enough to read the paperwork and revise this…) and yet I could still speak and walk about, despite having chronic chest pain, palpatations where I could get now air in and felt as if I was 'missing a breath' and immense difficulty breathing - I refused to lie down or sit back but kept forward and doing my breathing exercises at all times, on several days I passed urine at least 30-40 times, I had headaches, chronic fatigue, high blood pressure : cleary hypoxemia - which was left entirely untreated...
Once in the COVID-19 unit system my GP's hands were tied.
I struggle to tolerate sugar now and at my illest it led to extreme palpatations and my central back pain worsening. In the early stages my blood pressure was high, continual yogic and vedic breathing excercises have helped this, but still, although people are talking about brain-fog, confusion and other psychological states I was clear at all time with my doctor that when my breathing was at its most difficult I was having hallucinations. Having a fairly basic grasp of cognitive function I realised that this was caused by longterm stress on the lungs, which can produce excess DMT1 however other people have not been so aware of the medical root of these visions and have ended up being sectioned. I am also aware that my body may have undergone long term damage, i can only wait and see. I cannot currently go outside as the pollen levels trigger a severe inability to breathe…
The other almost unbelievable thing for myself and my GP was that I was not tested for COVID-19 at any point - they were (understandably) focussing on my heart function, ( I am fat) there was also an issue with my arterial blood samples, but - because I did not have a temperature on admission to the unit they did not test.

I clearly was having chest pain, hypoxemia, urinary frequency, exhaustion and hallucinations as well as having already been diagnosed and being treated for bronchitis. Verbally I was told I might have had it, I might yet get it. But I was then released, with a bronchial infection and dangerously low oxygen saturation to self isolate for 2 more weeks - two breathless, terrifying, painful and exchausting weeks, equally my GP was not given the information she so badly wanted to see if I was a vector in our community and therefore a risk to others. It seems logical to assume I have had a moderate to severe case of COVID-19, but until an anti-body test is provided, we will not be sure. I was basically left with the option of go home and get better or go back into the unit - and believe me there we people in a much worse way than me there. As I write this my lungs hurt and I am exhausted and it is seven weeks in. I spent nights of fury with high steroid dose kick in, cried when my son and my GP railed at me not to take more steroids as they were too dangerous and wrote simple letters of goodbye to my three children in the wee small hours, sitting up exhausted but unable to lie down and sleep - breathing in hod, out vav - and talking to the snakes who were my constant visual companions when I closed my eyes.

( In regard to this article - I took extra oral steroids against the wishes of my GP - and they worked - they were the only thing that allowed me to breathe : they could have killed me - it is russian roulette.
And do I want a vaccine? - no thanks…)

The article below describes some of the issues I have encountered and I hope to get better soon.
It is not a fake, it is deadly serious and if you love you family and friends stay in and stay safe.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/what-we-dont-know-about-covid-19?fbclid=IwAR0Cn4TQVZQqNGFhchN61JAlqoIusERYnHi2aT-7Ka_-bySfsxJWycjakzE

COVID-19 - sur le fait d'être dans le coup en 2020
09 mai 2020

Je l'ai écrit plusieurs nuits et je ne l'ai pas posté - de peur de devenir ennuyeux pour COVID.
Mais j'ai été dans une unité COVID-19 et j'ai été emmenée par un hasmat et les gens ne comprennent pas pourquoi nous devons être un foyer fermé à 100% jusqu'à ce que ma respiration aille mieux et que la crise soit passée.
Si j'attrape quoi que ce soit d'autre, même un rhume, mon système est trop stressé et trop faible pour faire face à quoi que ce soit d'autre.

Nous ne pouvons donc pas recevoir beaucoup de visiteurs comme nous le souhaiterions.

Ceci : mon taux d'oxygène maximum à l'hôpital était de 57% de saturation et pourtant je pouvais toujours parler et marcher, malgré des douleurs thoraciques chroniques, des palpitations où je pouvais maintenant respirer et j'avais l'impression de "manquer de souffle" et d'immenses difficultés à respirer - je refusais de m'allonger ou de m'asseoir mais je continuais à avancer et à faire mes exercices de respiration en permanence, pendant plusieurs jours j'ai uriné au moins 30 à 40 fois, j'avais des maux de tête, une fatigue chronique, de l'hypertension : une hypoxémie manifeste - qui n'a pas été traitée du tout...
Une fois dans le système de l'unité COVID-19, mon médecin généraliste avait les mains liées.
J'ai maintenant du mal à tolérer le sucre et, au plus mal, cela a entraîné des palpitations extrêmes et une aggravation de mes douleurs dorsales centrales. Au début, ma tension artérielle était élevée, des exercices respiratoires continus de type yogique et védique y ont contribué, mais malgré tout, bien que les gens parlent de brouillard cérébral, de confusion et d'autres états psychologiques, j'ai toujours su avec mon médecin que lorsque ma respiration était la plus difficile, j'avais des hallucinations. Ayant une connaissance assez élémentaire des fonctions cognitives, j'ai réalisé que cela était dû à un stress à long terme sur les poumons, qui peut produire un excès de DMT1 ; cependant, d'autres personnes n'ont pas été aussi conscientes de la racine médicale de ces visions et ont fini par être sectionnées. Je suis également conscient que mon corps peut avoir subi des dommages à long terme, je ne peux qu'attendre et voir. Je ne peux actuellement pas sortir car les niveaux de pollen déclenchent une grave incapacité à respirer...
L'autre chose presque incroyable pour moi et mon médecin généraliste est que je n'ai jamais été testé pour le COVID-19 - ils se sont (naturellement) concentrés sur ma fonction cardiaque, ( je suis gros) il y avait aussi un problème avec mes échantillons de sang artériel, mais - parce que je n'avais pas de température à l'admission dans l'unité, ils n'ont pas fait de test.

Il est clair que j'avais des douleurs thoraciques, de l'hypoxémie, des mictions fréquentes, de l'épuisement et des hallucinations, et que j'avais déjà été diagnostiqué et traité pour une bronchite. On m'a dit verbalement que je pouvais l'avoir, que je pouvais encore l'avoir. Mais j'ai ensuite été libérée, avec une infection bronchique et une saturation en oxygène dangereusement basse pour m'isoler pendant deux semaines supplémentaires - deux semaines essoufflées, terrifiantes, douloureuses et échangistes, de même que mon médecin généraliste n'a pas reçu les informations qu'elle voulait tant voir si j'étais un vecteur dans notre communauté et donc un risque pour les autres. Il semble logique de supposer que j'ai eu un cas modéré à grave de COVID-19, mais tant qu'un test anticorps ne sera pas fourni, nous n'en serons pas sûrs. En gros, on m'a laissé le choix de rentrer chez moi et de me rétablir ou de retourner dans l'unité - et croyez-moi, là-bas, nous sommes bien plus mal lotis que moi. Au moment où j'écris ces lignes, j'ai mal aux poumons et je suis épuisé, et cela fait sept semaines que je suis dans l'unité. J'ai passé des nuits de fureur avec de fortes doses de stéroïdes, j'ai pleuré lorsque mon fils et mon médecin m'ont demandé de ne plus prendre de stéroïdes car ils étaient trop dangereux et j'ai écrit de simples lettres d'adieu à mes trois enfants aux petites heures du matin, en m'asseyant épuisée mais incapable de m'allonger et de dormir - en respirant hod, out vav - et en parlant aux serpents qui étaient mes compagnons visuels constants lorsque je fermais les yeux.

( En ce qui concerne cet article - j'ai pris des stéroïdes oraux supplémentaires contre la volonté de mon médecin généraliste - et ils ont fonctionné - ils étaient la seule chose qui me permettait de respirer : ils auraient pu me tuer - c'est la roulette russe.
Et est-ce que je veux un vaccin ? - non merci...)

L'article ci-dessous décrit certains des problèmes que j'ai rencontrés et j'espère pouvoir m'améliorer bientôt.
Ce n'est pas un faux, c'est mortellement sérieux et si vous aimez votre famille et vos amis, restez chez vous et soyez en sécurité.

‘Systems of Philosophy – Wall(paper)s of Mind’ Part 3. VE DAY 2020. In honour of Pamela Pigeon, Britain’s first female Spy Master.

May 08, 2020 by Annett

Above. Engraving ‘Nan’ Annett 2018

‘Nan’

When working thought the huge archives at Bletchley Park as part of the research and development for ‘Systems of Philosophy – Wall(paper)s of Mind’ in 2017 and 18 I came across numerous photographs of women. These women, in sepia, black and white pictures; in uniform, in fancy or theatrical dress, single ‘mug-shots’, in posed formal groups and embracing young soldiers, were, in the main, nameless. It became painfully noticeable because their male counterparts were so often named in detail. When I turned over the photos of these women often there was just a question mark, on one occasion a ‘Jean’ and at another a ‘Nan’. There were boxes and albums, some from the GCHQ collections and others which had been secretly stored (originally stolen from Bletchley Park in wartime) in attics until their purloiners had died. Often the family and friends had no further information than “he/she had worked at Bletchley during the War” (WW2). So many ‘nannas and grandmas’ had kept treasured, top secret mementoes of their vital work in their homes and remained silent to their nearest and dearest for decades of such deep importance was this work to them. I was very moved. So many ‘Nan’s’ unrecognised and unremembered. I was also aware that there were many deliberate red-herrings and altered stories connected with the coding centre. It was like Jane Eyre’s Rochester, something feminine, secret and dangerous in the attic.
There are many ‘enigmas’ to still be unravelled.

Outside of the archives I had found a matrix of contacts and personal stories amongst my own friends and family and was uncovering plenty of connections, secret lives and places, which still have present day ramifications.

Above the printing plate ‘Nameless Dancers’ Annett 2018

Not least was the history of my dear friend’s grandmother. He told me that she had worked at Bletchley and/or Chicksands and maybe some other locations during the war but never spoken in detail about it. So, I spoke with and wrote informally to the archival team at Bletchley Park, as there is a ‘Roll of Honour’ for all those connected and who worked on or at the site to see if we could find out any information.

Below is a section of our correspondence :

SA . Hello - just on the off chance - is there any data of ‘Pamela Pigeon’
Happy Christmas
Sally

BP . Hi Sally, I can't see anything related to a Pamela Pigeon - do you mean the character from the Patience Powell book?
Best wishes

SA: Hi. Thank you for this - it is the story of a very dear friend, told to him by his grandmother who worked at BP during the war - this was her name - it may be yet another piece of deliberately false narrative - so fascinating.
Sally

BP. Hi Sally, the identities of the 12,073 individuals currently known to have had a connection with the work of the Government Code & Cypher School ('Bletchley Park') are recorded on our online Roll of Honour. At present there are no Pigeons listed, There are four Pidgeons (with a "d"), but none are known to have been known as Pamela. We are regularly adding new additions to the Roll of Honour and my colleague Jonathon Byrne who administers the Roll would be delighted to hear details of any potential candidates for inclusion. The criteria for inclusion on the RoH can be found here.
Best wishes Hi Sally, the Bletchley Park Trust wasn't formed until late 1992, so unfortunately it cannot have been to us that the material was given if the date of donation is correct. I also cannot find a record of us having received anything from someone named Pigeon. Is it possible that Pamela would have had an alternative surname either during her service with Bletchley Park or when donating material?
Best wishes…

‘Nan’ Annett 2018. Rose petal transfer engraving .

There was absolutely no trace, no acknowledgement and I was left dumbfounded and unable to find any further information at regarding Pamela Pidgeon. Like so many other ‘nannas’ she had been lost and become invisible.
In response, I created the print ‘Nan’ shown at Bletchley Park in 2018 as a series of original prints and rose petal transfer engravings. The catalogue produced for the exhibitions that year is dedicated to her the obscured memory.

This was about to change.

In November 2019 international media reports of broke across the world which explained the secrecy or lack of public information about Pamela Pidgeon, the women with no record or trace was being hailed as the world’s first female spymaster as well as a talented mathematician and a beloved mother and grandmother.

I attach the links below so that you can explore her incredible story more deeply.
In the mean -time on this, the 75th anniversary of VE Day I wish above all else for a healthy, united and peaceful Europe and send out love and thank to all our ‘Nanna’s’.
Stay home, stay safe and wear a mask if you must go out, those who fought in the war are fighting hardest against this terrible COVID- 19 Virus.

Pamela Pigeon (centre, middle row) was only 25 years old when she became Britain's first female spy unit commander. Photo / GCHQ
Herald on Sunday
By: Daniel Brunskill & Kurt Bayer

In memory of Pamela Pidgeon

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12281815&fbclid=IwAR1FQ4yiRK9484uuaUUGk5wD9DakrGOPRCuDRgdpX03k7s2XXNHlcoqwpZs

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2020/04/08/pamela-pigeon-doing-a-special-job/?fbclid=IwAR0bL2Pgbw3wErvBdM8jOy2HP0KKHSHY7RQPZaYZXwxfwYWPHt5w2ciKRA0

https://www.gchq.gov.uk/news/secret-sites-revealed?fbclid=IwAR0zH3pmenrkNBPoJSlEHnGN1X5AMWZC2BxbSz-M-EGQTlNlLjz_UJH0ugc

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/01/gchq-marks-100-years-by-unveiling-details-of-wartime-spy-work

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/at-last-gchq-reveals-the-secret-wartime-history-of-homes-farms-and-sheds-k8z5862md?fbclid=IwAR1FQ4yiRK9484uuaUUGk5wD9DakrGOPRCuDRgdpX03k7s2XXNHlcoqwpZs

Systèmes de philosophie - Murs de l'esprit

VE DAY 2020 08.05.2020

En l'honneur de Pamela Pigeon, la première femme maître espion de Grande-Bretagne.

Nan

‘Nan’. Hand gilded engraving Annett 2018.

En travaillant sur les immenses archives de Bletchley Park dans le cadre de la recherche et du développement pour "Systems of Philosophy - Wall(paper)s of Mind" en 2017 et 2018, je suis tombée sur de nombreuses photographies de femmes. Ces femmes, en sépia, en noir et blanc, en uniforme, en costume ou en tenue de théâtre, seules, en groupes formels et embrassant de jeunes soldats, étaient pour la plupart sans nom. Cela devenait douloureusement perceptible parce que leurs homologues du courrier étaient si souvent nommés en détail. Lorsque je retournais les photos de ces femmes, il n'y avait souvent qu'un point d'interrogation, à une occasion un "Jean" et à une autre un "Nan". Il y avait des boîtes et des albums, certains provenant des collections du GCHQ et d'autres qui avaient été secrètement entreposés (à l'origine volés à Bletchley Park en temps de guerre) dans des greniers jusqu'à la mort de leurs puriners. Souvent, la famille et les amis n'avaient pas d'autres informations que "il/elle avait travaillé à Bletchley pendant la guerre" (WW2). Tant de "nannas et de grands-mères" avaient gardé des souvenirs très secrets de leur travail vital dans leurs maisons et étaient restés silencieux pour leurs proches pendant des décennies, car ce travail était d'une telle importance pour eux. J'ai été très émue. Tant de "Nan's" ne sont pas reconnues et ne se souviennent pas. J'étais également consciente qu'il y avait de nombreuses histoires délibérément fausses et altérées liées au centre de codage. C'était comme le Rochester de Jane Eyre, quelque chose de féminin, de secret et de dangereux dans le grenier.

Il reste encore de nombreuses "énigmes" à résoudre.

En dehors des archives, j'avais trouvé une matrice de contacts et d'histoires personnelles parmi mes propres amis et ma famille et je découvrais de nombreux liens, des vies et des lieux secrets, qui ont encore des ramifications aujourd'hui.

L'histoire de la grand-mère de mon cher ami n'est pas la moindre. Il m'a dit qu'elle avait travaillé à Bletchley et/ou à Chicksands et peut-être dans d'autres endroits pendant la guerre, mais qu'elle n'en avait jamais parlé en détail. J'ai donc parlé et écrit de manière informelle à l'équipe des archives de Bletchley Park, car il existe un "tableau d'honneur" pour tous ceux qui sont liés et qui ont travaillé sur ou dans le site pour voir si nous pouvions trouver des informations.

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator (version gratuite)

Vous trouverez ci-dessous une partie de notre correspondance :

SA
Bonjour - juste au hasard - y a-t-il des données sur "Pamela Pigeon" ? Joyeux Noël
Sally

BP
Salut Sally, je ne vois rien qui soit lié à une Pamela Pigeon - tu veux dire le personnage du livre de Patience Powell ?Meilleurs voeux

SA
Salut. Merci pour cela - c'est l'histoire d'un ami très cher, qui lui a été racontée par sa grand-mère qui travaillait chez BP pendant la guerre - c'était son nom - c'est peut-être encore un autre morceau de récit délibérément faux - si fascinant.
Sally

BP
Salut Sally, l'identité des 12 073 personnes dont on sait actuellement qu'elles ont eu un lien avec les travaux de la Government Code & Cypher School ("Bletchley Park") est enregistrée sur notre tableau d'honneur en ligne. Actuellement, aucun pigeon n'est inscrit, il y a quatre pigeons (avec un "d"), mais aucun n'est connu pour avoir été connu sous le nom de Pamela. Nous ajoutons régulièrement de nouveaux noms au tableau d'honneur et mon collègue Jonathon Byrne, qui gère le tableau, serait ravi de connaître les détails de tout candidat potentiel à l'inscription. Les critères d'inscription sur le RoH sont disponibles ici. Meilleurs voeux

BP
Bonjour Sally, le Bletchley Park Trust n'a été créé qu'à la fin de l'année 1992. Malheureusement, nous n'avons pas pu recevoir le matériel si la date de donation est correcte. Je ne trouve pas non plus de trace de ce que nous avons reçu d'un dénommé Pigeon. Est-il possible que Pamela ait eu un autre nom de famille pendant son service à Bletchley Park ou lors du don de matériel ?
Meilleurs voeux

Il n'y avait absolument aucune trace, aucun accusé de réception et j'étais abasourdi et incapable de trouver d'autres informations concernant Pamela Pidgeon. Comme tant d'autres "nannas", elle s'était perdue et était devenue invisible.
En réponse, j'ai créé la gravure "Nan" exposée à Bletchley Park en 2018, sous la forme d'une série de gravures originales et de gravures par transfert de pétales de rose. Le catalogue produit pour les expositions de cette année-là est consacré à sa mémoire obscure.

C'était sur le point de changer.

En novembre 2019, beaucoup des reportages des médias internationaux mondial, qui expliquaient le secret ou le manque d'informations publiques sur Pamela Pidgeon, la femme sans casier judiciaire ni trace, qui était saluée comme la première femme spymaster au monde ainsi que comme une mathématicienne de talent et une mère et une grand-mère bien-aimée.

Je joins les liens ci-dessous afin que vous puissiez explorer plus en profondeur son incroyable histoire.

En attendant, en ce 75e anniversaire de la VE, je souhaite par-dessus tout une Europe saine, unie et pacifique, et j'envoie mon amour et mes remerciements à tous nos "Nanna's".

Restez chez vous, soyez en sécurité et portez un masque si vous devez sortir, ceux qui ont fait la guerre se battent le plus durement contre ce terrible virus COVID- 19.

En mémoire de Pamela Pidgeon

Pamela Pigeon (au centre, rangée du milieu) n'avait que 25 ans lorsqu'elle est devenue la première femme commandant une unité d'espionnage en Grande-Bretagne. Photo / GCHQ
Herald on Sunday
Par : Daniel Brunskill & Kurt Bayer

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator (version gratuite)

Systems of Philosophy - Wall(paper)s of Mind Part 2 : rose petal transfer engraving

April 08, 2020 by Annett

Rose petal transfer engraving

The technique was developed (by Annett) to directly represent the process of coding, cyphers or encryption with its tripartite methodology :

original message/print 1

scrambled message/print 2

reconstituted message/print 3

completely abstracted print using only the petals without the original plate/print 4

Process
The rose petals were collected from Annett’s garden and the gardens on my neighbours in the Vienne.

Annett sorting rose petals in her kitchen

The petals are used directly in the printmaking process and are place upon the fully inked plate.
A print is taken of the plate, this is print 1

The plate is then re-inked and rose petals placed on the plate surface.
This plate is then printed, and the petals carefully removed. This is print 2.

the second part of the rose petal transfer engraving process

The petals are then inverted and put back onto the same plate.
The plate is then reprinted, and the ink captured by the petals is re-placed, re-creating the image with its original content but not its exact configuration. This is print 3

In print 4 the petals are used without the original plate to create a completely abstracted code image

Codex 1 contains the original prints from both the Bletchley and Wrest Park series

Codex 2 contains the print 2 examples from both the Bletchley and Wrest Park series

Codex 3 contains the print 3 examples and a few print 4 examples from both the Bletchley and Wrest Park series

The scent and colour from the rose petal is crushed out in bleeds into the paper
Each print is sealed with Annett’s family seal.

Gravure par transfert de pétales de rose

La technique a été développée (par Annett) pour représenter directement le processus de codage, de cryptage ou d'encodage avec sa méthodologie tripartite :

message original/impression 1
message brouillé/impression 2
message reconstitué/impression 3

épreuve complètement abstraite utilisant uniquement les pétales sans la planche/impression originale 4
Processus
Les pétales de roses ont été récoltés dans le jardin d'Annett et dans les jardins de mes voisins de la Vienne.

Les pétales sont utilisés directement dans le processus de gravure et sont placés sur la plaque entièrement encrée.
Une empreinte est prise de la plaque, c'est l'empreinte 1

La plaque est ensuite réencrée et des pétales de rose sont placés sur la surface de la plaque.
Cette plaque est ensuite imprimée, et les pétales sont soigneusement retirés. C'est l'impression 2.

Les pétales sont ensuite inversés et remis sur la même plaque.
La plaque est ensuite réimprimée, et l'encre capturée par les pétales est replacée, recréant l'image avec son contenu original mais pas sa configuration exacte. Voici l'impression 3
Pour l'impression, 4 pétales sont utilisés sans la plaque originale pour créer une image de code complètement abstraite
Le Codex 1 contient les estampes originales des séries Bletchley et Wrest Park
Le Codex 2 contient les exemples imprimés de la série Bletchley et Wrest Park
Le Codex 3 contient les exemples imprimés 3 et quelques exemples imprimés 4 de la série Bletchley et Wrest Park

L'odeur et la couleur du pétale de rose sont écrasées par les saignements dans le papier
Chaque empreinte est scellée avec le sceau de la famille Annett.

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator (version gratuite)

Codex Three on display at Wrest Park in the ‘Dairy Installation’ as part of Annett’s 2018 exhibition ‘Systems of Philosophy - Wall(paper)s of Mind

Systems of Philosophy - Wall(paper)s of Mind Part 1 : Making 'The Codex'

April 08, 2020 by Annett

Systems of Philosophy - Wall(paper)s of Mind was an exhibition of my printed works, on paper, metal and in book format, which was shown in 2018/2019 at Bletchley Park and Wrest Park (English Heritage) in the UK and at the ATELIER MELUSINE France.

The sources of inspiration for the works were the two extensive collections of paper which are held and displayed in the two buildings. A 100 page full colour catalogue was produced alongside the exhibitions which were funded by Arts Council England. Collaborators included Susan Johanknecht, Eva Loubrieu, Elise Hardequart, David Hancock and Rowena Willard-Wright.
This text focuses on the production of the ‘Codex’ elements of the project, which were bound for me by Eva Loubrieu, La LIVRESSE D’Art, Montmorillon.

’The Codex’ are influenced by the processes of coding and encryption, for which (de-coding) Bletchley Park is world famous, the 2014 film ‘The Imitation Game’ tells one aspect of its history and is filmed on location at the museum. Whilst working I invented a dry point etching process called, ‘rose petal transfer engraving’, it is a tri-part method of engraving which uses rose petals as both support and transfer. It reflects, directly, the process of using encryption: you make the code; you scramble the code and you recreate the code. I will dedicate another text solely to this print making technique. The codex are the amassed collections of prints, from both sources, which show the original print, the scrambled prints and the re-coded/reconfigured images. In some instances there are four stages - the last being almost entirely abstracted.

Below the codices on display at Bletchley Park UK, Wrest Park UK and ATELIER MELUSINE Fr

The Codex reference the history of code, linked closely to those of linguistics, religion and the sciences and are a tribute to the Polish mathematicians, Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki and also to the polymath, Benedictine monk and later Bishop of Sponheim Johannes Trithemius, whose students included Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus.

Above and below are images of the lengthy process of selecting the fabrics and images, the bookbinding and presentation of the works in the UK and France in 2018/19.
These are the largest works Mme Loubrieu has ever been asked to bind and are currently on display in the Atelier LIVRESSE D’Art in Montmorillon to accompany of my exhibition ‘Trees of Life’ - access is currently forbidden due to the Corona Virus lockdown.

Partie 1 : élaboration du Codex
Systems of Philosophy - Wall(paper)s of Mind était une exposition de mes travaux imprimés, sur papier, métal et sous forme de livre, qui a été présentée en 2018/2019 à Bletchley Park et Wrest Park (English Heritage) au Royaume-Uni et à l'ATELIER MELUSINE France.

Les sources d'inspiration des œuvres ont été les deux vastes collections de papier qui sont conservées et exposées dans les deux bâtiments. Un catalogue en couleur de 100 pages a été produit parallèlement aux expositions qui ont été financées par l'Arts Council England. Parmi les collaborateurs figuraient Susan Johanknecht, Eva Loubrieu, Elise Hardequart, David Hancock et Rowena Willard-Wright.
Ce texte se concentre sur la production des éléments "Codex" du projet, qui ont été liés pour moi par Eva Loubrieu, La LIVRESSE D'ART, Montmorillon.

Le Codex" est influencé par les processus de codage et de cryptage, pour lesquels (le décodage) Bletchley Park est mondialement connu. Le film "The Imitation Game" de 2014 raconte un aspect de son histoire et est filmé sur place au musée. En travaillant, j'ai inventé un procédé de gravure à la pointe sèche appelé "gravure par transfert de pétales de rose". Il s'agit d'une méthode de gravure en trois parties qui utilise les pétales de rose à la fois comme support et comme transfert. Elle reflète directement le processus d'utilisation du cryptage : vous créez le code, vous le brouillez et vous le recréez. Je consacrerai un autre texte uniquement à cette technique de gravure. Les codex sont des collections de tirages, provenant des deux sources, qui montrent le tirage original, les tirages brouillés et les images recodées/reconfigurées. Dans certains cas, il y a quatre étapes - la dernière étant presque entièrement abstraite.

Le Codex fait référence à l'histoire du code, étroitement liée à celles de la linguistique, de la religion et des sciences, et rend hommage aux mathématiciens polonais Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski et Jerzy Różycki ainsi qu'au polymat, moine bénédictin puis évêque de Sponheim Johannes Trithemius, dont les élèves comprenaient Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa et Paracelsus.

Vous trouverez ci-dessus et ci-dessous des images du long processus de sélection des tissus et des images, de la reliure et de la présentation des œuvres au Royaume-Uni et en France en 2018/19.
Ce sont les plus grandes œuvres que Mme Loubrieu ait jamais eu à relier et elles sont actuellement exposées à l'Atelier LIVRESSE D'ART à Montmorillon pour accompagner mon exposition "Arbres de vie" - l'accès est actuellement interdit en raison du verrouillage du virus Corona

Walking the stone tree P 2 - Constant flux and endless complexity locked in stone : Marcher sur l'arbre de pierre P 2 - Flux constant et complexité infinie enfermés dans la pierre

April 04, 2020 by Annett

The contemplation of walking the tree operates on many levels. The human movement around the stones and paths is set in a particluar scale and has a specific rythmn. The more intimate and intricate element also have endless interplays…

La contemplation de la marche de l'arbre se fait à plusieurs niveaux. Le mouvement humain autour des pierres et des chemins se déroule sur une échelle particulière et a un rythme spécifique. Le mouvement humain autour des pierres et des chemins se déroule sur une échelle particulière et a un rythme spécifique…

I made a stone tree in the garden
as a contemplation
as an active meditation
as a devotional act

the spring has come and I have left it, deliberately, to grow unattended, perhaps as a response to the collective fear of death around us now - I have not wanted to hinder life - but to see what it will bare - this morning in sun and wind I sat, contemplated and then walked the stone tree

observations

daisies surround the little menhir which you can sit on to contemplate the stone tree from malkuth.
I sat and watched the bright yellow dandelion twinning, slightly on the diagonal, to the left (pillar) the bright yellow dandelion above the kether stone (as above so below)
around malkuth forget-me-nots bloom alongside dead nettles (alive in flower), tiny fennel-like ferns and unopened miniature daffodils. There is more yet to flower - more beauty to come. I step forward from the large stable stone of malkuth to yesod.

yesod; the foundation wobbles and is very unsteady, I step back and study more closely the abundance of tiny flora and fauna - and still the plant, that plant - the fog of my brain will not give me its name. I can’t remember ; it is green with lots of tiny florets, red-stalks, I know it is edible, but I cannot recall its name. around the stone of yesod there is space.

I step left to hod - I hadn’t noticed it is very small in comparison to the other key stones. on its creamy surface (which I imagine has come up the rivers on boats pulled by horses from Chauvigny) is a bright red beetle - I call it a cochineal - I have no idea if it is really its name, but they are red when you crush them, which I try not to do. Its markings look like a tribal mask. I think of hot African summers and then vats of red dyes in south America. there is always heat and things hidden at hod it seems. names are eluding me today, after the rambling, part conscious correspondences about names of yesterday - drug softened the meanings still escape me…

the sun is hot. I should not really be doing this. the gap to netzach is crossed. the liminal path of the awakening of spirit from the animal to the human world. it has larger, lusher more geranium like flowers than its counterweight and purple fronds at its base. its side slope at 45%, taller grasses dotted around it like lonely trees in a stone savanna. the insects like to sunbathe here in the late evening sun

I am taking pictures all the way, of the colours, still thinking of the work on spring palettes, but I am intrigued by the creatures, the lizards and beetles don’t run, but follow me to tipereth’s central position accompanied by hummingbird moths. it is wedge shaped like cheese.

at tipereth I become aware of my shadow, the shade it casts across the stone and i begin to reflect upon the constant movements of these shadows and the beings that move swiftly up and down the tree’s stone pathways - the vegetation too is moving but at a so much slower pace. it moves outwards from a static point at its root. the beetles and the shadows flick

above tiphereth one of the rocks has burst, or rather crumbled, the calcium and lime turned to powder, crystal elements freed after millions of years, twinkling in the sunshine.

geburah is clear and solid but turning across to chesed, I cannot find it, cannot see it. how can i not have noticed that it is almost entirely subsumed by folds of green, cloaking its location so effectively that i mistakenly pick up another large stone? - not the correct one, which is occupying a large portion of the right hand triad. I clear away clumps of greenery and expose the equally cream cheese surface of chesed - it can breathe again.

I turn backwards and survey the tree I have just walked - it is still solid, still beautiful despite a year of almost untended growth and it is not perfect.

at binah the view across the river over the peony tree is divine and I have already dug the poisonous ragwort weed from around her base; one of the few acts of intervention. she glimmers like the rock at da’ arth which holds secrets ; it has fault lines of crystal and speckles of silver and insects are mating, back to back in a curious mechanical tumble. again I look back - aware that i am still only getting a partial picture.

chesed is an abundance of red and russet flowers - also blues and purples -

just lovely

I let down my hair and it blows in the wind, long and heavy, I cup the hand of my shadow under the kether stone and move on : to kether where the second dandelion head turns out to be one of three, all in different stages of blooming and seeding and wilting. repetition. dandelion clocks. time in different degrees, passing but cyclical and mirrored, refracted. one head is fluffy and white, ready for blowing the other is almost spent with just a few tufts like the fine hair which sprouts from the scalps of very old women. the third is vivid, brilliant, vital yellow.
I have a lot of hair.

I want to be alive
I want to see the summer, to die in spring time is a terrible thing, when all around you is bursting, forcing forward with life

I turn back again and see it is a good thing this tree
containing so much life, so much movement within and inhabiting its ancient static stone self, pied corps.
It has patterns and repeats, so necessary, but changing, often imperceptibly - so many elements interconnected, breathing, growing, copulating, dying, being and growing again

as you move up and down the tree the colours change, the shadows circle and perspectives change

(purselaine - its name is purselaine)

J'ai fait un arbre de pierre dans le jardin
comme contemplation,
comme méditation active,
comme acte de dévotion ;

le printemps est arrivé et je l'ai laissé, délibérément pour qu'il pousse sans surveillance, peut-être en réponse à la mort qui l'entoure - je n'ai pas voulu entraver la vie - pour voir ce qu'il va mettre à nu - ce matin, au soleil et au vent, je me suis assis et j'ai contemplé, puis j'ai marché sur l'arbre de pierre

Les marguerites d'observation entourent le petit menhir sur lequel on peut s'asseoir pour contempler l'arbre de pierre de malkuth. Je me suis assis et j'ai regardé le pissenlit jaune vif se jumeler, légèrement en diagonale, à gauche (pilier) ; le pissenlit jaune vif au-dessus de la pierre de kéther (comme ci-dessus si en dessous) autour du myosotis de malkuth fleurit aux côtés d'orties mortes (vivantes en fleur), de minuscules fenouils comme des fougères et de jonquilles miniatures non ouvertes. Il y a encore beaucoup à fleurir - plus de beauté à venir. Je m'avance de la grande pierre d'étable de malkuth à yesod.

yesod ; la fondation vacille et est très instable, je prends du recul et j'étudie de plus près l'abondance de la flore et de la faune minuscules - et toujours la plante, cette plante - le brouillard de mon cerveau ne me donnera pas son nom. Je ne m'en souviens pas ; elle est verte avec beaucoup de petites fleurs, des tiges rouges, je sais qu'elle est comestible, mais je ne me souviens pas de son nom. autour de la pierre de yesod, il y a de l'espace. Je fais un pas à gauche pour hod - je n'avais pas remarqué qu'elle est très petite par rapport aux autres pierres clés. Sur sa surface crémeuse (qui, j'imagine, a remonté les rivières sur des bateaux tirés par des chevaux depuis Chauvigny) se trouve un scarabée rouge vif - je l'appelle une cochenille - je ne sais pas si c'est vraiment son nom, mais elles sont rouges quand on les écrase, ce que j'essaie de ne pas faire. Ses marques ressemblent à un masque tribal. Je pense aux étés chauds d'Afrique, puis aux cuves de teinture rouge en Amérique du Sud. il y a toujours de la chaleur et des choses cachées à hod il semble. les noms m'échappent aujourd'hui, après les correspondances divagantes et en partie conscientes sur les noms d'hier - drogués les significations m'échappent encore... le soleil est chaud. je ne devrais pas vraiment faire ça. le fossé vers le netzach est franchi. le chemin liminal de l'éveil de l'esprit, de l'animal au monde humain. il a des fleurs plus grandes, plus luxuriantes comme le géranium que son contrepoids et des frondes violettes à sa base. sa pente latérale à 45%, des herbes plus hautes parsemées autour de lui comme des arbres solitaires dans une savane de pierre. les insectes aiment se bronzer ici au soleil de fin de soirée

Je prends des photos tout du long, des couleurs, en pensant encore au travail sur les palettes de printemps, mais je suis intrigué par les créatures, les lézards et les coléoptères ne courent pas, mais me suivent jusqu'à la position centrale de tipereths accompagnés de colibris. il est en forme de coin comme le fromage.

à tipereth, je prends conscience de mon ombre, de l'ombre qu'elle projette sur la pierre et je commence à réfléchir aux mouvements constants des ombres et des êtres qui montent et descendent le long des chemins de pierre de l'arbre - la végétation aussi bouge mais à un rythme beaucoup plus lent. elle se déplace vers l'extérieur à partir d'un point statique à sa racine. les coléoptères et les ombres tournent au-dessus de tipereth : l'un des rochers a éclaté, ou plutôt s'est effondré, le calcium et la chaux se sont transformés en poudre, les éléments cristallins se sont libérés après des millions d'années, scintillant au soleil. geburah est claire et solide, mais en traversant à chesed, je ne la trouve pas, je ne la vois pas. comment n'ai-je pas remarqué qu'elle est presque entièrement subsumée par des plis de vert, masquant si efficacement son emplacement que je prends par erreur une autre grosse pierre - pas la bonne qui occupe une grande partie de la triade de droite. J'enlève les touffes de verdure et j'expose la surface de fromage tout aussi crémeux de chesed - il peut à nouveau respirer.

Je me retourne et j'examine l'arbre que je viens de marcher - il est encore solide, toujours beau malgré une année de croissance presque inattendue et il n'est pas parfait. à binah, la vue sur le pivoine de l'autre côté de la rivière est divine et j'ai déjà creusé l'herbe à poux empoisonnée autour de sa base - un des rares actes d'intervention. Elle brille comme le rocher de Da'arth qui renferme des secrets ; il présente des lignes de faille de cristal et des taches d'argent et les insectes s'accouplent, dos à dos dans une curieuse chute mécanique. je regarde encore une fois en arrière - conscient que je n'ai encore qu'une image partielle.

chesed est une abondance de fleurs rouges et rousses - également bleues et violettes -

tout simplement charmant

Je laisse tomber mes cheveux et le vent souffle, longs et lourds, je coupe la main de mon ombre sous la pierre de kether et je passe à kether où la deuxième tête de pissenlit se trouve être l'une des trois, toutes à des stades différents de floraison, de semis et de flétrissement. répétition. horloges de pissenlits. temps à différents degrés, passant mais cyclique et réfléchi, réfracté. une tête est duveteuse et blanche, prête à exploser ; l'autre est presque passée avec seulement quelques touffes comme les cheveux fins qui poussent sur le cuir chevelu des femmes très âgées.
le troisième est d'un jaune vif, brillant et vital.
J'ai beaucoup de cheveux.

Je veux être en vie, je veux voir l'été, mourir au printemps est une chose terrible, quand tout autour de vous éclate, forçant la vie à avancer, je me retourne à nouveau et je vois que c'est une bonne chose| l'arbre contient tant de vie, tant de mouvement contenu dans et habitant son ancien soi de pierre, le corps de pied. Il a des motifs et des répétitions, si nécessaires, mais changeants, souvent imperceptibles - tant d'éléments interconnectés, respirant, grandissant, copulant, mourant, étant et grandissant encore et, à mesure que vous montez et descendez de l'arbre, les couleurs changent, les ombres tournent et les perspectives changent

c’est purselaine - son nom est purselaine

Walking the Stone Tree P1 - Shadow bodies and stone : Marcher sur l'arbre de pierre P1 - Corps d'ombre et pierre

April 03, 2020 by Annett

Part 1

In late 2017. I made a stone tree of life in the garden of the Atelier on the second terrace using only stone excavated from the ‘crypt’ space in the old building.
These images are from a walking meditation / active contemplation of the Stone Tree of Life at ATELIER MELUSINE - performed in the sunshine 02 - 04 - 2020 with the intention of healing the self and studying the complexities of the ecosystems in our locked down world - including the human.
Back in bed today.

standing at chesed holding the kether stone

Fin 2017. J'ai fait un arbre de vie en pierre dans le jardin de l'Atelier sur la deuxième terrasse en utilisant uniquement de la pierre extraite de l'espace de la "crypte" de l'ancien bâtiment. Ces images sont issues d'une méditation ambulante / contemplation active de l'arbre de vie en pierre à l'ATELIER MELUSINE - réalisée sous le soleil du 02 - 04 - 2020 avec l'intention de guérir le moi et d'étudier les complexités des écosystèmes de notre monde verrouillé - y compris l'humain. De retour au lit aujourd'hui - le verrouillage du virus corona.

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator (version gratuite)

Aubrieta - drugs and bright purple - or GREEN 'printemps'

April 02, 2020 by Annett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrieta

After 48 hours on steroids, anti-biotics, ventalin and vitamin D I have had very little sleep but have got over the intial anger hit that the steroids produce. My chest hurts less but is still ‘productive’ and I am very tired. I didnt spend much time in the garden - I intended to, took up my paints, camera, etc, but when I got there felt too tired and nauseaus to do much but water my beloved peony which is almost out.

I also love my wall of Aubrieta, it is well established and very thirsty and gives out such a deep dark luminosity. I have wanted to paint it, much as I want to paint the colours of all the seasons in our beautiful Vienne landscape. I want to bring the colours into the house. Yet the key colours are often far too gaudy or colour combinations which (seemingly) do not ‘work’ outside of a naturel, vibrant (living) garden. My paintings are not generally colour muted as it is.
Morgan and I have been discussing these colours and their scale and combination for over 18 months now and being under lockdown and confined mostly to my room today I have been working with drawn and digital images - some the mad images i was drawing until 5am this morning because of the medications and the photographs i have been taking all weak whilst confined - in aware of the complexity of the ecosystems in my house and garden. I have been bitten by a spider, but the grey collared doves and green lizards seem tame, unused to us being here in the daytime and with the warm weather, coming out to greet us and sit on patches of moss in the stone ramparts by my side.
So many greens: such an incredible range - and against the bright purple and mauve Abrieta - an interior deisgn nightmare - purple and acid green. So today I have been digitally decontructing the palettes.
Green and purple.

This is what I have made …
I have slept only 6 hours out of the last 48 - and it is already tomorrow again - but I am healing and the spring is beautiful.
Sending love to all those who are ill, and all those who have lost someone to this dreadfuld situation, do not wait to go to the doctor if you are ill, go straight away.

Après 48 heures sous stéroïdes, anti-biotiques, ventaline et vitamine D, j'ai très peu dormi mais je me suis remis de la colère initiale provoquée par les stéroïdes. J'ai moins mal à la poitrine mais je suis toujours "productif" et je suis très fatigué. Je n'ai pas passé beaucoup de temps dans le jardin - j'en avais l'intention, j'ai pris mes peintures, mon appareil photo, etc. mais quand je suis arrivé, je me suis senti trop fatigué et j'ai eu des nausées pour faire autre chose qu'arroser ma pivoine adorée qui est presque épuisée. J'aime aussi mon mur d'Aubrieta, il est bien établi et très assoiffé et dégage une luminosité sombre si profonde. J'ai eu envie de le peindre, tout comme je veux peindre les couleurs de toutes les saisons dans notre beau paysage viennois. Je veux faire entrer les couleurs dans la maison. Pourtant, les couleurs clés sont souvent beaucoup trop voyantes ou des combinaisons de couleurs qui (apparemment) ne "fonctionnent" pas en dehors d'un jardin (vivant) naturel et dynamique. Morgan et moi discutons de ces couleurs, de leur échelle et de leur combinaison depuis plus de 18 mois maintenant, et comme je suis enfermé et confiné dans ma chambre, je travaille aujourd'hui avec des images dessinées et numériques - certaines images folles que j'ai dessinées jusqu'à 5 heures du matin à cause des médicaments et des photos que j'ai prises - en étant conscient de la complexité des écosystèmes de ma maison et de mon jardin. J'ai été mordu par une araignée, mais les colombes à collier gris et les lézards verts semblent apprivoisés, peu habitués à ce que nous soyons ici en plein jour et avec le temps chaud, sortant pour nous saluer et s'asseoir sur les plaques de mousse dans les remparts de pierre à mes côtés.tant de verts : une gamme si incroyable - et contre le violet et le mauve lumineux Abrieta - un cauchemar intérieur de déisgn - violet et vert acide. Aujourd'hui, j'ai donc déconstruit numériquement les palettes de vert et de violet.

Voici ce que j'ai fait... Je n'ai dormi que 6 heures sur les 48 dernières - et c'est déjà demain - mais je guéris et le printemps est magnifique.

Envoyer de l'amour à tous ceux qui sont malades, et à tous ceux qui ont perdu quelqu'un dans cette terrible situation, n'attendez pas pour aller chez le médecin si vous êtes malade, allez-y tout de suite.

Lusignan Palette

March 31, 2020 by Annett

Today I am unwell - I have a chest infection, bronchitis - I have not been tested for corona virus and have a good range of meds from my GP to take for the next week self-isolating at home. This gives me time to think and allows for an entirely different pace of life.

I have been contemplating one of the projects Eva Loubrieu; La Livresse D’art and I are quietly working on. I have been building images and working on palettes for prints, fabrics and books for ‘les couleurs de lusignan’

Aujourd'hui, je suis malade - j'ai une infection de la poitrine, une bronchite - je n'ai pas été testé pour le corona virus et j'ai une bonne gamme de médicaments de mon médecin généraliste à prendre pour la semaine prochaine en s'isolant chez moi. Cela me donne le temps de réfléchir et me permet d'avoir un tout autre rythme de vie.

J'ai réfléchi à l'un des projets sur lesquels Eva Loubrieu, La Livresse d'art et moi-même travaillons tranquillement. J'ai construit des images et travaillé sur des palettes d'imprimés, de tissus et de livres pour "les couleurs de lusignan".

This post is entitled ‘Spring’
Ce poste est intitulé “Printemps”

ci-dessous ; œufs, marbre et fruits
below; eggs, marble and fruit

ci-dessous ; jardin sauvage à l'ATELIER MELUSINE - vert
below; wild garden at the ATELIER MELUSINE - green

en bas ; pierre et fleur
below ; stone and blossom

ci-dessous ; argents, violets et bleus
below ; silvers, purples and blues

pour la consultation des couleurs, contacter : sally annett : annett897@btinternet.com
for colour consultation contact : sally annett : annett897@btinternet.com

Freya Payne P2 : The Moonlit Playground

March 21, 2020 by Annett

Freya Payne – The Moonlit Playground by

Stephen O’Driscoll

Written in response to ‘The Fear of Getting Lost’ print retrospective
ATELIER MELUSINE 2020

It’s refreshing to come across work that when you stand in front of it engages you immediately with a sense of naked honesty. There are no sheets of explanation or plaques of description to accompany the prints. The curtain has been drawn and the hand that fashioned these works has already invited you in, and there is a lot to see.

If Goya and Paula and Rego had managed to produce a child these works would be an obvious result, but that is a self-evident analysis one could make on first view, but this idea soon dissipates and you are left within the Payne arena. Or, I would like to suggest, the moonlit playground of her imagination. There is so much to resonate with the viewer that it takes time to absorb the mental gymnastics that occur within their frame. Scenarios rich with playfulness and dark contrasting elements that seek a relationship with the viewer and engage the subconscious. I found myself taking time with each piece, to allow it to unravel and present itself. Evoking the uncanny. The mysterious, aligning itself with the everyday, like new chemical combinations giving rise to unsettling end products. When you allow creative work into the world to be free, and give it time to live, that’s when it finds its corner to be alive, and that is exactly what these works do. They are creatures of the mind made live. Touchstones for our very own imagination and littered with trauma, sadness, doodles, questions and delight.

Stephen O’Driscoll Ba Ma RCA March 2020

Freya Payne - Le terrain de jeu au clair de lune par

Stephen O'Driscoll

Écrit en réponse à la rétrospective imprimée "La peur de se perdre" ATELIER MELUSINE 2020

C'est rafraîchissant de rencontrer un travail qui, lorsque vous vous tenez devant lui, vous engage immédiatement avec un sentiment d'honnêteté nue. Il n'y a pas de feuille d'explication ou de plaque de description pour accompagner les tirages. Le rideau a été tiré et la main qui a façonné ces œuvres vous a déjà invité à entrer, et il y a beaucoup à voir.

Si Goya et Paula et Rego avaient réussi à produire un enfant, ces œuvres seraient un résultat évident, mais c'est une analyse évidente que l'on pourrait faire à première vue, mais cette idée se dissipe rapidement et vous êtes laissé dans l'arène de Payne. Ou, je voudrais suggérer, le terrain de jeu de son imagination au clair de lune. Il y a tellement de choses qui entrent en résonance avec le spectateur qu'il faut du temps pour absorber la gymnastique mentale qui se produit dans son cadre. Des scénarios riches en espièglerie et en contrastes sombres qui recherchent une relation avec le spectateur et engagent le subconscient. Je me suis retrouvé à prendre du temps avec chaque pièce, pour lui permettre de se défaire et de se présenter. Évoquant l'étrange. Le mystérieux, s'alignant sur le quotidien, comme de nouvelles combinaisons chimiques donnant naissance à des produits finis troublants. Quand vous laissez le travail créatif dans le monde être libre, et que vous lui donnez le temps de vivre, c'est là qu'il trouve son coin pour être vivant, et c'est exactement ce que font ces œuvres. Ce sont des créatures de l'esprit rendues vivantes. Pierres de touche de notre propre imagination et jonchées de traumatismes, de tristesse, de gribouillis, de questions et de joie.

Pour moi, le bon art a toujours une résistance, une pépite en soi qui défie l'analyse de la description. Un noyau de silence qui, en fin de compte, vous oblige à le laisser être juste. Freya Payne y parvient. Ils laissent ce silence envelopper l'œuvre qui ne fait qu'ajouter à leur mystère et à leur intelligence.

Stephen O’Driscoll Ba Ma RCA Mars 2020

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator (version gratuite)

In This ChairTo see more work by Freya Payne please follow the link: Pour voir d'autres oeuvres de Freya Payne, veuillez suivre le lien: https://www.flowersgallery.com/artists/view/freya-payne — In This Chair
To see more work by Freya Payne please follow the link:
Pour voir d'autres oeuvres de Freya Payne, veuillez suivre le lien:
https://www.flowersgallery.com/artists/view/freya-payne

The most complex and beautiful prints; Freya Payne BA, MA RCA - Part One - Les estampes les plus complexes et les plus belles ; Freya Payne BA, MA RCA - Première partie

March 21, 2020 by Annett

Below is a section of the text which accompanied the wonderful retrospective print exhibition ‘Fear of Getting Lost’ by Scottish artist Freya Payne. The show finishes this weekend but due to the out break of Corona virus the ATELIER MELUSINE has been closed to the public for over a week.

What I wish to convey in this blog is the technical complexity of the work, this is truly brilliant print making.

The Fear of Getting Lost 01 02 2020 - 20 03 2020

“The prints are extraordinary on both levels, visually they appear to reference the great print series and collections of Francisco Goya and Paula Rego, themselves centuries and continents apart but with a fluidity of drawing and ease of printmaking that allow the viewer to engage immediately in the images at a level of mark-making and patternation as well as with figuration. These are not representational prints of fruit and flowers or illustrations for books or stories. They are powerful vivid, stand-alone pieces which dialogue with each other. Somehow, they are cinematic, the lighting and the creation of space are reminiscent of film noir or Hitchcock. The black and white tones, which allow a little colour involves blacks or greys which head towards ultramarine and off-white papers which change very subtly to hint light peaches or tan. Sharp angles (like Goya’s triangular witch hats) and sharply contrasted hard floors race backwards into darkness, emphasising the changes in scale of the fleshy, soft bodies which inhabit these fields; stretching, twisting , lying prone, clinging to one another, standing alone in spotlights, bending over – no knickers and walking, weighted like pilgrims. When I ask about the spaces, they are internal, the drawings external manifestations of imagined spaces. Rooms and fields.

Detail : ‘Looking for Exits V’ - detail of the text which makes up the woman’s dress.

They contain symbols and languages from which you can make up your own narrative – there is not one set narrative, but the possibility of many narratives. I ask about the symbols of the tree, the horns, the graffiti/cave painting and received considered and often gentle responses that they are deliberately open ended symbols, that the ambiguity is deliberate, the figures are imagined, the prints start as very small thumbnail sketches and then evolve and change, often radically as the process of making the plates continues. Text ripples through the works, as the surface of the floor or the folds of a dress, repeating key phrases and (sometimes) painful or intimate questions.

This process to a printmaker is complex, there is perhaps the need to communicate to someone who does not have a good understanding of the intaglio printmaking process just how masterful these prints are.

The prints start as a copper plate, which is cleaned (de-greased) and the edges are bevelled at a 45-degree angle. First a hard ground is applied, and the drawing made with a standard needle, scratching the drawing through the waxy ground. The plate is then placed into an acid bath, which ‘bites’ (etches) into the exposed (scratched) metal. The plate is cleaned and examined and then a soft ground is applied (on a hot plate), and other materials like bubble wrap and crumpled paper have been used to make subtle tonal differences, section and stipple. The plate is drawn into with the needle and acid bitten again. These processes create the strong clear lines and detail. Then processes which create softer effects, which can look like gouache or watercolour techniques are used, aquatint and spit-biting, sugar lifting. Areas of the plates are scraped or sanded back in order to make deletions or shift the pace of image-making.
The paper is often itself collaged together as the print is pulled, including slips of Japanese paper in a process described as chine-colle. In Looking For Exits V a section of the paper has been burnt before use.

Detail : ‘Looking for Exits V’ - male figures in a spotlight/totem of shade one weeping

It is not just hours of work but weeks of work to make each image.

Each is an act of dedication, a process of commitment and a commitment to process.

Les estampes les plus complexes et les plus belles ; Freya Payne BA, MA RCA - Première partie

Vous trouverez ci-dessous une partie du texte qui accompagnait la magnifique exposition rétrospective de gravures "Fear of Getting Lost" de l'artiste écossaise Freya Payne. L'exposition se termine ce week-end, mais en raison de la propagation du virus Corona, la MELUSINE DE L'ATELIER est fermée au public depuis plus d'une semaine.

Ce que je souhaite transmettre dans ce blog, c'est la complexité technique de l'œuvre, c'est vraiment une impression brillante.

La peur de se perdre 01 02 2020 - 20 03 2020

Detail : ‘Looking for Exits V’ - girl in a cot or crib with toy hens, chine colle burnt paper addition

"Les estampes sont extraordinaires à ces deux niveaux, visuellement elles semblent faire référence aux grandes séries et collections d'estampes de Francisco Goya et Paula Rego, elles-mêmes séparées par des siècles et des continents, mais avec une fluidité de dessin et une facilité de gravure qui permettent au spectateur de s'engager immédiatement dans les images à un niveau de marquage et de motif ainsi que de figuration. Il ne s'agit pas de gravures représentatives de fruits et de fleurs ni d'illustrations de livres ou d'histoires. Il s'agit de pièces autonomes, puissantes et vivantes, qui dialoguent entre elles. D'une certaine manière, elles sont cinématographiques, l'éclairage et la création de l'espace rappellent le film noir ou Hitchcock. Les tons noir et blanc, qui permettent un peu de couleur impliquent des noirs ou des gris qui se dirigent vers l'outremer et des papiers blanc cassé qui changent très subtilement pour laisser apparaître des pêches claires ou du fauve. Les angles aigus (comme les chapeaux de sorcière triangulaires de Goya) et les sols durs très contrastés courent à reculons dans l'obscurité, soulignant les changements d'échelle des corps charnus et mous qui habitent ces champs ; s'étirant, se tordant, s'allongeant, s'accrochant les uns aux autres, se tenant seuls dans les projecteurs, se penchant - sans culotte - et marchant, lestés comme des pèlerins. Quand je pose des questions sur les espaces, ils sont intérieurs, les dessins sont des manifestations extérieures d'espaces imaginés. Des pièces et des champs.

Detail : ‘Looking for Exits V’ - male figures waist and shorts, spit-bite, aquatint , haerd ground and dry point

Ils contiennent des symboles et des langages à partir desquels vous pouvez composer votre propre récit - il n'y a pas un récit fixe, mais la possibilité de plusieurs récits. Je pose des questions sur les symboles de l'arbre, les cornes, les graffiti/peinture de la cavité et je reçois des réponses réfléchies et souvent douces, à savoir qu'il s'agit de symboles délibérément ouverts, que l'ambiguïté est délibérée, que les figures sont imaginées, que les estampes commencent comme de très petits croquis et qu'elles évoluent et changent, souvent de façon radicale au fur et à mesure que le processus de fabrication des plaques se poursuit. Le texte ondule à travers les œuvres, comme la surface du sol ou les plis d'une robe, répétant des phrases clés et (parfois) des questions douloureuses ou intimes.

Ce processus pour un graveur est complexe, il est peut-être nécessaire de communiquer à quelqu'un qui n'a pas une bonne compréhension du processus de gravure en taille douce à quel point ces gravures sont magistrales.

Les gravures commencent par une plaque de cuivre, qui est nettoyée (dégraissée) et les bords sont biseautés à un angle de 45 degrés. On applique d'abord une terre dure, et le dessin est fait avec une aiguille standard, en grattant le dessin à travers la terre cireuse. La plaque est ensuite placée dans un bain d'acide, qui "mord" (grave) dans le métal exposé (rayé). La plaque est nettoyée et examinée, puis un sol mou est appliqué (sur une plaque chauffante). D'autres matériaux comme du papier bulle et du papier froissé ont été utilisés pour faire de subtiles différences de tons, de section et de pointillés. La plaque est aspirée à l'aide de l'aiguille et l'acide est à nouveau piqué. Ces procédés permettent d'obtenir des lignes nettes et des détails très nets. Ensuite, on utilise des procédés qui créent des effets plus doux, qui peuvent ressembler aux techniques de la gouache ou de l'aquarelle, de l'aquatinte et du crachat, de la levée de sucre. Des zones des plaques sont grattées ou poncées afin d'effectuer des suppressions ou de modifier le rythme de la création d'images. Le papier est souvent lui-même collé au fur et à mesure que l'on tire sur l'impression, y compris des bouts de papier japonais dans un processus décrit comme le chine-colle. Dans l'ouvrage "Looking For Exits V", une partie du papier a été brûlée avant d'être utilisée.

Il ne s'agit pas seulement d'heures de travail, mais de semaines de travail pour réaliser chaque image.

Chacune est un acte de dévouement, un processus d'engagement et une volonté de processus.

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator (version gratuite)