PATH OF LOSS AND REBIRTH
In collaboration with
Omero Museum • Daniele Antonini - musician, graduated in Communication Sciences and sound designer • Laura Della Valle - painter - makeup and body painting - installation • Models • Claudia Palazzo - University of Trento • Chiara Marcellini - Conservatory of Music, Perugia Photographers • Giorgio Tanasi - Palermo • Biagio Marino – Palermo Video Shootings • Andrea Mandozzi
This path intends to distrust “naturalness", since what we define "natural" is actually the product of a series of cultural habits mixed with the ethnocentric view of most cultures, particularly manifest in the capitalism of the Western World. “The more you begin to investigate what we think we understand, where we came from, what we think we are doing, the more you begin to see we have been lied to. We've been lied to by every institution. “ (ZEITGEIST, The Movie)
The German word Zeitgeist, literally “Spirit of the Time”, indicates a movement of ideas which radically put on discussion the dominant culture in all its forms. And that's what I intend to do: an extensive work of research, at the roots of the “why”.
Evoking Sensations While Creating Thoughts An interesting thought has arisen in relation to Brecht’s concept of epic theatre: the intention to upset causing reasoning and awareness is what has driven my mind. Can a critical judgment be encouraged by the suggestion of the scenes? "Art renews the peoples and reveals their life. The delight of the scenes is useless if it is not intended to prepare the future " An emotion can cause reasoning. The self becomes the emotional centre, ready to burst into new life, denying his own ignorance to devote himself to the deep knowledge of the self in relation with society.. This work is social polemic, an open position against all forms of male chauvinism and against the belief that, in the era of the media, everybody knows everything. The research, in fact, besides offering the experience itself, wants to be ethically scientific: the homo animalis and the homo spiritualis meet and confront. The scientific knowledge, mixed with the artistic work, tends to improve the way of thinking and the living conditions of men. THE SETTING The environment, inscribed in a "black tent", is meant to give the feeling of “non-spatiality”, stressed by the fact that the visitor is blindfold when he is let in. At the end of the path, when the blindfold is removed, the components installed will do the rest.
The choice of the setting and the components have been designed on the basis of precise references, symbols and sensorial evocations: the arcane and archaic come together, not as elements separated in time and place. The assumption of an absolute, mythical time, removes the visitor from any historical dimension and leads him to have his own experience.
THE PARTICIPATION • ARTISTS Each member of the Art'n'Ritual Circus group has had the freedom of interpretation. In fact, I needed to create a suitable intersubjective language to ensure both the progress and the results. My intention was, in fact, that the motivations of my research had to keep deep inside the artistic/scientific feeling and method, based on intersubjectivity and progressivity. Bacon stated that “truly effective results (…) can be attained only through collaboration". In this sense I have embraced the method of scientific research, in order to carry out practical applications aimed at a conversion "at work". • USER Under the assumption that the concept of politics has lost the meaning of thought and expression of personal relationships, and has acquired the more convenient meaning of "palace politics", I try to make the visitor reflect and think, breaking up his certainties, Harris’s and De Martino's Marxist analysis, and the archeologist Marja Gimbutas’s discoveries imply the individuation and the abolition - though temporarily- of the effects of social and economic stratification. Each element installed can be explored and enjoyed in every part by all the five senses. The interplay of culture and nature is therefore constant. STRUCTURE The symbols are based on the representation of the object itself in the literal sense of making it present. The structure is divided into nine homes (or phases): Parallelism is the symbol for the nine months of gestation before birth; in the middle of the path stands the house of transition, which hosts the contact with the mythological goddess Mother, the highest stress, the climax of the path.
PATH TRACED FOR THE PERFORMANCE, BEFORE WRITING The path has a counterclockwise oval pattern, which the traveller walks through being blindfolded. At the end he will be allowed to see; afterwards he will walk backwards on his steps to the exit and through the sensory memory, he will activate the process of re-composition of sensations with images. By reversing the process of acquiring information, the encoding of the same routes will have psychologically different paths. IT IS IMPORTANT TO CONSIDER THE DURATION OF TIME Whereas the sensory memory holds information for a few minutes from the original sense, discarding 75%, and the remaining 25% only 1% is selected from the language (primary memory access - MBT), experience shall not exceed 7minuts. In our brain every information is shared through an entire set of memory cells. Therefore, to recall to mind a piece of data is sufficient to present a small part and the whole is rebuilt. Our brains, in fact, does not store the data as a hard disk in which individual data is stored in a single area, but through a process similar associations with hologram and you can get a whole image with the retrieved data only partially . Since the hippocampus is the area dedicated to the filtration of the stimuli,the aim of my work is to associate concepts with emotions. You have to search and find the reasons of interest using all the available techniques of persuasion (in this case: music-hearing, different smells-sense of smell, different tactile sensations-sense of touch, tastes, and, only lastly, the sight). The use of associative memory is therefore fundamental: we must stimulate the subconscious so that the necessary associations are formed.
The traveller’s personal memory will be therefore the discriminating factor according to which each experience will never be the same for different people. The work developsat first in the user’s mind according to his own associations. So is there a distinction between the motivation of the symbol - stimulating element - and the feeling connected with it? Actually, there is not. Although the experience is unique and different for everyone, the topic of conversation between work and viewer is the same. The constant lies right in its installed components that serve as an ethnographic redolent element. In our culture, in fact, bones, blood and incense placed consecutively, are immediately brought back to the concept of death. Personal experience is given by the metastasis of the reasoning and by the elaboration of data influenced and diverted by personal background. The Characters There are two characters in the scene. The Handmaid is the soul who accompanies the visitor on his journey towards catharsis and rebirth The Goddess Mother is the spirit that comes out of the darkness of the archaic depths; she is the one who, after having symbolically given to birth and fed the traveller, actually leads him to the purification and purging of the former self, and thence to the second part of the route. The choice of the physical and symbolic female figure is a precise stance compared to the phallocentric structures, infrastructures and superstructures which make up and influence every kind of societies. Serial memory Associative memory The HANDMAID is spirit and soul of the mortal woman. The use of the symbol "soul" cancels out the scheme of the formal ages, and consequently cancels out the social conception of the individual and his inherent materiality. Furthermore, with the cessation of vital activity, the reference to death implies the change of status of the body itself, making the roles of both handmaid and traveler sacred. "THE WOMAN SHALL SEE THE WOMAN INSIDE HERSELF, AND THE MAN SHALL ADMIT THE WOMAN IN HIMSELF"
The woman is a suggestion, a light to state that the woman’s greatness does not lie, as many feminist groups maintain, in seeking men’s positions, in saying "now am the commander", like a girl who whines: the greatness lies in the awareness of our being. The handmaid is therefore a manifestation of the woman as the eternal initiator, as the feeder of humanity and the carrier of knowledge, creative power embodied in the natural world.
THE GODDESS Focal centre of the discourse and the course. According to Jung, the archetype of the Mother Goddess is "the magical female authority, spiritual wisdom that transcends the limits of the intellect." Jung also describes the symbolism connected to the woman, affirming that "any woman with whom a relationship exists is the magic circle, the uterus is any hollow form, it is the baptismal font, it is the flower as areceptacle, it is the oven, it is any animal, it is life". The stance from the woman’s point of view is not only due to feminism, but also to a a socioantropological criticism of materialist origin. In fact we can notice that even today the sexual division of labor implies a social manipulation of individuals. IN NO SOCIETY DOES THE WOMAN HAVE EQUAL CHANCES. In his book NURSERY FUNCTION, Nancy Chodrow highlights three key points: 1. Women, unlike men, acquire their status through biological processes (Menarche - pregnancy - menopause) 2. To act as mother is the result of cultural choices imposed by the man 3. The hierarchy arises from the difference that the male child feels toward her mother (with whom he has the very first relationship) and learns to hide his female side. The studies of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas have brought to light how the role of women-connected to the cult of the Goddess - was decisive. In prehistoric times, in fact, the female figure was socioculturally central. Ms Gimbutas finds out the complete sequence of Neolithic culture and demonstratesthat it was a developed one, in harmony with the natural life processes and cycles. Excavations inGreece, Italy and Yugoslavia also show that the villages were inhabited by as many as 15/20.000individuals, had no rank distinctions and were peaceful. The representations of Venuses, such as thewell-known Venus of Willendorf dating back to 23,000 years ago, show a goddess-woman creator oflife, who held life and nature together. I point out that Ms Gimbutas uses the term Great Goddess instead of Mother Goddess to describe all the many aspects of the Goddess besides that of birth, namely the support to life, the rule of death, the regeneration, the fertility of land, etc. ... It is clear that the use of metaphors and references to the original figure of the woman are placed in open ideological challenge to the current concept. Our soul is a process in constant evolution, which constantly shows several archaisms. CYCLICITIES AND SYMBOLS "In order to be the symbol of the Goddess, circles have to be placed sideways, so that the contour of life is clear" cit. Bolen from the book "Passage to Avalon" VESICA PISCIS We notice that we can draw the same figure into the intersection between the two circles infinite times.
It is not a coincidence that before becoming a Christian symbol, it was the symbol of the Mother Goddess, and there are many infracultural associations between the Goddess and the fish. In the ancient Greek language, Delphos means both uterus and fish. The visual metaphor of two interpenetrating circles have different symbolic properties. The ring, considered as an extended point, carries the idea of the absence of division; for Jung it is the archetypal image of the totality of the psyche, of the self opposed to the square, the symbol of material reality. The perfection with no beginning or ending leads to the figure of the uroboros (already present in Egyptian mythology), ergo to cyclicity.
Uroboros on papyrus
The Irish tradition has kept the symbol of the Goddess: the mother's body is the beginning and the end of life itself. REPRESENTATION OF SHEELA -11TH CENTURY Originally, in pre-Celtic society, Sheela symbolized the god in his aspect of "Great Mother", and later, the Celts integrated it into their druidic religion to make them subsequently become integral part of Celtic Christianity. Later, the victory of the Church of Rome over the Celtic Church gradually transformed the Divine Hag into a prostitute. But for the Irish, Sheela has always personified the land, the landscape and fertility.
Today these images are in the early monastic settlements in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England and along the main pilgrimage routes tracked on the European continent by Irish missionaries. "(...) To give the humans the choice to appear in the time of eternity or to live in the eternity of time" from the book THE SACRED FEMALE G.M. Concannon THE PATH is modelled on this figure: The visitor enters the scene barefoot, walking on the earth path, following the contours of the figure. The visual reference to the vulva, walking along its contour tracked on the earth, is the imaginary elaboration that places the event in a story, giving back a possible sense. According to Ricoeur, the work is a fusion of horizons of the world created by the artist and the world perceived by the user. .Forgetting this aspect implies the neutralization of the subversive function of fiction, which is oriented towards the moral and social order. Inscribing all that in a dark, uterine environment, completes the circle: it establishes homologies of morphological character through mimesis. The activity of modelling creates the illusion and the relationship between model and object, being iconic type, allow the contamination of real and virtual levels. The information contained in the work receive endless possibilities of meaning . In 1963, Frye defines imagination as "the ability to develop possible worlds of human experience." THE HOUSES
Loss: After taking off his shoes, the traveller is blindfolded. Her handmaid accompanies him/her inside. They will walk along the route counterclockwise to symbolize "the return on their steps."
1, HOUSE - THE BLOOD: The acceptance of the route: the traveller will find a sheet in front of him. At his feet, a vessel of blood and some tampons. He has to draw a sign with the blood on the blanket to accept to walk through the route. In this case the blood is meant as a loss. In many primitive burial places the body was placed in fetal position and covered with powdered ocher, just in relation to the cycle of life and death. .
HOUSE # 2 - THE BONES: The abandonment of the body: the traveller, blindfolded, starts his journey. He will face a case - coffin filled with bones. He will have to take a bone and keep it with him along the next steps. Bones, corpses, may arouse horror, fear of contamination. The traveller will have to interact with that.HOUSE # 3 - The INCENSE: The Triumph of Death: the handmaid lights some incense and spreads itaround the traveler with its smoke while reciting:Wake up! Wake up!The earth smiles.Wake up, and you are readyto the day begins.The mother's life is calling,greets you, then wake upand not to linger longer.Powerful Sun, give us light,because you lead us.because you help us.Watch as it rises,looks like the earthit shines,and how to enjoy the spirit in the breastlistening to the music of the SunWake up! Wake up!The earth smiles.Wake up and you are readyto the day begins.The mother's life is calling,greets you, and then .... forceWake up!!(Prayer upon wakingApache chant)
ACCORDING TO SCHOPENHAUER, THE PROBLEM OF DEATH LIES AT THE THRESHOLD OF ANYPHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT)THE BODY OF THE TRAVELLER IS NOW DEAD AND IS THEREFORE IDEALLY READY TO GOFORWARD TO THE NEXT HOUSE.
HOUSE#4 - The ABSENCE OF PAIN: THE REFRIGERIUM We celebrate a feast (epulae) in which the ancestor - not relatives, as they did in the early Christian culture- feeds. At the moment you define the meal (a piece of unleavened bread), the handmaid parts from the visitor and leaves him to his rebirth. He hears a scream.
HOUSE#5 - THE CONTACT WITH THE GODDESS: THE BIRTH: The Mother come out of darkness and, taking the traveller by hand, leads him to the centre of the almond, reciting:
For I am the first and the last, I am the venerated and despised, I am the wife and the virgin, I am the mother and the daughter I am the arms of my mother, I am barren and my children are many, I am the married woman and the spinster, I am the woman who gives birth and she who never procreated, I am the consolation for the pain of birth, I am the wife and the husband, And it was my man who created me, I am the mother of my father, I am the sister of my husband, And he is my rejected son, Always respect me, For I am the shameful
and the magnificent one
(HYMN TO ISIS - Nag Hammadi 3rd -4th century B.C)
In the middle he will find the source filled with milk. The Goddess gives his child some milk kneeling in front of him.
The channel to the second part of the ritual, REBIRTH, is now open.
HOUSE #6 - RESURRECTION AND SCEPTICISM: MAGDALENE’S EGGS: the reference to Mary
Magdalene has two bases: one is related to the figure of the Feminine (a word which in ancient Tuscan was opposed to "masculine"). Magdalene is in fact the female fire and refers to the specific force latent in each woman. Women are able to absorb energy through the point "uterus", orient and and release it at every lunation. The woman's body can condense forces able to open and transform the matter. The second factor is related to the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene, a model woman in Christianity and function dilated to maternity. In the biblical passage that tells the Sunday of the Myrrhophores, Mary Magdalene is the central key who explains the meaning of the eggs in the Easter rites. She goes to Emperor Tiberius’s banquet with an egg in her hand, exclaiming, "Christ is risen." The emperor replies, " Christ’s resurrection is as impossible as that white egg to turn red."." The egg turned red. In the sixth house the traveller will find a bowl full of jelly. He will have to put one hand, or both if he likes, in the jelly, take an egg out and break it. The shell has been broken and life has officially resumed.
HOUSE #7 - THE SWEET NOURISHMENT: FOOD AND THE COMMUNICATION WITH THE SELF:matter is an essential component for the creation of symbolic devices. The baby will find his feet threevases (female function to contain and maintain life, to protect and to nourish). Each of these willcontain, respectively, honey, herbs and seeds. He will have to touch each of these elements: he cantaste, spread, smell them, and any instinctive wish will be satisfied. Food is not only materiality, but it isunconsciously linked to the instincts of sexuality (which is also material and physical object). Both aimat the bodily pleasure and find their fulfillment in the contact. According to Freud, this is the stage ofauto-erotism, exposed in the "Three Contributions to theTheory of Sex" -1905.The sexual act as a pleasure is the continuation of cycles; it is therefore suggested to thesubconscious.
HOUSE #8 - THE BODY WASHING After all these experiences the baby can wash his hands in a basin of water. This is meant to remove all visible evidence of the just occurred ritual, as experience and reflection must prevail. From this moment on, the experience is doubled:: on one hand the "experienced" and on the other the "representation", which makes possible the surfacing of something new, redescribing a reality inaccessible by a direct description. The contact with the water will give relief to the baby by washing the layer of experiences off, reconfiguring the atemporal experience and suggesting the end of the path. HOME #9 – THE PLACENTAL CONTACT Before the child regains the use of sight, the handmaid places him before the first of the nine containers that indicate the path backwards. The container as a cradle. Inside, slippery balls -which the water, prerequisite for the presence of life, makes visually imperceptible- symbolize the organic cells. They ask for awareness of the origins and deference towards life. It is a prolific container and generator, and it is the last contact the traveler will have before regaining the sight Once the bendages are removed, the baby/traveler can walk through the path backward (clockwise) until the exit / entry. The rebirth has happened..
