Survival feast
Abstract
This thesis captures the spirit of a dilettante theatre troupe, albeit more or less from an omnipotent perspective. It is composed of myriad shapes and characters, some made up, others supposedly real. It is a collage of conversations, philosophy, scripts, stream of consciousness and poetic notions; some intersecting, others bolting, some dead ending. It is dark laughter, violently tender, a carnival( esque) of sorts; it is madness, doubt, fervent mouthing, dangers, fears, and sex. The things that make life worth living and, at times, make it unbearable. And for what you might ask? This thesis echoes the many ways we are human—thereby I grant it permission to be a contradiction.
I attempt to set the stage for the reader to enter the performative space of my work, which in return will arrange itself like actors— or material bodies—in rambling monologue and dialogue with me, other artists and thinkers, and each other. The different elements follow a non-linear logic, letters like refugees fleeing a failing state: the dominating land of meaning. Envision a gang of rats eating up the insulation of white pages resembling white walls, finding their way out, or falling off the pages drunk—most likely ending up in a dumpster. Or perhaps a guerrilla warfare inside bodily fluids, running its course: discharging, bleeding, puking, sweating, shitting out fiction and style.
Here I question the directives prescribed by a mind-body dualism, which in one way or another, involves roping off to delineate the viewer from works of art. I’m interested in how space, bodies and ideas are perceived together, through phenomenological experience. Because let’s get real: there exists an initial sensuous perception of the world, prior to context and questioning, that tickles our impulses. And because this is prior to context, it has no name; even though some like to call it intuition and others women’s art—the Apollonian hunt on emotion is frankly tedious. NO. Let’s chill in the Dionysian crux. Like Mathias Rust’s “imaginary bridge” (minus the stabbing of an abdomen) this thesis reduces the tension between two sides: that of the left and the right, that of the sun and the moon, day and night, head and emotion, intelligible and sensitive, logos and pathos.
Ladies and Gentlewomen, non-conformists and queerdos; from now on let’s slant, be out of tune, spin on our heads. I welcome thee to the nitty-gritty Survival Feast.