Just some quick thoughts trying to think about what the purpose of the event will be…
Thinking about it as a ceremony or ritual that will heal the flow of qi, I was looking for some thoughts about how to go about this. I ran into some descriptions of gods/goddesses, etc. One that caught my eye was the goddess Durga who, from what I could glean, was the woman who could destroy man. As a ritual the “trinity of men” would go to the river, asking her to save their civilization. When she rose from the river, they knew they would be safe. Following onward, I ran into a description of ‘lemures’ which in Roman belief were evil spirits of the dead who wander about as noctural bogeymen. On November 9th and May 13th, households would hold a feast and at midnight they would go out and, making sure they kept their faces turned away, throw black beans to the lemures as a peace offering.
I was talking to Don about the 4th wall… which is when the audience becomes the exhibition, unknowing participants. This carries into what Chris V is working on and what Taizo was talking about with creating this sort of input (assuming video / audio of the audience) / becomes distorted output (projections / sound) becomes new distorted output (more projections / sound)…
Just talking to Spencer about ritual and sacrifice… what is it that we (the audience) are sacrificing? What can people sacrifice to restore the flow of lifebreath? What about sacrificing dignity (images distorted into something ridiculous like throwing beans)? What other “things” could we sacrifice? How do you sacrifice yourself? Is there some sort of measure of the sacrifice? When do we know that we’ve restored the flow of qi?
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Some thoughts about rituals . . . despite the variety of ‘applications’ throughout history and culture, the structure seems to be standard. AND it seems to relate to Roussel’s procédé in the way that circularity is combined with a restricted entry or placement. We might call it a ‘gapped circle’. A restricted ‘entrance’ (this could be some variation on the minimal difference theme) leads to unlimited visions. Can’t have one without the other. Usually the restricted entrance is some kind of hazing/initiation routine. There is also a funny relationship in foundation rituals with twins: they always seem to be involved in some way when a space (city, building) must be consecrated (Romulus/Remus, Castor/Pollux). The ‘templum’ is the quartering of the sacrificed victim that corresponds to the four-fold division of the night sky for divination purposes. The four corners of intersection become the four ‘quarters’ of the cosmos. That’s also related to the four elements (fire-earth-air-water) and the intersecting rivers of Eden (always wonder how rivers intersect).
You could say that the templum is the gap of the gapped circle, and that the sky is the domain of the unlimited visuality: from the ‘inside frame’ of the quartering of the victim to the externally-bounded four corners of the cosmos. A lot of good stuff is in the book, ‘The Ancient City’, by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulange. Fortunately there’s an electronic copy linked on our ‘documents’ list.
When you think of sacrifice, try to focus on the specifically spatial-temporal things that can happen, such as the restricted entrance of the Japanese tea-house. Loss, as in Roussel’s procédé, is the important element. Limited space, size, dimensionality, etc. Don’t rely on loss that is a characterization or caption; make it something that is actually thrown away, lost, done without. Then the category will remain ‘open’ so that everyone is able to attach personal meanings to it and do their own captioning.