REHEARSAL B4 REVOLUTION

“I place myself as this kind of theatre director and I PLACE THE SPECTATORS as the MAIN CHARACTERS who have to follow the SCRIPT OF WORK. What the work then does is create a stage for them to get in and walk around or perform in, where that could be just engaging in the site and walking.

If we understand the REHEARSAL as a COLLECTIVE PRAXIS where a CHORUS PERFORMS a symbolic action, then PERFORMANCE is just a TRIAL SPACE (or a fictional site if you wish) which, by the mere fact of bracketed from the context of what we think of as ‘reality’, can thereby bring the possibility of creating something new, different..

In rehearsal, the player or performer has the opportunity to insert him or herself in a temporal space which is constrained by some pre-determined rules or a script. If this text is open enough, then he or she has the freedom to act in a completely different way, much more free than you normally act in real life. But of course this actor is also the link between the fictional, where new ways of making could potentially occur, and the reality, as when the rehearsal is over he keeps on living his or her own life… Rehearsals as potential spaces where we could evoke political and social changes.”

-Rehearsal For Revolution, in conversation with Leonor Serrano Rivas, published in Four By Three Magazine

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At some point, distraught by the lost of a loved one on stage, #KrittyKouture of CosmiKnots did not know what to do. We REHEARSED the REFUSAL to the regular SCHEDULE of RITUAL. 

(from Nihilisa Frank)

Celebrating Amidst a Crisis

Saturday Night LIVE. CosmiKnots tried to continue the three-day celebration, Public Ceremonies for the Cult of Consumption. Surrounded by our sacred altar of trash, we were ready to keep the party going. But then our friend/follower, Hardly/OK, got into an accident and ended up in the hospital. How could we celebrate our cult of stuff when our close friend couldn’t be there? WHAT MATTERS IN THE WORLD? ( #blacklivesmatter! )

“Both moral and metaphysical pessimism point to another kind, a pessimism that is neither subjective nor objective, neither for-us nor in-itself, and instead a pessimism of the world-without-us. We could call this a cosmic pessimism… but this sounds too majestic, too full of wonder, too much the bitter aftertaste of the Great Beyond…

The contours of cosmic pessimism are a drastic scaling-up or scaling-down of the human point of view, the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time, and all of this shadowed by an impasse, a primordial insignificance, the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought—all that remains of pessimism is the desiderata of affects—agonistic, impassive, defiant, reclusive, filled with sorrow and flailing at that architectonic chess match called philosophy, a flailing that pessimism tries to raise to the level of an art form (though what usually results is slapstick).

”Cosmic Pessimism” by Eugene Thacker in Continent Continent

(from Nihilisa Frank)

Trapped in the Light of the Looking Glass

“Is the internet dead? This is not a metaphorical question. It does not suggest that the internet is dysfunctional, useless or out of fashion. It asks what happened to the internet after it stopped being a possibility. The question is very literally whether it is dead, how it died and whether anyone killed it…

…So what does it mean if the internet has moved offline? It crossed the screen, multiplied displays, transcended networks and cables to be at once inert and inevitable. One could imagine shutting down all online access or user activity. We might be unplugged, but this doesn’t mean we’re off the hook. The internet persists offline as a mode of life, surveillance, production, and organization—a form of intense voyeurism coupled with maximum nontransparency.”

-”Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead” by Hito Steyerl in E-flux

/// FYI, we were not in sync enough to live stream the three-day show, so we performed ‘off-line.’ Still, we were always connected to the screen… 

(from Honey Boo Boo Philosophy)

Procession, interrupted / Crisis, inverted 

[ A chalk of courage, like a pen. A container for feelings, spilling over, upside-down, inside-out. A sad clown performs for the stage.]

“Ultimately, pessimism is weary of everything and of itself. Pessimism is the philosophical form of disenchantment—disenchantment as chanting, a chant, a mantra, a solitary, monophonic voice rendered insignificant by the intimate immensity surrounding it…

The very term “pessimism” suggests a school of thought, a movement, even a community. But pessimism always has a membership of one—maybe two. Ideally, of course, it would have a membership of none, with only a scribbled, illegible note left behind by someone long forgotten. But this seems unrealistic, though one can always hope.”

-Eugene Thacker in Continent Continent

The shred of human hope, like the salt in your tears [before ocean’s rise]. 

ReCap/Rewind/Move_Forward: Day2Details

CosmiKnots is envisioned a creative network embodying spirtu-ecological/decolonial concerns through live arts productions that stage critiques of contemporary issues and current events. Much as cosmonauts command control of a spacecraft, we imagined our co-conspirators and ourselves as physics-defying autopilots journeying through a universal entanglement of embodied dimensions.

In A Call=OUT B4 the Fall-OUT: Public Ceremonies for the Cult of Consumption, CosmiKnots includes #KrittyKouture, who brands herself as an avatar that seeks recognition through crafted composite of popular consumer expressions, which she critiques to be too simple; blonde, pink and bossy, she is a decoupage of all that she sees as being desired. She plays as a foil to Coupon, whose lack of cultivated taste is balanced by her glittered pop-color palette and daydream play. Then, we positioned a character known as guardian alien as a non-earthly conscious entity that watches the unfolding process of humanity’s planetary situation and our staged drama. Finally, our confused cult believer, Hardly/OK, straddled the state of suspension, stuck between ritual belief and bold refusal.

We were a mini-polity representing disparate figures for communication and conflict. And of course, excesses of consumer stuff surrounded us, bringing us figurative ‘believers’ in conversation with surplus garbage materiality habitually ignored. We wanted to create an inverted ritual space of commercial animist ‘worship’ for the performance-art public audience, though we also sought to touch on today’s obstacles in the collective orientation towards community. Although we published a schedule of events, we barely followed it; we were too busy being divided in conflict or collectively distracted by our digital devices. This played out the contemporary story of human life, celebrating through techno-material consumption but on the whole, still incapable of coming together in conscious unity.

Unexpectedly, on the second day, the character that played Hardly (Rachel J!<3) had an accident and went to the hospital. I could barely prepare for the performance knowing that my good friend had gotten into a total crash. Four became three — #KrittyKouture, Qpon and Guardian Alien (xfatherfigurex). Me, I could do nothing but turn my clown’s face into a frown, with blue sparkle tears literally falling down my cheeks… The next series in this tumblr cascade will be from Day 2: Crysis, Crisis –>>

Existential Crisis /// The Selfie as a Ritual of Reflection

[[ REVELATIONS —> #KrittyKouture (aka Kk): I admit I had high hopes on the first night and felt frustrated that I could not get into serious discussion with audience members about the sacred stuff of trash. The night ended with my existential crisis, captured in a selfie video. Our volunteer comforted me, letting me know that she liked the piece and could see how I tried to turn trash into a living conversation in a community like Fort Lauderdale, where consumption is the unquestioned normcore. This public existential crisis of both Kk & #Kritty may have diverged from my intended direction, but ultimately it speaks to the multiple rifts in the making of self within spectator society. ]] 

“Nature is Imperfect / but / Technology is Perfect”

blip_clip from ritual07:

TranceDance 2 TechnoFutures 

// an ancient trance music meditation on transcending materiality through the techno-machine // 

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(see ‘cybernetic & metaphysics’ by luciana parisi @ ica_miami)

(video forthcoming on you_tube)

CAUGHT UP W/ the CAMERA

1. The Documentarian (performed by Mariyn Doddi of Eggplantian Spring Meditation) stops by and disrupts attention with her digital eyes. #KrittyKouture wags her legs as the camera lens walks by. Hardly can hardly speak. Coupon gives her a coupon. 

2. Another photographer grabs Coupon & #KrittyKouture’s attention, while Hardly and Guardian Alien dance to work-out videos in the back. 

from the video_vault upcoming on you_tube:

Ain’t Nothin’ Like Arctic Blues of Polar Tears

Hardly/OK sings to ‘LET IT GO’ by Disney’s Frozen /// “…Day… Let the storm pass on… The cold never bothered me anyway… Is that the end of the song? Yes that’s the end of the song, I was so distracted by this filmmaker’s presence!” (featuring Marilyn Loddi as The Documentarian)

[[ REWIND —>>> #KrittyKouture believed that before she could properly lead celebrations into the literal cult of utter stuff, she needed to make a symbolic sacrifice —because first is the mourning.

[We can’t post the photo though because a group of schoolchildren walked in on our performance and we didn’t get their parental approval]. We started with a mourning on the polar bear, an animal that is said to face the sixth extinction if the arctic ice melts from higher earth surface temperatures. 

Even if we ‘let it go’ from our future, if we won’t have the real animal, we will at least have our polar bear stuffed animals to continue to comfort us. All our stuffed animals of all the soon-to-be-extinct-species is what will survive climate change: the wild panda, jaguar, lemur, rhinoceros, sea otter, salamander, wolverine, asian elephant, and orangutan [[[insert super cute stuffed animal pixxx here]]] - The (HUMAN-MADE MATERIAL) THING’S ALL WE’LL HAVE LEFT ! SO Let’s Forget Their PrimalFlesh & Be THANKFUL 4 OUR PlayThings!

Let’s Call This Video : A_Pop_Song_Dropped_Like_Polar_Tears.me ]]

introducing ::: GUARDIAN ALIEN :::

The guardian alien is a spectral figure envisioned halfway-hidden in the performance scene, as a non-earthly  conscious entity that patiently watches and intermittently interacts with the unfolding utterances between the anthropoid actors, performing a play of staged power that represents the ceremonial and conflictual process of humanity’s planetary situation.

Their [decolonial] GAZE of observation forces a gravitational pull oriented to the outward-looking eye, setting the spectacle as a site to penetrate higher dimensions. 

CosmiKnots were blessed to have @RainLove3000 play our guardian alien in this production !!! <3<#

[[ PREVIEW ]]

#KrittyKouture getting ready for da rituals!

/// look inspired by ganguro girls ~ be the face of beauty that you face ///