SPIRITS READ FOUCAULT - FEEDBACK
The feedback is organised chronologically, starting from the last online presentation in 2019 to the ones in 2015
The feedback is organised chronologically, starting from the last online presentation in 2019 to the ones in 2015
ONLINE DISTRIBUTION - 2019
Participant A - online
This wasn't an easy act for me and it was difficult to stay on till the end. The action of dismembering a body, is definately something I can't do, no even metaphorically. But I did it. If this should help me to reflect on death it definately does. When you ask me to put the part I have taken from you in the chosen place, what is the chosen place? Where I should put all these precious parts after have been taken away from your body? I still thinking and visualizing nothing even though is not there any more. I can smell his/her presense and the sound of her breath. Thank you for taking me through this very difficult but complex journey. Thank you!
Participant B - online
I was strangely calm throughout your guided meditation. Dismemberment and flesh is not something that I take lightly, it is something that I have experienced on my skin in the past
and it deeply disturbed me, the trauma was very strong, but this time I could do it in a cold, unemotional, detached way. I placed the flesh, organs and bones in 3 separate chosen places. I felt that each of them had to be separated and neatly placed in 3 baskets. When I removed everything, the Aura of Nothing was still there, a presence that would fill the space where her/his body was.
I thanked Nothing for this precious and intimate journey and the trust she/he put on me, I thanked him/her for letting me dismember her/him.
The outline of his Aura became a portal of future possibilities where no fear would enter, no boundaries of the flesh, no limitations of the mind and the ego.
What once was is no more.
Participant C - online
What an unusual and difficult visualisation this was. I once dreamt of my own dismemberment, but I had taken the much more abstract shape of a starfish. Its limbs had come off.
I noticed my reluctance to visualise the cutting and the blood, the very physical reality of the human body. I almost had to abort. However my mind then created a more graphic depiction of the body. It turned it into a mannequin used in doctors' training - that can be neatly taken apart into its individual components. The organ mass was placed into a light precious container. The word container does not quite describe it. It was more like a divine shell that held all the parts, slightly illuminous. For me the persona although not in their physical shape was still present at the end - as their spirit or soul. The flesh and skin was just the superficial sheet that held it together.
Participant D - online
I. PORTAL
Instincitvely I chose to do this ritual naked. I showered first, cleansed. As I looked into the screen, at first I saw you, but then I quickly realized that NOTHING was Me. So I began the visualizations a bit earlier than instructed, and began to look upon myself. I saw myself, standing before me, in that same black box theatre... I was wearing the clothes I am intending to wear today. I paid attention to my feelings -- I had sexual desire for myself. I saw in NOTHING a cloaked vulnerability -- it was indicated by the way NOTHING's head was angled -- like the way a dog slightly bows its head to show submission to dominance. I saw this and it made me want to fuck him (me). Or hold him tenderly. It made me want to bring him out of submission into full frontal power. The urge to re-adjust came first as sexual, and then morphed into something else. By the time NOTHING was naked, it was no longer sexual, but maternal. I looked at NOTHING's nipples -- small, cold, fragile. Everything else in his posture appeared strong, but the nipples declared their vulnerability. Like two sleeping kittens.
II. THE CUTTING
It was interesting that you told us to remove the skin quickly -- I did not want to. I want to peel it off slowly, I wanted to see how everything oozed, I wanted to sit holding a knife the way you would when skinning an animal, and cut that glue layer and the veins. But when I ripped it off, the most startling image was the eyes, of the face, of the blood and the muscle and the tissue of the face. But it did not frighten me, in fact it felt ominously familiar. Peeling off the muscle was like removing velcro. I could not WAIT to get to the intestine, and when I did I pulled it out in a kind of frenzy. I wanted to wrap myself up in it. When it fell to the floor I watched the way it dropped and looked at it like the ancient Romans used to -- a Haruspex -- I believe I will return to the image, to the shape of my entrails later. When I got to the Skull, I looked upon him -- I found his skull and his Bones so familiar. And I just began this Jungian process -- to make a book of Visions -- which I instinctively called THE BOOK OF SKULLS. The Skull and I knew eachother deeply. It felt like providence to arrive to (him).
III. PILES
The ritual moved very fast, I wanted all to take more time. At a point, I wanted the ritual to shift -- I wanted NOTHING to no longer be standing in a dark room, but laying on a Table, like a mummification procedure. I wanted the vision to move into that space -- into some desert temple, with many tools laid out, herbs smoking, candles flickering and I wanted to remove everything piece by piece -- and carefully place it somewhere, each in its own ceramic container, marked with symbols. But I kept to the original vision for purpouses of the exercize. I put all the meat and guts in one big pile. There was repulsion -- but not at the blood, or the pus, or the abjection -- rather that it was not ordered, that liver was mixed with pancreas and intestines and all of these brilliant machines lost their individuality amongst one another. Then, when the Voice asked me to dismantle the bones, I did. I recall the sound they made as they all became a pile. Atop of the pile I placed the Skull. (I should note that during the writing of this section, in real life I felt the need to shit -- and much of this section was written while shitting...)
IV. LIGHT
After the skin, the meat and the bones were gone, in their piles, there was still something. Something I recognized that was beneath all of those layers. It was an energy. Almost turquoise blue on the outside and white on the inside. It was in a line-shape -- but when I looked closer it had mini tentacles of light that came out of it. I tried to erase it, to get at NOTHING, but it remained, staring back at me. I could tell and feel that it was present the whole time, I could remember its gaze -- looking at me through the skin-face of Nothing, the skinned face of Nothing, the Skull face of Nothing and now Nothing. There was an energy always beneath it. As an energy it was the musical note 'A'.
Participant E - online
The experience was extremely powerful. Strangely, the most intense part of the process for me were the initial gazing at Nothing and the disrobement. During these two phases I connected deeply with Nothing and burst into tears. The emotions were an externalization of the reciprocity and mirroring I had been experiencing. I became Nothing and the boundaries me-you and me-others dissolved. What followed was a spontaneous flow of dismemberment and shedding that ran quickly and naturally ... I had no major difficulties in cutting and tearing off the different layers of the body. I almost felt a sense of pleasure, lightness, profound calm and release. I was enjoying the process ... At the end there was no nothingness. The lack of visual representation doesn't equal emptiness. The matter has different qualities and forms. The presence was there, vibrant and persuasive. Still graspable, still loudly speaking. If only you dare to listen ...
Thank you Nothing!
Participant F - online
I suppose the experience depends a lot on one's imaginative capacity. For me, it was a short but real horror experience. First, the idea of having power over someone, and then expose his nudity: I was both people at the same time: the victim and the executioner: I felt exposed and hated being the voyeur. And then, to pass to the act of dismemberment: the blood that flow, the tearing, the anguish of the pain: even to write about it, reliving the imaginative act, it makes me suffer a lot. I can even smell the blood, I, who am anosmic ... Really terrible ...
Participant G - online
The blood on the floor is still there, I can smell it, and my eyes can't help to turn to the look where I placed their pieces. I can't look into emptiness until their flesh bleeds.
Undressing Nothing wasn't difficult, I wondered if it would bother her, that is my only worry. I like her nakedness, the vulnerability of her skin and her folds, I seem to know more about Nothing.
Cutting and removing the skin was very disturbing, but it was also the most vivid act: my throat was dry, my feet and my sweaty hands writhed. The blood impressed me, but I also found it liberating, terrifying, but the body seemed to rejoice in jets.
The skeleton change my gaze to Nothing. My twisted stomach becomes still. The bones give me peace. Stillness. Me and the skeleton recognize ourselves. I feel joy.
I wouldn't want to break down the skeleton, lose it. Now, the pieces mixed in the box call me
Participant H - online
Participant did not give their consent for the publication of their feedback
Participant I - online
Today felt like the moment to do this. I was frightened and throughout felt uncomfortable. I kept breathing. The imagery involved i find difficult. I have a strong fear of knives and needles. I always carry knives facing down to the floor. Having come to the end, I feel a sense of relief. Imagining the blood and muscles was difficult. I felt sick. I felt no real desire a part from a desire to run or move away especially when wearing the blindfold. For a moment, I thought someone was standing to my right hand side also watching the screen. I didn't want my mind to go into overdrive so i ignored that sensation of splitting and kept focused on the image - looking straight ahead in my mind's eye. By centring on the figure, I could then imagine the dismemberment but only at speed and without too much details. I tried to put all the parts neatly in piles. The first action of the cutting from all sides was interesting as it created a fluted or multi-dimensional figure of the human which i liked. When we got to the bones, I wanted to just kick them down like dominoes. i felt anger. I wanted them to crumble but I tried to be neat and respectful. I also felt a huge relief when we reached the absence. It was familiar and shimmering like little patches of light almost fading out. I could have stayed there for a long time but was worried about the figure coming to stand next to me again so quickly took of the scarf and moved on to writing this...
Participant L - online
Many paradoxical feelings and thoughts, which I have tried to capture straight away without filtering. Initially I felt calm,
on one level I felt this was because I was still detached and wasn't yet fully immersed in the visualization. But, as well, it was difficult to accept that I was committing such a barbaric act on another person. As I went deeper I hoped that I might 'see' something that might help me know this person better, to grasp their essence as their body was being broken down. This process was interesting as in the past I have undergone similar experiences in ritual settings but I was the one undergoing the destructive process. In many ways it felt much worse to imagine this happening to someone else. As I felt a deeper connection to the person, I started to feel emotional and distressed, but conversely felt I was in a process of 'knowing' this person and even as the body was fully discarded there was never any point that I felt the person had gone. Was this just fear of death and an attachment to this person/body and my own embodied form? Or the sense of an innate essence that the person possessed? At the end I had the urge to rearrange the bones and piles of organs and flesh into a pattern around the empty space where the person had stood even though it was an irrational gesture, perhaps it could help the disconnected matter retain a link to its essence? But on the other hand this essence might not want to be bound? I carried out this gesture and by leaving the empty space in the middle of the organs and bones it felt that both of these states of embodiment-life and dissolution-death could be acknowledged and honoured. As I could not tell which state was more real or where the person really was now, but still wanted to feel her presence. This paradoxical state felt very profound and moving and I stayed with it for some length of time. This was a powerful piece and I thank you for letting me experience it.
Participant M - online
A Reflection on Spirits Read Foucault
I once listened to poets discussing methodologies of practice. An observation made that struck me was that time spent writing in the waking hour, was time best spent. For this particular artist, there was something in the boundary between the absence of sleep and the presence of the waking state that marked a transition which was creatively useful. Perhaps our emergence into full consciousness, associated with all the sensory signals of the coming day, creates a tension whose vacuum must be filled and which into this, imagination pours and the human mind creates. For this reason, I too chose to encounter this act and reflect upon it, in the waking hour.
Since Nature abhors a vacuum here too is a clue to how one might process 'Nothing's' invitation in Spirits Read Foucault, and to reflect on their imaginary deconstruction of self. For my part, I could not see the systematic flaying and dissection of the body as destruction, since it is my belief we cannot alter the essence of what it actually is to be human. No matter the mechanism, it becomes a kind of reductio ad absurdum in which the tools, however surgical in their delicacy, or brutal in their crudeness, are forever incapable of rendering sense from a physical sensibility. This is the kernel of what it is to be Human - that is to also be Spirit.
One might read therefore the play-acting of dismemberment as a kind of 'hollowing-out', an incremental forging of space, as a sculptor searching for form within the marble... however I would argue that this kind of butchery is essentially futile, in that far from destroying the self you are just as equally enlarging it, setting it free.
I cannot read the Foucault experience through the lens of empiricism. The anonymous author of the 14th century English contemplative work The Cloud of Unknowing urges his students to understand the concepts of darkness or absence not by 'intellectual ingenuity' but rather by putting aside that which we know, 'to step above it stoutly but deftly'. Similarly we cannot expect to find answers to the self in the laboratory or to scrutinise our consciousness from within.
We are taken on a journey that starts visually and ends in the imagination. To jettison this most primary of senses is the first challenge, in what I saw as an invitation to discard preconceived ideas if the 'self' and uncover alternative understandings which I may have either buried, lost forever or could invent anew.
To this end the theatricality of the blindfold was a useful stage prop: and like the Freudian pocket watch, it provided a kind of foil to facilitate the imagination, a crutch which was ultimately thrown away as we progressed on our journey. Both participants in this adventure were anonymous, and this gentle destruction of self seemed an essential step if we were serious about personal exploration. The best travel writers are usually strangers in their chosen country.
Participant N - online
Thank you for inviting me to participate in your work Spirits Read Foucault.
I delayed viewing for about a week, concerned that I might find the work too confronting, and waited for day in which I felt strong and was without distraction.
It is hot here today, 40+ degrees Celsius, Australian summer and I am in my element.
So here goes…I read the letter.
It addresses me by name. I like that. Very thoughtful.
Interesting references for future reading…thank you!
Yes, it all sounds quite cathartic.
I play the video.
The person I see is quite likeable; no beak, experienced eyes, clothes acceptable and non-descript.
The voice is enchanting.
We can imagine anyone we wish, I know that, but at this stage the figure required seems to be quite arbitrary, so I focus on you.
You ask me to imagine body and skin.
I now reference my own as I know it intimately and it is to it that I have the strongest connection. I feel no repulsion, just a familiarity.
You ask me to section and flay the skin.
Too quickly, too quickly. These things take time.
I want to feel the resistance under my knife, the resistance under my fingers as I peel away.
Now I see the flayed body and feel a revulsion not there before.
Moist, raw, red and noisy.
Ooze.
I feel nauseous.
Strangely, I smell nothing.
Again, the removal of muscles, tissues, vessels and organs is too quick.
Do I want to savor the experience? No, not for enjoyment, instead I want to give the process the time and respect that should be attributed to ritualistic practice. To take it all in.
I pile the glistening organs to the side…away from where the skeleton still stands. Fascinating are the different texture and colours, but there is more to do.
Gone is the initial revulsion. The skeleton offers no confrontation. I pick it apart piece by piece and notice the pieces fit nicely together. Artfully I arrange them in a tidy, architectural mound.
You ask me to look at the space where the physical body had been. I do not see/feel ‘nothing’. An energy still persists, without a doubt. I do not wish to define it.
Participant O - online
Thanks so much for inviting me on this journey ‘into nothing’.
A few things I feel able to say, I’m not sure that they are very coherent but I will write quickly and without pre-planning a direction or trajectory, simply tracking as close to a train of thoughts as they unfold in the immediate wake of this journey …
Firstly, although ‘nothing’ disappears, as we are guided through layers of revelation and anatomical exposure to eventual dismemberment, she reappears for me in her absence. Nothing leaves many traces: feelings, associations, memories. She will not be erased fully, she lingers. For how long, I don’t know. But she is still t/here, present. So nothing is not nothing, although her material self may be made to disappear.
Secondly, dismemberment perhaps inevitably invites re-membering: a re-arrangement of the molecules into fresh bundles or configurations, even if temporary ones. ‘Sparagmos’, in Greek tragedy: the Maenads/Bacchants tear apart a sacrificial person or creature; and Orpheus is also dismembered – but his head floats in the waters and sings. Death as transformation, reconfiguration, process of rebirth, continuous cycle.
I wonder: is the body the self? Are they the same? Perhaps the body is the self’s location or vehicle (or perhaps it’s the other way around?), it seems it represents or stages core elements of some of the self’s attributes, its material architecture, its music, it is a material manifestation that we conflate with the self - but it is not the sum surely, not the totality. The body is a temporary arrangement of molecules, always in transformation, in process – dying, and being born: dis/appearing. And in that way it is like the self. Here is Jeanette Winterson: ‘The self is not contained in any moment or any place, but it is only in the intersection of moment and place that the self might, for a moment, be seen vanishing through a door, which disappears at once’.
It’s interesting to watch ‘nothing’ in a spotlight on a stage: the surface of an identity on display, to be viewed. But whereis she? I don’t know. There and not there. Elsew/here perhaps. Certainly not visible, not picked up by the spotlight in the theatre (is this one of the blind spots of the theatron– the ‘seeing place’ – and its play of surfaces?).
And of course this particular ‘nothing’ who I watch in the early part of this journey is something / someone to me … She does not arriveto my sight and consciousness with nothing; she carries freight (that may be her self as I understand it). And I can’t or won’t picture this dismemberment beyond a certain point: the cutting, flaying, peeling of an anatomist. I resist the enacting of violence upon this livingbody, even if I am invited to do so. This envelope of skin, with its organs and bones, is important to me, the particular ‘self’ that inhabits it is important to me, and even though I know this body will be dispersed and fade in time, like all bodies, I would like to sustain its integrated corporeal form for now, I would like this material form to linger, this ‘self’. Perhaps this is a definition of ‘superficial’! - an attention to and desire to retain surfaces (although my smiling recognition of this desire and my attachment to it, alongside a clear sense of the mortality of all beings and forms, the transience of everything, perhaps suggest at least the possibility of some greater ‘depths’ in the shallows I inhabit!)
One final thought or association triggered: perhaps the disappearance of death – the deaths of others, or one’s own – is only disturbing or frightening if one cannot accept in one’s being that the only constant is change. And the dead live on, of course they do – materially, their materials dispersed and redistributed (most vividly in the sky burials of Tibetans, but literally and actually in the fate of all bodies in death too); also in the memories of those who saw their ‘nothingness’ as a temporary flaring into appearance of a particular something; and in consciousness, the ‘light matter’ of the universe that physicists have not yet begun to look for.
So, ‘nothing’ remains … and those remains are forever in process themselves.
I must stop now, although this is far from finished. The journey has opened up all sorts of feelings and thoughts, and it is in reality unfinishable.
I have tried to write. As the poet Anne Michaels says, ‘To write / knowing that the dead can read’.
Write. Right. Rite.
Thank you. May something of the youness of you linger …
Participant P - online
CONTINUI BRIVIDI HANNO ATTRAVERSATO IL MIO CORPO DURANTE L'ESPERIENZA...VISUALIZZARE L'ATTO DI INCIDERE E ANDARE DENTRO IL TUO CORPO ERA SOFFERENTE PERCHè ERI TE E L'AFFETTO CHE PROVO NON LO RENDEVA FACILE. POI HO INIZIATO DALLA TESTA E HO VISTO UN RIVOLO DI SANGUE SCENDERE LUNGO IL SENO DESTRO. PIAN PIANO TI HO SMEMBRATA METTENDO DA PARTE IL SENTIMENTO PER TE...SENTIVO COME SE ME LO RICHIEDESSI COME TUO DESIDERIO....
GLI ORGANI E VISCERI E TUTTO CIò CHE ERA SANGUINEO ROSSO ERA SPARSO A TERRA E LE OSSA LE HO POSIZIONATE IN UN SECCHIO BIANCO..
NELLA VISIONE FINALE DELL'ASSENZA/PRESENZA SONO APPARSE LE TUE SCARPE AL POSTO CENTRALE COME QUANDO LE INDOSSAVI....ALLA FINE HO SENTITO UN SORRISO DI SOLLIEVO E PACE....
MENTRE STO SCRIVENDO SONO PASSATA DAL PIANTO AL BENE PROFONDO VERSO TE E ME E IN TE E ME....LOVE AMICA CARA
....E CONTINUA A LAVORARE DENTRO....
Participant Q - online
This was a strange exprience and I need to reflect more on it. I was in a 'good' place when I decided to do this experience and I sat on the floor near the window allowing the sun to come into the room. During the first stage of 'undressing the Nothing,' it came straight into my mind that 'she' looks like the woman with the long red hair (middle) from Klimt's painting the 'The three ages of woman' and I thought that it was sad that she is naked but she was calm. So I felt relieved for her and I thought that vulnerability is beautiful. The second stage of 'cutting' was the most difficult I really didn't want to do it. I wanted to stop immediately, but I kept listening and instead I tried to convice my self that it is not a body that I am cutting but a piece of cheese - weird right? This comes from my early childhood, when there was something distrurbing on television involving violence particularly with blood my dad would always encourage me to think of it as 'something' else e.g. the blood in films is not real they use kethcup. Funny enough, this is a strategy that I use even today when I watch TV and I avoid watching anyhthing that could be violent e.g. thrillers I simply can't, my stomach hurts. So when I recovered from my cheese platter visualisation it was the point that we had to strip the body apart I felt more comfotable doing the organs - I treated them as something really really valuable and moved them with caution on the one side of the room. The same with the bones but I did it faster like picking tree branches from a forest on a cold day. I felt very sad during this stage but calm I thought of my friend Craig who passed away a few months ago and I smiled. I felt that a big cloud of white smoke or dust has replaced the body on stage. 'They' were still there present, somehow ... and that felt good!
Participant A - online
This wasn't an easy act for me and it was difficult to stay on till the end. The action of dismembering a body, is definately something I can't do, no even metaphorically. But I did it. If this should help me to reflect on death it definately does. When you ask me to put the part I have taken from you in the chosen place, what is the chosen place? Where I should put all these precious parts after have been taken away from your body? I still thinking and visualizing nothing even though is not there any more. I can smell his/her presense and the sound of her breath. Thank you for taking me through this very difficult but complex journey. Thank you!
Participant B - online
I was strangely calm throughout your guided meditation. Dismemberment and flesh is not something that I take lightly, it is something that I have experienced on my skin in the past
and it deeply disturbed me, the trauma was very strong, but this time I could do it in a cold, unemotional, detached way. I placed the flesh, organs and bones in 3 separate chosen places. I felt that each of them had to be separated and neatly placed in 3 baskets. When I removed everything, the Aura of Nothing was still there, a presence that would fill the space where her/his body was.
I thanked Nothing for this precious and intimate journey and the trust she/he put on me, I thanked him/her for letting me dismember her/him.
The outline of his Aura became a portal of future possibilities where no fear would enter, no boundaries of the flesh, no limitations of the mind and the ego.
What once was is no more.
Participant C - online
What an unusual and difficult visualisation this was. I once dreamt of my own dismemberment, but I had taken the much more abstract shape of a starfish. Its limbs had come off.
I noticed my reluctance to visualise the cutting and the blood, the very physical reality of the human body. I almost had to abort. However my mind then created a more graphic depiction of the body. It turned it into a mannequin used in doctors' training - that can be neatly taken apart into its individual components. The organ mass was placed into a light precious container. The word container does not quite describe it. It was more like a divine shell that held all the parts, slightly illuminous. For me the persona although not in their physical shape was still present at the end - as their spirit or soul. The flesh and skin was just the superficial sheet that held it together.
Participant D - online
I. PORTAL
Instincitvely I chose to do this ritual naked. I showered first, cleansed. As I looked into the screen, at first I saw you, but then I quickly realized that NOTHING was Me. So I began the visualizations a bit earlier than instructed, and began to look upon myself. I saw myself, standing before me, in that same black box theatre... I was wearing the clothes I am intending to wear today. I paid attention to my feelings -- I had sexual desire for myself. I saw in NOTHING a cloaked vulnerability -- it was indicated by the way NOTHING's head was angled -- like the way a dog slightly bows its head to show submission to dominance. I saw this and it made me want to fuck him (me). Or hold him tenderly. It made me want to bring him out of submission into full frontal power. The urge to re-adjust came first as sexual, and then morphed into something else. By the time NOTHING was naked, it was no longer sexual, but maternal. I looked at NOTHING's nipples -- small, cold, fragile. Everything else in his posture appeared strong, but the nipples declared their vulnerability. Like two sleeping kittens.
II. THE CUTTING
It was interesting that you told us to remove the skin quickly -- I did not want to. I want to peel it off slowly, I wanted to see how everything oozed, I wanted to sit holding a knife the way you would when skinning an animal, and cut that glue layer and the veins. But when I ripped it off, the most startling image was the eyes, of the face, of the blood and the muscle and the tissue of the face. But it did not frighten me, in fact it felt ominously familiar. Peeling off the muscle was like removing velcro. I could not WAIT to get to the intestine, and when I did I pulled it out in a kind of frenzy. I wanted to wrap myself up in it. When it fell to the floor I watched the way it dropped and looked at it like the ancient Romans used to -- a Haruspex -- I believe I will return to the image, to the shape of my entrails later. When I got to the Skull, I looked upon him -- I found his skull and his Bones so familiar. And I just began this Jungian process -- to make a book of Visions -- which I instinctively called THE BOOK OF SKULLS. The Skull and I knew eachother deeply. It felt like providence to arrive to (him).
III. PILES
The ritual moved very fast, I wanted all to take more time. At a point, I wanted the ritual to shift -- I wanted NOTHING to no longer be standing in a dark room, but laying on a Table, like a mummification procedure. I wanted the vision to move into that space -- into some desert temple, with many tools laid out, herbs smoking, candles flickering and I wanted to remove everything piece by piece -- and carefully place it somewhere, each in its own ceramic container, marked with symbols. But I kept to the original vision for purpouses of the exercize. I put all the meat and guts in one big pile. There was repulsion -- but not at the blood, or the pus, or the abjection -- rather that it was not ordered, that liver was mixed with pancreas and intestines and all of these brilliant machines lost their individuality amongst one another. Then, when the Voice asked me to dismantle the bones, I did. I recall the sound they made as they all became a pile. Atop of the pile I placed the Skull. (I should note that during the writing of this section, in real life I felt the need to shit -- and much of this section was written while shitting...)
IV. LIGHT
After the skin, the meat and the bones were gone, in their piles, there was still something. Something I recognized that was beneath all of those layers. It was an energy. Almost turquoise blue on the outside and white on the inside. It was in a line-shape -- but when I looked closer it had mini tentacles of light that came out of it. I tried to erase it, to get at NOTHING, but it remained, staring back at me. I could tell and feel that it was present the whole time, I could remember its gaze -- looking at me through the skin-face of Nothing, the skinned face of Nothing, the Skull face of Nothing and now Nothing. There was an energy always beneath it. As an energy it was the musical note 'A'.
Participant E - online
The experience was extremely powerful. Strangely, the most intense part of the process for me were the initial gazing at Nothing and the disrobement. During these two phases I connected deeply with Nothing and burst into tears. The emotions were an externalization of the reciprocity and mirroring I had been experiencing. I became Nothing and the boundaries me-you and me-others dissolved. What followed was a spontaneous flow of dismemberment and shedding that ran quickly and naturally ... I had no major difficulties in cutting and tearing off the different layers of the body. I almost felt a sense of pleasure, lightness, profound calm and release. I was enjoying the process ... At the end there was no nothingness. The lack of visual representation doesn't equal emptiness. The matter has different qualities and forms. The presence was there, vibrant and persuasive. Still graspable, still loudly speaking. If only you dare to listen ...
Thank you Nothing!
Participant F - online
I suppose the experience depends a lot on one's imaginative capacity. For me, it was a short but real horror experience. First, the idea of having power over someone, and then expose his nudity: I was both people at the same time: the victim and the executioner: I felt exposed and hated being the voyeur. And then, to pass to the act of dismemberment: the blood that flow, the tearing, the anguish of the pain: even to write about it, reliving the imaginative act, it makes me suffer a lot. I can even smell the blood, I, who am anosmic ... Really terrible ...
Participant G - online
The blood on the floor is still there, I can smell it, and my eyes can't help to turn to the look where I placed their pieces. I can't look into emptiness until their flesh bleeds.
Undressing Nothing wasn't difficult, I wondered if it would bother her, that is my only worry. I like her nakedness, the vulnerability of her skin and her folds, I seem to know more about Nothing.
Cutting and removing the skin was very disturbing, but it was also the most vivid act: my throat was dry, my feet and my sweaty hands writhed. The blood impressed me, but I also found it liberating, terrifying, but the body seemed to rejoice in jets.
The skeleton change my gaze to Nothing. My twisted stomach becomes still. The bones give me peace. Stillness. Me and the skeleton recognize ourselves. I feel joy.
I wouldn't want to break down the skeleton, lose it. Now, the pieces mixed in the box call me
Participant H - online
Participant did not give their consent for the publication of their feedback
Participant I - online
Today felt like the moment to do this. I was frightened and throughout felt uncomfortable. I kept breathing. The imagery involved i find difficult. I have a strong fear of knives and needles. I always carry knives facing down to the floor. Having come to the end, I feel a sense of relief. Imagining the blood and muscles was difficult. I felt sick. I felt no real desire a part from a desire to run or move away especially when wearing the blindfold. For a moment, I thought someone was standing to my right hand side also watching the screen. I didn't want my mind to go into overdrive so i ignored that sensation of splitting and kept focused on the image - looking straight ahead in my mind's eye. By centring on the figure, I could then imagine the dismemberment but only at speed and without too much details. I tried to put all the parts neatly in piles. The first action of the cutting from all sides was interesting as it created a fluted or multi-dimensional figure of the human which i liked. When we got to the bones, I wanted to just kick them down like dominoes. i felt anger. I wanted them to crumble but I tried to be neat and respectful. I also felt a huge relief when we reached the absence. It was familiar and shimmering like little patches of light almost fading out. I could have stayed there for a long time but was worried about the figure coming to stand next to me again so quickly took of the scarf and moved on to writing this...
Participant L - online
Many paradoxical feelings and thoughts, which I have tried to capture straight away without filtering. Initially I felt calm,
on one level I felt this was because I was still detached and wasn't yet fully immersed in the visualization. But, as well, it was difficult to accept that I was committing such a barbaric act on another person. As I went deeper I hoped that I might 'see' something that might help me know this person better, to grasp their essence as their body was being broken down. This process was interesting as in the past I have undergone similar experiences in ritual settings but I was the one undergoing the destructive process. In many ways it felt much worse to imagine this happening to someone else. As I felt a deeper connection to the person, I started to feel emotional and distressed, but conversely felt I was in a process of 'knowing' this person and even as the body was fully discarded there was never any point that I felt the person had gone. Was this just fear of death and an attachment to this person/body and my own embodied form? Or the sense of an innate essence that the person possessed? At the end I had the urge to rearrange the bones and piles of organs and flesh into a pattern around the empty space where the person had stood even though it was an irrational gesture, perhaps it could help the disconnected matter retain a link to its essence? But on the other hand this essence might not want to be bound? I carried out this gesture and by leaving the empty space in the middle of the organs and bones it felt that both of these states of embodiment-life and dissolution-death could be acknowledged and honoured. As I could not tell which state was more real or where the person really was now, but still wanted to feel her presence. This paradoxical state felt very profound and moving and I stayed with it for some length of time. This was a powerful piece and I thank you for letting me experience it.
Participant M - online
A Reflection on Spirits Read Foucault
I once listened to poets discussing methodologies of practice. An observation made that struck me was that time spent writing in the waking hour, was time best spent. For this particular artist, there was something in the boundary between the absence of sleep and the presence of the waking state that marked a transition which was creatively useful. Perhaps our emergence into full consciousness, associated with all the sensory signals of the coming day, creates a tension whose vacuum must be filled and which into this, imagination pours and the human mind creates. For this reason, I too chose to encounter this act and reflect upon it, in the waking hour.
Since Nature abhors a vacuum here too is a clue to how one might process 'Nothing's' invitation in Spirits Read Foucault, and to reflect on their imaginary deconstruction of self. For my part, I could not see the systematic flaying and dissection of the body as destruction, since it is my belief we cannot alter the essence of what it actually is to be human. No matter the mechanism, it becomes a kind of reductio ad absurdum in which the tools, however surgical in their delicacy, or brutal in their crudeness, are forever incapable of rendering sense from a physical sensibility. This is the kernel of what it is to be Human - that is to also be Spirit.
One might read therefore the play-acting of dismemberment as a kind of 'hollowing-out', an incremental forging of space, as a sculptor searching for form within the marble... however I would argue that this kind of butchery is essentially futile, in that far from destroying the self you are just as equally enlarging it, setting it free.
I cannot read the Foucault experience through the lens of empiricism. The anonymous author of the 14th century English contemplative work The Cloud of Unknowing urges his students to understand the concepts of darkness or absence not by 'intellectual ingenuity' but rather by putting aside that which we know, 'to step above it stoutly but deftly'. Similarly we cannot expect to find answers to the self in the laboratory or to scrutinise our consciousness from within.
We are taken on a journey that starts visually and ends in the imagination. To jettison this most primary of senses is the first challenge, in what I saw as an invitation to discard preconceived ideas if the 'self' and uncover alternative understandings which I may have either buried, lost forever or could invent anew.
To this end the theatricality of the blindfold was a useful stage prop: and like the Freudian pocket watch, it provided a kind of foil to facilitate the imagination, a crutch which was ultimately thrown away as we progressed on our journey. Both participants in this adventure were anonymous, and this gentle destruction of self seemed an essential step if we were serious about personal exploration. The best travel writers are usually strangers in their chosen country.
Participant N - online
Thank you for inviting me to participate in your work Spirits Read Foucault.
I delayed viewing for about a week, concerned that I might find the work too confronting, and waited for day in which I felt strong and was without distraction.
It is hot here today, 40+ degrees Celsius, Australian summer and I am in my element.
So here goes…I read the letter.
It addresses me by name. I like that. Very thoughtful.
Interesting references for future reading…thank you!
Yes, it all sounds quite cathartic.
I play the video.
The person I see is quite likeable; no beak, experienced eyes, clothes acceptable and non-descript.
The voice is enchanting.
We can imagine anyone we wish, I know that, but at this stage the figure required seems to be quite arbitrary, so I focus on you.
You ask me to imagine body and skin.
I now reference my own as I know it intimately and it is to it that I have the strongest connection. I feel no repulsion, just a familiarity.
You ask me to section and flay the skin.
Too quickly, too quickly. These things take time.
I want to feel the resistance under my knife, the resistance under my fingers as I peel away.
Now I see the flayed body and feel a revulsion not there before.
Moist, raw, red and noisy.
Ooze.
I feel nauseous.
Strangely, I smell nothing.
Again, the removal of muscles, tissues, vessels and organs is too quick.
Do I want to savor the experience? No, not for enjoyment, instead I want to give the process the time and respect that should be attributed to ritualistic practice. To take it all in.
I pile the glistening organs to the side…away from where the skeleton still stands. Fascinating are the different texture and colours, but there is more to do.
Gone is the initial revulsion. The skeleton offers no confrontation. I pick it apart piece by piece and notice the pieces fit nicely together. Artfully I arrange them in a tidy, architectural mound.
You ask me to look at the space where the physical body had been. I do not see/feel ‘nothing’. An energy still persists, without a doubt. I do not wish to define it.
Participant O - online
Thanks so much for inviting me on this journey ‘into nothing’.
A few things I feel able to say, I’m not sure that they are very coherent but I will write quickly and without pre-planning a direction or trajectory, simply tracking as close to a train of thoughts as they unfold in the immediate wake of this journey …
Firstly, although ‘nothing’ disappears, as we are guided through layers of revelation and anatomical exposure to eventual dismemberment, she reappears for me in her absence. Nothing leaves many traces: feelings, associations, memories. She will not be erased fully, she lingers. For how long, I don’t know. But she is still t/here, present. So nothing is not nothing, although her material self may be made to disappear.
Secondly, dismemberment perhaps inevitably invites re-membering: a re-arrangement of the molecules into fresh bundles or configurations, even if temporary ones. ‘Sparagmos’, in Greek tragedy: the Maenads/Bacchants tear apart a sacrificial person or creature; and Orpheus is also dismembered – but his head floats in the waters and sings. Death as transformation, reconfiguration, process of rebirth, continuous cycle.
I wonder: is the body the self? Are they the same? Perhaps the body is the self’s location or vehicle (or perhaps it’s the other way around?), it seems it represents or stages core elements of some of the self’s attributes, its material architecture, its music, it is a material manifestation that we conflate with the self - but it is not the sum surely, not the totality. The body is a temporary arrangement of molecules, always in transformation, in process – dying, and being born: dis/appearing. And in that way it is like the self. Here is Jeanette Winterson: ‘The self is not contained in any moment or any place, but it is only in the intersection of moment and place that the self might, for a moment, be seen vanishing through a door, which disappears at once’.
It’s interesting to watch ‘nothing’ in a spotlight on a stage: the surface of an identity on display, to be viewed. But whereis she? I don’t know. There and not there. Elsew/here perhaps. Certainly not visible, not picked up by the spotlight in the theatre (is this one of the blind spots of the theatron– the ‘seeing place’ – and its play of surfaces?).
And of course this particular ‘nothing’ who I watch in the early part of this journey is something / someone to me … She does not arriveto my sight and consciousness with nothing; she carries freight (that may be her self as I understand it). And I can’t or won’t picture this dismemberment beyond a certain point: the cutting, flaying, peeling of an anatomist. I resist the enacting of violence upon this livingbody, even if I am invited to do so. This envelope of skin, with its organs and bones, is important to me, the particular ‘self’ that inhabits it is important to me, and even though I know this body will be dispersed and fade in time, like all bodies, I would like to sustain its integrated corporeal form for now, I would like this material form to linger, this ‘self’. Perhaps this is a definition of ‘superficial’! - an attention to and desire to retain surfaces (although my smiling recognition of this desire and my attachment to it, alongside a clear sense of the mortality of all beings and forms, the transience of everything, perhaps suggest at least the possibility of some greater ‘depths’ in the shallows I inhabit!)
One final thought or association triggered: perhaps the disappearance of death – the deaths of others, or one’s own – is only disturbing or frightening if one cannot accept in one’s being that the only constant is change. And the dead live on, of course they do – materially, their materials dispersed and redistributed (most vividly in the sky burials of Tibetans, but literally and actually in the fate of all bodies in death too); also in the memories of those who saw their ‘nothingness’ as a temporary flaring into appearance of a particular something; and in consciousness, the ‘light matter’ of the universe that physicists have not yet begun to look for.
So, ‘nothing’ remains … and those remains are forever in process themselves.
I must stop now, although this is far from finished. The journey has opened up all sorts of feelings and thoughts, and it is in reality unfinishable.
I have tried to write. As the poet Anne Michaels says, ‘To write / knowing that the dead can read’.
Write. Right. Rite.
Thank you. May something of the youness of you linger …
Participant P - online
CONTINUI BRIVIDI HANNO ATTRAVERSATO IL MIO CORPO DURANTE L'ESPERIENZA...VISUALIZZARE L'ATTO DI INCIDERE E ANDARE DENTRO IL TUO CORPO ERA SOFFERENTE PERCHè ERI TE E L'AFFETTO CHE PROVO NON LO RENDEVA FACILE. POI HO INIZIATO DALLA TESTA E HO VISTO UN RIVOLO DI SANGUE SCENDERE LUNGO IL SENO DESTRO. PIAN PIANO TI HO SMEMBRATA METTENDO DA PARTE IL SENTIMENTO PER TE...SENTIVO COME SE ME LO RICHIEDESSI COME TUO DESIDERIO....
GLI ORGANI E VISCERI E TUTTO CIò CHE ERA SANGUINEO ROSSO ERA SPARSO A TERRA E LE OSSA LE HO POSIZIONATE IN UN SECCHIO BIANCO..
NELLA VISIONE FINALE DELL'ASSENZA/PRESENZA SONO APPARSE LE TUE SCARPE AL POSTO CENTRALE COME QUANDO LE INDOSSAVI....ALLA FINE HO SENTITO UN SORRISO DI SOLLIEVO E PACE....
MENTRE STO SCRIVENDO SONO PASSATA DAL PIANTO AL BENE PROFONDO VERSO TE E ME E IN TE E ME....LOVE AMICA CARA
....E CONTINUA A LAVORARE DENTRO....
Participant Q - online
This was a strange exprience and I need to reflect more on it. I was in a 'good' place when I decided to do this experience and I sat on the floor near the window allowing the sun to come into the room. During the first stage of 'undressing the Nothing,' it came straight into my mind that 'she' looks like the woman with the long red hair (middle) from Klimt's painting the 'The three ages of woman' and I thought that it was sad that she is naked but she was calm. So I felt relieved for her and I thought that vulnerability is beautiful. The second stage of 'cutting' was the most difficult I really didn't want to do it. I wanted to stop immediately, but I kept listening and instead I tried to convice my self that it is not a body that I am cutting but a piece of cheese - weird right? This comes from my early childhood, when there was something distrurbing on television involving violence particularly with blood my dad would always encourage me to think of it as 'something' else e.g. the blood in films is not real they use kethcup. Funny enough, this is a strategy that I use even today when I watch TV and I avoid watching anyhthing that could be violent e.g. thrillers I simply can't, my stomach hurts. So when I recovered from my cheese platter visualisation it was the point that we had to strip the body apart I felt more comfotable doing the organs - I treated them as something really really valuable and moved them with caution on the one side of the room. The same with the bones but I did it faster like picking tree branches from a forest on a cold day. I felt very sad during this stage but calm I thought of my friend Craig who passed away a few months ago and I smiled. I felt that a big cloud of white smoke or dust has replaced the body on stage. 'They' were still there present, somehow ... and that felt good!
HYDERABAD UNIVERSITY – 2015
Participants A - Hyderabad
The experience of peeling off layers of another person was meditative, for the lack of a better word. At the end, I felt, very strangely, that if I were to literally do all that I was asked to, there would still be an aura or sense of a being at the space where the material being was, just like I could feel it with my eyes closed.
Thank you for this wonderful experience. It reinforces my idea of everyone carrying an energy out of the physical body and that does not die with physical disintegration.
Hope this helps !
Regards
Participants B
Lack of self.
Space openness – disappearing, illuminating.
Desire turning into repulsion.
Erotic turning deathinto… and …
Sameness of all – same body below men and women.
Beauty and ugly.
Participants C
I experience my memory, while I imagined.
I am also very aware of myself.
Participants D
I entered the session after it had already started. So as soon as I entered I saw the people in the room trying to concentrate on the video. I saw them all carrying blindfolds, but since I entered midway I didn’t have a blindfold. It took me a while to follow the instructions that were being relayed.
However, when the instructions were given out to close our eyes, I was a little unnerved. But I did close my eyes.
It then was instructed to visualize the person in front of us, which I was able to do easily as the person in front of me was already known to me.
Gradually the instructions got ?...? of visualizing skin and cutiing it and ripping it off the person – however all the while this was to be done with kindness. I could visualize for a while but then it became more and more difficult to concentrate. And I felt myself going blank in my thoughts toward the end.
New Delhi
Participants E
It was interesting to think that when nothing is left, what is left? Just like the body, layered, the brain too exists within layers which are beging attempted to unravel together. What matters? External/internal. How much would holding the bones of a hand mean in relation to holding a real, fully formed hand in skin and flesh. Though I just observed the process, I did try to imagine what the participant were going through.
Participants F
The piece is methodologically problematic because there is not acknowledgement of the effect of our knowing that we are being cut open and dismantled so:
When we contemplate ‘what is left’, are we also open?
Are we still ‘closed’?
Coming from a daoist tradition, cutting open the body seems redundant. I tried is but the pieces I ‘set down’ melded back up into the same of their body. The body uncloaked itself, morphing at its components as you spoke, into the density of the somatic field.
A central dense core that was part of the morphology of the world, a light thin and intense
Participants A - Hyderabad
The experience of peeling off layers of another person was meditative, for the lack of a better word. At the end, I felt, very strangely, that if I were to literally do all that I was asked to, there would still be an aura or sense of a being at the space where the material being was, just like I could feel it with my eyes closed.
Thank you for this wonderful experience. It reinforces my idea of everyone carrying an energy out of the physical body and that does not die with physical disintegration.
Hope this helps !
Regards
Participants B
Lack of self.
Space openness – disappearing, illuminating.
Desire turning into repulsion.
Erotic turning deathinto… and …
Sameness of all – same body below men and women.
Beauty and ugly.
Participants C
I experience my memory, while I imagined.
I am also very aware of myself.
Participants D
I entered the session after it had already started. So as soon as I entered I saw the people in the room trying to concentrate on the video. I saw them all carrying blindfolds, but since I entered midway I didn’t have a blindfold. It took me a while to follow the instructions that were being relayed.
However, when the instructions were given out to close our eyes, I was a little unnerved. But I did close my eyes.
It then was instructed to visualize the person in front of us, which I was able to do easily as the person in front of me was already known to me.
Gradually the instructions got ?...? of visualizing skin and cutiing it and ripping it off the person – however all the while this was to be done with kindness. I could visualize for a while but then it became more and more difficult to concentrate. And I felt myself going blank in my thoughts toward the end.
New Delhi
Participants E
It was interesting to think that when nothing is left, what is left? Just like the body, layered, the brain too exists within layers which are beging attempted to unravel together. What matters? External/internal. How much would holding the bones of a hand mean in relation to holding a real, fully formed hand in skin and flesh. Though I just observed the process, I did try to imagine what the participant were going through.
Participants F
The piece is methodologically problematic because there is not acknowledgement of the effect of our knowing that we are being cut open and dismantled so:
When we contemplate ‘what is left’, are we also open?
Are we still ‘closed’?
Coming from a daoist tradition, cutting open the body seems redundant. I tried is but the pieces I ‘set down’ melded back up into the same of their body. The body uncloaked itself, morphing at its components as you spoke, into the density of the somatic field.
A central dense core that was part of the morphology of the world, a light thin and intense
GREENWHICH UNIVERSITY – 2015
Participant A
We are more than our bodies / the restrictions of our body.
As when we strip back the skin, what we see visually is all the same + blood, organs and bones.
We are more than the restrictions of our bodies, But can we really be? Are we here to lonely express ourselves or are we limited to our bodies.
The song felt like a farewell song.
Silvia made me think about myself even though she was talking about herself.
Why am I not happy with my body and the outside of my body, but I am happy with the internal?
What can we do to make people see the internal over the external?
On a daily basis, how much of our behaviour is truly our internal self?
Participant B
I could not do it. I felt anxious, my heart was beating fast. Could not listen to you, it felt wrong. Face still attached, but I just saw bones.
The song was like the end sound track to a film you had ended, and I saw the credits go up the screen.
Sentence difficult to understand.
Participant C
Duality, what happen when there is no physical body in the space to imagine. Your mind, well my mind try to remain where it once was. I still see the body, not actually see, but my mind eye can still imagine where the body was before. What happens to the person when the body is removed? The person is more than just a body, the body has only boundaries. A place to enable us to explore ourselves, a vessel to help us explore more than just our bodies.
What does it mean to strip a person down, visually remove everything they are until there is just the absent body left. Only someone present for that can be aware of the absence of the physical left in the space.Our body, is just a ship, a home for our creativity to take flight. To enable us to create something material for us, to share or keep to ourselves. Hidden, just as one day, we all will be again lost, within a palimpsest of being.
Participant A
We are more than our bodies / the restrictions of our body.
As when we strip back the skin, what we see visually is all the same + blood, organs and bones.
We are more than the restrictions of our bodies, But can we really be? Are we here to lonely express ourselves or are we limited to our bodies.
The song felt like a farewell song.
Silvia made me think about myself even though she was talking about herself.
Why am I not happy with my body and the outside of my body, but I am happy with the internal?
What can we do to make people see the internal over the external?
On a daily basis, how much of our behaviour is truly our internal self?
Participant B
I could not do it. I felt anxious, my heart was beating fast. Could not listen to you, it felt wrong. Face still attached, but I just saw bones.
The song was like the end sound track to a film you had ended, and I saw the credits go up the screen.
Sentence difficult to understand.
Participant C
Duality, what happen when there is no physical body in the space to imagine. Your mind, well my mind try to remain where it once was. I still see the body, not actually see, but my mind eye can still imagine where the body was before. What happens to the person when the body is removed? The person is more than just a body, the body has only boundaries. A place to enable us to explore ourselves, a vessel to help us explore more than just our bodies.
What does it mean to strip a person down, visually remove everything they are until there is just the absent body left. Only someone present for that can be aware of the absence of the physical left in the space.Our body, is just a ship, a home for our creativity to take flight. To enable us to create something material for us, to share or keep to ourselves. Hidden, just as one day, we all will be again lost, within a palimpsest of being.
RHODES UNIVERSITY – 2015
Participant A
The exercise was difficult. I am very queamish so visualizing the surgical cuts was quite gruesome. It was very hard to remain focused until the muscles had been ‘removed’ and all that remained were bones.
Once everything was ‘placed aside’, my partner presence remained. Not just because he still stood in front of me, but because his being, his essence transcended the physical attributes (body)
Participant B
The skin is where the identity is contained. The muscles and blood is where life and movement is contained. The skeleton is where the mind lives, but without life or identity, it is cold or barren. When we take everything away, sound still remains. Energy remains.
It is this sound and energy that makes a person who they are. The way their energy originates in the skeleton/mind, finds life in the blood and bones, and reads through the skin, makes almost the totality of a person.
Last sentence not understandable …
Participant C
In my mind the person was more exposed when I undressed them compared to when I was surgically removing their skin.
The skeleton structure stood out more, … when I noticed their presence more.
They completely disappeared, I felt only their souls was left behind.
There is more to life than just flesh and bones. There is the soul as well. It needs to be nurtured, cared for and loved.
This was really weird.
Participant D
It was a very unusual experience and it became quite uncomfortable. I found myself breaking out of the exercise quite often because of this discomfort. I think it is an extremely different exercise in mindfulness to what I am used to, but I think it is an extremely effective way to encourage a letting go of the outside world. I think a better forewarning of the way in which the exercise will be lead is necessary as I do not think I was prepared for what came along.
Participant E
The experiment starts off quite awkwardly because you are told to undress your peer/colleague but after the undressing I think it is easier to commit to it.
I think in general the experiment is a lovely lesson about acknowledging one another presence, not only in a physical sense. I felt my partner still existed in the space even after I had left her in pile of bones in the centre of the room. Her energy was present in the space in front of me and this showed that she is more than the bone and flesh that I interact with on a daily basis.
Thank you for the experience.
Participant A
The exercise was difficult. I am very queamish so visualizing the surgical cuts was quite gruesome. It was very hard to remain focused until the muscles had been ‘removed’ and all that remained were bones.
Once everything was ‘placed aside’, my partner presence remained. Not just because he still stood in front of me, but because his being, his essence transcended the physical attributes (body)
Participant B
The skin is where the identity is contained. The muscles and blood is where life and movement is contained. The skeleton is where the mind lives, but without life or identity, it is cold or barren. When we take everything away, sound still remains. Energy remains.
It is this sound and energy that makes a person who they are. The way their energy originates in the skeleton/mind, finds life in the blood and bones, and reads through the skin, makes almost the totality of a person.
Last sentence not understandable …
Participant C
In my mind the person was more exposed when I undressed them compared to when I was surgically removing their skin.
The skeleton structure stood out more, … when I noticed their presence more.
They completely disappeared, I felt only their souls was left behind.
There is more to life than just flesh and bones. There is the soul as well. It needs to be nurtured, cared for and loved.
This was really weird.
Participant D
It was a very unusual experience and it became quite uncomfortable. I found myself breaking out of the exercise quite often because of this discomfort. I think it is an extremely different exercise in mindfulness to what I am used to, but I think it is an extremely effective way to encourage a letting go of the outside world. I think a better forewarning of the way in which the exercise will be lead is necessary as I do not think I was prepared for what came along.
Participant E
The experiment starts off quite awkwardly because you are told to undress your peer/colleague but after the undressing I think it is easier to commit to it.
I think in general the experiment is a lovely lesson about acknowledging one another presence, not only in a physical sense. I felt my partner still existed in the space even after I had left her in pile of bones in the centre of the room. Her energy was present in the space in front of me and this showed that she is more than the bone and flesh that I interact with on a daily basis.
Thank you for the experience.