SPIRITS READ FOUCAULT - TEXTS
In this section you can find all the different adaptations of the original script according to the three formats employed and the orders of spectatorship that emerge from each. It is in chronological order from the online presentation in 2019 to the previous ones in 2015.
In this section you can find all the different adaptations of the original script according to the three formats employed and the orders of spectatorship that emerge from each. It is in chronological order from the online presentation in 2019 to the previous ones in 2015.
ONLINE VERSION
The online version is written in three parts: the email / invitation; ACT I - the letter; and the script delivered in the video.
The email
Dear ….
This email is to invite you to an individual online vernissageof the work Spirits Read Foucault,a project that I started in 2015 and it is now at its final stage.
Spirits Read Foucaulthas been presented live in UK, experienced collectively through video recorded instructions in India and South Africa, and now, in this individual, digital/online form it will be part of the global system of interconnected computer networks.
You will need around 30 minutes to engage with the work.
Before starting you need something that can play the function of a blindfold. Once you have it, please follow this order of actions:
- Act One:open the attached document and read the letter;
- Act Two:open the Vimeo link https://vimeo.com/360090466 and enter the password AS1968 and when you are ready and comfortable play the video;
- Act Three:write something about your experience in the Vimeo comment box, feel free to write anything that emerges from the guided journey you went through.
Please do not share this video with anyone else. If you would like someone else to experience it, send me their email address and I will send them a personal invitation.
In the guided visualization there will be imaginary blood and cuttings, so if you do not feel this is not something you would like to engage with, please let me know. It is fine to say no.
To conclude, if you decide to participate, I wish you an insightful journey and looking forward to reading your feedback online.
Many thanks,
Silvia
The Letter
SPIRITS READ FOUCAULT - ACT ONE
Dear …,
In 2014 I had a dream or better a journey guided by Zoe Bran with whom I was training at that time. I had a dream of being dismembered. This experience disturbed me but also made me feel strangely anew.
Mircea Eliade argues in the seminal book Shamanism: Archaic techniques of Ecstasythat the experience of being dismembered is recorded in several shamanic traditions. For example, Siberian Tungus shamans experience visions of dismemberment in different forms when their bodies are cut and the blood drunk by evil spirits; the same is recorded among the Buryat, the Teleut and the Eskimo. The Eskimo ‘speak of an animal (…) that wounds the candidate, tears him to pieces or devour him’ (Eliade). There are recordings of similar experiences in the Tibetan Buddhist ritual Chöd, usually performed in solitude in cemeteries where the practitioner cultivates detachment when visualizing her/his body been dismembered and offered to wrathful deities and hungry demons to eat. Alexandra David-Neel in the book ‘Magic and Mystery in Tibet’ (1929) describes the beginning of the rite with these words:
the celebrant blows his bone trumpet, calling the hungry demons to the feast he intends to lay before them. He imagines that a feminine deity, which esoterically personifies his own will, springs from the top of his head and stands before him, sword in hand. With one stroke she cuts off the head of the [celebrant]. Then, while troops of ghouls crowd round for the feast, the goddess severes his limbs, skins him and rips open his belly. (David-Neel).
And there is more: Richard Noll tells of the initiatory vision of a Nganasan Samoyed shaman of Siberia, when ‘a “blacksmith” dismembered him and also changed his eye’ (Noll). Carl Gustave Jung relates visionary experiences of dismemberment to the process of individuation and as a practice aimed to dismantle self-attachment to a fixed sense of identity or to a specific form of self that we perceive as immutable (Jung).
To die and to be born anew must be one of the oldest ideas of the human psyche,culminations of existential journeys where the self is confronted not only with physical death but with the impermanence of all realities.
Spirits Read Foucault, consists in storytelling and guided visualization to reflect on death, on the meanings of our embodied lives, on what – if something – remains after death, and on the boundaries between the material and the spiritual. The narration will be the trigger and the rest will happen within your imaginary space.
I thank you very much for the time and the attention you will pay to the work and I look forward to reading of your experience.
Yours Sincerely, 01/11/2019
Silvia
The Script
This is a brutal and maybe disturbing story that you are going to be part of. Please before starting find a blindfold, do not use merely your hands, but look for something, a scarf or anything that can help you to keep your external sight restrained.
It might be a story that for some contributes to something, to their ideas of life and death, to their relationship to their embodied forms; for others it might not
I am not going to introduce myself, but I can tell you that this is a story about me… but also a story about you… or better it is a story about that something in between me and you… or… maybe about that something that is within all of us or maybe about that something that lies above and beyond all of us.
Who knows
I would like to start by inviting you to stand in front of this screen and look at the person there. Look attentively…
Their name is Nothing and this name is somehow relevant here in a way that is not necessarily interesting for you right now…. Bear with me…
Look at Nothing and explore with your sight their appearances, look at their main features: hair, eyes, their expression, their mouth, lips, the shape of the face, the size –small, tall, tiny, thin, large, big maybe. Look again at their clothes, the way they wear them.
Do you like them?
How do they look?
Do you like that person?
Do you find them attractive or maybe repulsive?
I invite you to close your eyes and start using your imagination and go deeper Imagine taking off slowly, one by one, all the clothing that Nothing is wearing. Start from the most superficial, visible ones – jumper if they are wearing it, their shoes, coat, jacket – and continue with the other layers by imagining what they are wearing underneath – stockings maybe?
Socks?
An under vest, a bra, who knows … and eventually take the underwear off.
Imagine them now standing naked in front of you. Picture all these details and keep observing your feelings.
How do you feel?
Any emotion there, any desire?
Any repulsion?
Are they different from before and why?
Keep looking and imagine the color of their skin, look at their legs, the hairy
triangle covering the vagina or decorating the penis; look at their belly; their breast; their chest; the nipples; how they react to cold; the neck. Go back to focus on the skin. Because the skin is important, but actually it might not be important at all. It is however their skin that separate their internal from the external, that define their shape, their color, the color of the skin that seems always so relevant. It is the skin that separate their internal from the internal of anyone else in their proximity, it is this skin that defines my boundaries, that defines the perimeters of my body and it is your skin that defines your boundaries, therefore the perimeters of your body. And it is the skin that attracts so much attention.
This is why I invite you to go deeper than this.
But how, you might wonder?
Through you imagination, I answer. Please wear the blindfold, scarf or whatever you have found and commit to keep it even though the journey will not be easy.
As you have your eyes closed, imagine to have a surgery knife. Take it, and imagine to make four cuts on the skin of the person you saw in the screen. Make one on the front, from the top of the head to the vagina or penis; the second on the back from the top of the head to the asshole; the third from the top of the head to the side of the right foot; and the fourth from the top of the head to the side of the left foot.
And eventually take off the skin from scalp to feet and… do it fast.
Visualize the blood coming out from the body and observe your feelings, your emotions and how your body reacts to these imaginary acts of cruelty and to all the blood that these generated.
How do you feel?
Any emotion there, any desire?
Any repulsion?
Am I different now from before and why?
And now let’s go deeper than this. Look through the darkness of your blindness and visualize what is left of Nothing, focus on the muscles and ligaments that you can identify. Start taking them off, one by one. Start with the surface muscles of the head and neck – take them off… the muscles of eyes socket, of the jaw and the muscles around the cervical vertebrae – take them off… move down and remove the superficial muscles of the back and the deeper layers of the back muscles, the intercostals muscles, the diaphragm; move to the abdominal muscles and remove them, move up and remove the muscles of the shoulders and front upper arms; the muscles of the scapula and triceps, of the front and back forearms and hands muscles. Remove the muscles of the pelvis, muscles of the front and back hips and thighs, the muscles of the front and back lower leg.
Now visualize Nothing again and feel… feel… and come back to them again.
Can you see what is left?
How do you feel?
Any emotion there, any desire left?
Any repulsion?
Are they different from before and why?
Let’s go deeper and remove all soft tissues left like veins and arteries, the organs one by one: the heart, the lungs, the brain, the glands, the nerves, the spinal cord, the stomach, the intestine, the pancreas, the liver, the kidneys, the bladder and so on.
Remove everything and put aside. Put everything together in a chosen space.
Visualize Nothing now, look at this skeleton standing in front of you.
Can you see it, can you recognize it?
Is it Nothing?
The Nothing you saw before closing your eyes and engaging with this brutal act of dismemberment, this skeleton left without the ability to see, touch or feel.
Is this actually the same person?
Let’s go deeper, dismantle it, take all the bones apart, one by one and put them all together in the chosen space.
And now through the darkness of your closed eyes, visualize Nothing again.
Where are they?
Are they that bunch of bones and flesh left in the corner of the room?
Focus on the space where they were standing, feel, feel the empty space, feel if anything is left, feel the absence, feel this thing that is not what it was.
Is there any sense of materiality left?
If not, what is left then?
I ask you again, what is left then?
Can we say that is a flavor?
Or maybe a sound, or a whisper? A smell?
Or maybe can it be a single, unique fixed note left vibrating through you into the universe?
Or could it be a breeze? A light wind passing by? A breathing.
You might feel something or you might not and that is fine. Just be there for whatever is there for you, personally, individually.
PARTICIPATIVE PERFORMANCE AND VIDEO SCREENING
In the participative performance the performer stands in front of the audience and deliver the text live – conventional spectatorship.
It was delivered to a large group of theologians and religious studies scholars in London, at the Faith and Civil Society Unit during the 2nd Annual Symposium Sacred and Secular: Faith and Formation at Goldsmith University; and to psychologists and psychiatrists involved in psychedelic studies and interested in the role of altered states of consciousness in therapeutic contexts during the 3rdInternational Conference on Psychedelic Studies, Greenwich University, London.
In the video screening version the performer is previously filmed and projected. In this case the relation is between the members of the audience, who stand in front of each other in pairs, and with the digital performer delivering the text – double condition of spectatorship.
It was delivered to the artists and scholars attending the IFTR conference at Hyderabad University, in India; and to the students of the Department of Drama in Rhodes University in South Africa studying mindfulness. Dr Anton Krueger used Spirits Read Foucault as model for teaching mindfulness.
The Script
This is a brutal and maybe disturbing story that I am going to share with you. It might be a story that for some contributes to today symposium, for others it might not and that is fine of course. It is a story about me, about you, about that something in between me and you, or maybe about that something that is within all of us or maybe about that something that lies above and beyond all of us. Who knows I might say.
I would like to start by inviting you to look at me, more attentively. Look at and explore with your sight my appearances, look my main features, my hair, my eyes, my expression, my mouth, my lips, the shape of my face, my size –small, tiny, thin maybe-, look again at my clothes, the way I wear them – do you like them? How do I look? Do you like me? Do you find me attractive or maybe repulsive?
I invite you now to start using your imagination to go deeper than this, now imagine taking off slowly, one by one, all my clothing. Start from the most superficial, visible ones – my jumper, my shoes, my dress- and continue with the other layers by imagining what I am wearing- stockings maybe? Socks? An under vest, a bra, and eventually the underwear. Imagine me now standing naked in front of you. Picture all these details and keep observing your feelings. How do you feel? Any emotion there, any desire? Any repulsion? Am I different from before and why?
Keep looking and imagine the color of my skin, look at my legs, my hairy
triangle, covering my vagina, look at my belly, my breast, my neck. Go back to focus on my skin, it is indeed my skin that separate my internal from the external, that define my shape, that separate my internal from your internal, it is this skin that defines my boundaries, that defines the perimeters of my body and it is your skin that defines your boundaries, therefore the perimeters of your body.
This is why I invite you now to go deeper than this. But how, you might wonder? Through you imagination, I answer. Please wear now the provided blindfolds and cover your eyes; if you do not have the provided blindfold, use a scarf and if you do not have a scarf, please close your eyes and commit to keep them closed.
As you have your eyes closed, imagine to have a surgery knife, take it and imagine to make four cuts on my skin one on the front, from the top of my head to my vagina, the second on the back from the top of my head to my asshole, the third from the top of my head to the side of my right foot, and the fourth from the top of my head to the side of my left foot. And eventually take off the skin from my scalp to my feet. Imagine the blood coming out from my body and observe your feelings, your emotions and how your body reacts to these imaginary acts of cruelty and to all the blood that these generated. How do you feel? Any emotion there, any desire? Any repulsion? Am I different now from before and why?
And now lets go deeper than this. Look through the darkness of your blindness and visualize what is left of me, focus on the muscles and ligaments that you can identify. Start taking them off, one by one. Start with the surface muscles of the head and neck, take them off; the muscles of eyes socket, of the jaw and the muscles around the cervical vertebrae, take them off; move down and remove the superficial muscles of the back and the deeper layers of the back muscles, the intercostals muscles, the diaphragm; move to the abdominal muscles and remove them, move up and remove the muscles of the shoulders and front upper arms; the muscles of the scapula and triceps, of the front and back forearms and hands muscles. Remove the muscles of the pelvis, muscles of the front and back hips and thighs, the muscles of the front and back lower leg.
Now visualize me and feel yourself, feel, and come back to me again. Can you see what is left? How do you feel? Any emotion there, any desire? Any repulsion? Am I different from before and why?
Lets go deeper and remove all soft tissues left like veins and arteries, the organs one by one, the heart, the lungs, the brain, the glands, the nerves, the spinal cord, the stomach, the intestine, the pancreas, the liver, the kidneys, the bladder and so on. Remove everything and put aside. Visualize me now, look at this skeleton standing in front of you, can you see it, can you recognize me? Is it me, this skeleton left without the ability to see, touch or feel. Is this actually me?
Lets go deeper, dismantle it, take all the bones apart, one by one and put them all together in the corner of the room where the rest is left.
And now through the darkness of your closed eys, visualize me again. Where am I? Am I that bunch of bones and flesh left in the corner of the room? Focus on the space where I was standing, feel, feel the empty space, feel if anything is left, feel my absence, feel this thing that is not what it was. Is there any sense of materiality left? If not, what is left then? I ask you again? What is left then? Can we say that is a flavor? Or maybe a sound, or a whisper? Or a smell? Or maybe it can be a single, unique fixed note left vibrating through you into the universe. Or it could be a breeze, can you breath me?
You might feel something or you might not and that is fine too. Just be there for whatever is there for you, personally, individually just for few moments stay where you are with the blindfolds on and pay attention until I will start talking again.
Keep your blindfolds on, please, as I am going to conclude this disturbing story with a brief sentence by Michael Foucault from his book Madness and Civilization. It is a sentence that moved me greatly and that has, somehow, something to do with this story and this symposium, I believe. However, I am not sure why. This is the sentence:
‘Madness is no longer the space of indecision through which it was possible to glimpse the original truth of the work of art, but the decision beyond which this truth ceases irrevocably and hangs forever over history’.
(Michael Foucault 1961. Madness and Civilization: a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, p. 287)
In the participative performance the performer stands in front of the audience and deliver the text live – conventional spectatorship.
It was delivered to a large group of theologians and religious studies scholars in London, at the Faith and Civil Society Unit during the 2nd Annual Symposium Sacred and Secular: Faith and Formation at Goldsmith University; and to psychologists and psychiatrists involved in psychedelic studies and interested in the role of altered states of consciousness in therapeutic contexts during the 3rdInternational Conference on Psychedelic Studies, Greenwich University, London.
In the video screening version the performer is previously filmed and projected. In this case the relation is between the members of the audience, who stand in front of each other in pairs, and with the digital performer delivering the text – double condition of spectatorship.
It was delivered to the artists and scholars attending the IFTR conference at Hyderabad University, in India; and to the students of the Department of Drama in Rhodes University in South Africa studying mindfulness. Dr Anton Krueger used Spirits Read Foucault as model for teaching mindfulness.
The Script
This is a brutal and maybe disturbing story that I am going to share with you. It might be a story that for some contributes to today symposium, for others it might not and that is fine of course. It is a story about me, about you, about that something in between me and you, or maybe about that something that is within all of us or maybe about that something that lies above and beyond all of us. Who knows I might say.
I would like to start by inviting you to look at me, more attentively. Look at and explore with your sight my appearances, look my main features, my hair, my eyes, my expression, my mouth, my lips, the shape of my face, my size –small, tiny, thin maybe-, look again at my clothes, the way I wear them – do you like them? How do I look? Do you like me? Do you find me attractive or maybe repulsive?
I invite you now to start using your imagination to go deeper than this, now imagine taking off slowly, one by one, all my clothing. Start from the most superficial, visible ones – my jumper, my shoes, my dress- and continue with the other layers by imagining what I am wearing- stockings maybe? Socks? An under vest, a bra, and eventually the underwear. Imagine me now standing naked in front of you. Picture all these details and keep observing your feelings. How do you feel? Any emotion there, any desire? Any repulsion? Am I different from before and why?
Keep looking and imagine the color of my skin, look at my legs, my hairy
triangle, covering my vagina, look at my belly, my breast, my neck. Go back to focus on my skin, it is indeed my skin that separate my internal from the external, that define my shape, that separate my internal from your internal, it is this skin that defines my boundaries, that defines the perimeters of my body and it is your skin that defines your boundaries, therefore the perimeters of your body.
This is why I invite you now to go deeper than this. But how, you might wonder? Through you imagination, I answer. Please wear now the provided blindfolds and cover your eyes; if you do not have the provided blindfold, use a scarf and if you do not have a scarf, please close your eyes and commit to keep them closed.
As you have your eyes closed, imagine to have a surgery knife, take it and imagine to make four cuts on my skin one on the front, from the top of my head to my vagina, the second on the back from the top of my head to my asshole, the third from the top of my head to the side of my right foot, and the fourth from the top of my head to the side of my left foot. And eventually take off the skin from my scalp to my feet. Imagine the blood coming out from my body and observe your feelings, your emotions and how your body reacts to these imaginary acts of cruelty and to all the blood that these generated. How do you feel? Any emotion there, any desire? Any repulsion? Am I different now from before and why?
And now lets go deeper than this. Look through the darkness of your blindness and visualize what is left of me, focus on the muscles and ligaments that you can identify. Start taking them off, one by one. Start with the surface muscles of the head and neck, take them off; the muscles of eyes socket, of the jaw and the muscles around the cervical vertebrae, take them off; move down and remove the superficial muscles of the back and the deeper layers of the back muscles, the intercostals muscles, the diaphragm; move to the abdominal muscles and remove them, move up and remove the muscles of the shoulders and front upper arms; the muscles of the scapula and triceps, of the front and back forearms and hands muscles. Remove the muscles of the pelvis, muscles of the front and back hips and thighs, the muscles of the front and back lower leg.
Now visualize me and feel yourself, feel, and come back to me again. Can you see what is left? How do you feel? Any emotion there, any desire? Any repulsion? Am I different from before and why?
Lets go deeper and remove all soft tissues left like veins and arteries, the organs one by one, the heart, the lungs, the brain, the glands, the nerves, the spinal cord, the stomach, the intestine, the pancreas, the liver, the kidneys, the bladder and so on. Remove everything and put aside. Visualize me now, look at this skeleton standing in front of you, can you see it, can you recognize me? Is it me, this skeleton left without the ability to see, touch or feel. Is this actually me?
Lets go deeper, dismantle it, take all the bones apart, one by one and put them all together in the corner of the room where the rest is left.
And now through the darkness of your closed eys, visualize me again. Where am I? Am I that bunch of bones and flesh left in the corner of the room? Focus on the space where I was standing, feel, feel the empty space, feel if anything is left, feel my absence, feel this thing that is not what it was. Is there any sense of materiality left? If not, what is left then? I ask you again? What is left then? Can we say that is a flavor? Or maybe a sound, or a whisper? Or a smell? Or maybe it can be a single, unique fixed note left vibrating through you into the universe. Or it could be a breeze, can you breath me?
You might feel something or you might not and that is fine too. Just be there for whatever is there for you, personally, individually just for few moments stay where you are with the blindfolds on and pay attention until I will start talking again.
Keep your blindfolds on, please, as I am going to conclude this disturbing story with a brief sentence by Michael Foucault from his book Madness and Civilization. It is a sentence that moved me greatly and that has, somehow, something to do with this story and this symposium, I believe. However, I am not sure why. This is the sentence:
‘Madness is no longer the space of indecision through which it was possible to glimpse the original truth of the work of art, but the decision beyond which this truth ceases irrevocably and hangs forever over history’.
(Michael Foucault 1961. Madness and Civilization: a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, p. 287)