This text is dedicated, with my whole heart, to mothers of newborns who were shot in the delivery rooms of the hospital in Kabul, some during childbirth... Some of the babies were next to their mothers when that happened and survived this attack. I dedicate this text to all the babies who have to move on on their own and moms whose love is eternal. And... to Europe that persistently rejects Afghan refugees and denies the war in Afganistan. In the month of May, when poppies bloom. This attack is known as Afgan maternity ward attack. 15/5/2020 I, the red flower with a dark core on a long slender stalk. Are you looking at me? I love sunny positions and I love the richness of darkness, I love rich and permeable soils. I love rich and permeable minds, sunny minds in the houses of light. Do you understand? I am persistent. I am a persistent weed in arable fields, by roadsides, along rails, amidst grains, I grow on all abandoned lands. Unlike many, I love my own abandonment; I am when you let me be. I am! I am bright red, flaming red, yellow and white, and as soon as I bloom and stand upright, I joyfully discard my petals. I don't need luxury. I cultivate more occult knowledge than decorating a pistil . I surrender my life to the fields by the third day. I am completely invisible. Completely. I swing my plant being with the wind next to the track, I love railway tracks, these are my lines of transition from plant to man. You are a man on the train of frenzied time, riding the points of ravaged time, insensitive to dreams and insensitive to plants. You are a man of plant oblivion. Three centuries ago, you named me Nocturnal Oblivion. You used to enter the gods at night, the lighthouses of abandoned lands. Dreaming was the main occupation, and all the nights in the dark core of my flower were illuminated by your eyes. Your eyes illuminated the paths of eternal time though which we traveled together from Sumer with the Babylonians, with Phoenicians to Egypt following the Assyrians, from India to Persia uttering loudly in exultant cries of Anatolia, with flowers in our hair, danced in Minoan culture, planted in Crete and surprised by Greek Eleusinian mysteriously across the Arab empires to Europe, inhaled in drunken Rome, blown away with a single puff of smoke all the way to China and Indochina, via silk and seed back and forth, through silk, now and everywhere, ancient and present, dormant awoken. A figure of a Minoan goddess, found at Knossos in Crete, from 1400-1100. BC Because of the three capsules of the poppy fruit, the species Papaverum somniferum, which are placed on her head like a crown, in historical interpretations she is better known as the goddess of the poppy. Closed eyes, raised arms and open body indicate a state of openness to insight or embodied seeing and being in the otherworldly. The Minoan culture from Crete moved to Greece and by cooperating with the plant culture embodied in poppy gave birth to as yet unpenetrated Eleusinian mysteries. The cult of Demeter is directly related to the knowledge of the worlds of Papaverum Somniferum, or as they called it: The Mother of the Gods. I was your plant of joy, hul gil you called me when you were Sumerians. For millennia, I am the one who cries for your otherworld, the weed and the goddess, red, the one made of clay who loves to live along the long-distance tracks. You extracted my sorrow, Lachryma papaveris. So thank you, human-like creatures, ignorant travelers, slaves of time and slaves of goods. While you were trading, there in Baghdad, I, sitting like an old man in a smoky tea room, secretly snuck into your pockets between sips of red tea.
Can you smell me? I was a weak old man, a commoner, with eyes crumpled between wrinkles, bright, watery eyes that could see far away. We drank tea lightly, together, taking turns, sitting on the ground talking about nothing; aratpa pal, poppy juice, would you like some? You agreed diplomatically, with a trader’s instinct because the exchange is good for business. I, an old man, took out a shisha, put in the embers and inhaled three times. The first time for myself, for I am the flower of flowers and the Mother of the Gods; the second time for your soul, for you are a man, a strange plant; and the third time for the cure of God himself, forsaken, scattered, God invisible. I am completely invisible, completely. We traveled to your times, demarcated by clock hands. The Iron Age of the old rage, the Bronze Time of the soft crime. There, 5,000 years before some Christ, we huddled together on a chilly Neolithic night by the fire in the hearth of a woman’s womb. I was a child of the gods conceived by a heart, you were the heart. Seen by your eyes, I was conceived by you. The womb was our house of light, the earthen roof over our heads, beneath which plants and people know and infuse into each other’s existence. You are, man, my fruit in a poppy capsule with numerous compartments filled with kidney-shaped seeds. Man, you are my fruit-child! I am the Mother of the Gods! Can you hear me? Don't be a stumblebum! Remember! The night is always immense enough to be starry, spacious enough for nocturnal oblivion. It is sprinkled with poppies along the road, and all your historical memories in timelessness are like opium: meconium. History laden with violence, harnessed like horses, running after itself, grace streaming from the eyes of horses left between maces and swords, gunpowder and spears, the smell of blood and the taste of alienated life. Hundreds of thousands of faces and hundreds of thousands of faces and hundreds of thousands of faces soaked in morphine gauze in collective pain of a bright red color that does not abate. A child of God and a child of God and a child of God were born in Kabul in 2020 after some Christ, at the time of some Allah in the middle of collective madness of God’s oblivion, they shot mother and mother and mother in the maternity ward as soon as the child and child and child came out of the womb. A warm, red, safe womb. Guts full of love and life fluids, floating and close, calm, soporific, maternal, human, earthy, beloved, red, fertile. Can you hear me my child, my dear, mother's gold, I am here in timelessness, I love you in timelessness; love is not demarcated by a clock hand, it is not alienated by place, it is not abolished by violence, love is immeasurable, growing like a vast starry sky from which I see you, I always see you, and I always look at you and always listen to you, my heart, can you hear me ... and in the cradle of a baby left alone crying the bitter tears of a newly created life that is recognizing itself through liquid. I am the red flower, your mother, your extracted sorrow, abducted, unconscious and anesthetized. I am the fruit, the baby rattle, the musical cocoon of the innocence of a child's being, a newborn being, and a plant-human being being born again and again, with each late spring. I am the Mother of the Gods and I am patiently waiting for your springs to arrive! Out of love for you I live like a poppy, everywhere, bright red. I am a plant because I cannot tolerate human pain, so I alleviate it with bottles of morphine and sedatives. I give myself for your calm, I give peace to the history of tissue. I stream peace into the core of the collective madness of God’s oblivion and sow the seeds in the fertile amnesia of humanity. Behind the curtain of amnesia we are allowed to meet, the mother of humanity and the child of humanity, love and beloved. How one loves is unchanged since ancient times. And in this culture love is love in this culture is love in this and in this and in that culture love is love. And in this culture pain is pain in this culture is the pain in this and in this and in this culture pain is pain. Management skills of Lachrymae papaveris, poppy tears full of fields all over Afghanistan. I, the red flower with a dark core on a long slender stalk thrive in a torn country, I the Afghan curse am the Afghan treasure that covers 85% of the world’s opium production. My milk, my tears, opium extract (extractum opii), herbal wine (vinum opii), opium pollen (pulvis opii), opium syrup (sirupus opii) ... A litre of my tears in Afghanistan will give you 800 US gold coins, will arrive on the railway tracks from which I will wave to you, so that on the streets of Europe the tear becomes a jewel turned into a heroine, the heroine of Western modernity of 16,000 American gold coins. The heroine will caress you as long as she wants, and when the time comes, her Greek capricious divine nature will suck you up. Because of the heroine, human gods fell one by one head over heels in love, with no added religious opiates, equipped only with the modern pain of absence in the world garden of addiction. Just so it doesn't hurt. Just so it doesn't hurt! Just so it doesn't hurt!!! I, Papaver Somniferum, praiseworthy, laudanum, the cure of God himself, God for God. Me, Papaver Somniferum, Paracelsus himself, lesser known as Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, brought from his journey through Asia as a treasure of immortality, along with lemon juice and the essence of gold. I, Papaver Somniferum, am consumed frequently by all historical and contemporary addicts like lemonade, chasing its essence of gold, its house of light, its wealth of darkness. I am an analgesic of history! The Crusaders loved me so much that the Chinese associated Christianity with opium. I pulled the dervish by the arm as he spun in love rapture of unattainable perfection. I rocked the ships of French sailors returning from colonized Indochina. I gave Greece a cradle full of plant weeping that built Europe. I died with the gods in Egyptian tombs. I blew up Babylon. I took over Tasmania, rushed to China. The British were so in love with me that they fought the Opium Wars with the Chinese. Because of me there are still wars, drug bosses and Europe are looking forward to every new shipment of tears of my Afghan herbal wine that flows very welcomed through the European streets intravenously side by side with unwelcomed Afghan defectors because there is no war there, because mother is mother is mother is mother is already - dead . Are you looking at me? Do you understand? Can you smell me? I am completely invisible. Completely. My human pain is alleviated by my plant expand. I am, in the end, just a flower that loves sunny positions, rich and permeable soils. I discard my petals joyfully, I am a hul gil, a plant of joy, I love abandoned lands, and empty stone houses. I don't need luxury. I cultivate more occult knowledge than decorating a pistil. My pollen is blue. Are you sleepy? My pollen blue is abundantly visited by bees. During the day they enter the gods, the light houses of abandoned lands. Together we buzz the Eleusinian mysteries, the paths illuminated in the dark core of my flower, quietly, in bumblebee bass. Remember! The Poppy Mother is part of series of Herbal Writings (see: Biljno Pisanje), the first one translated in English.
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you gotta love what you do is an example of
Soundscape Narratology. Text & narration: Iva Korbar Sound: Hilal Gergin Video mastered by: Hilal Gergin Click HERE for the recording of Soundscape narratology you gotta love what you do ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ ° ~ you gotta love what you do and that what you do has to love you back for, love nourishes and helps growing. love gives and heals and gives strength. if you love what you do, you nourish that what you do, you water it with the best parts of yourself that is why, to that what you give yourself in, should nourish you back, should mirror your love, to what you give your water to should be a lake that mirrors your love that what you do is surroundings where you work, where you invest your time and give your energy to that what you do are people with whom you work with, those people should mirror your love that what you have done with love should be witnessed with acknowledgment and appreciation then you know you are at the right spot for you, for, all that what you have done comes back to you being successful is to love what you do and to shower in waves that return to you from your love that means to be connected to your love, it is like waves watering the shore, your love is given to the sea and the sea always returns to you as a wave and with the waves. this is the nature of the sea, because the sea cannot move any other way, the sea cannot hold back or restrain, this is not the sea. the sea waters you back, loves you, responds to you, cherish you, cleanse you. the sea celebrates your friendship, it celebrates who you are. the sea sees you. with the sea you float, within the sea you oppose the gravity of life you are normally exposed to, the sea helps you carry your weight and gives you opportunities to find yourself in different positions than you're usually used to. Sea loves you. Love loves you and your only responsibility is to swim. you gotta love what you do and that what you do has to love you back you gotta love where you are and there where you are has to love you back if not, you will lose strength, your waters will flow to the dams for someone else's interest, and someone else's needs, the best parts of yourself, your rivers and lakes will dry out, your surroundings won't nourish you back, and you will find yourself eventually standing weak in the empty river bed, drained out, empty, disoriented, nervous, guilty, lost, sad, bad, mad, dead. you gotta love what you do and that what you do has to love you back because the rivers have to run free, because the waters cannot burn out the way you did when you stopped swimming in the source of your resource, when you forgot the sea. The rivers flow to the sea. Learn to be a river that sees the sea. See the sea! you have to see the horizon and keep the horizon clean. always make sure you see the real horizon. you have to love the real horizon and witness it with acknowledgment and appreciation. then you know you are at the right spot for you, for, all that what you have done comes back to you. Photo taken in Hyde Park, Sidney during Invasion Day Rally on Jan 26th 2020 Full text in PDF available here. Abstract This text was written as a response to non-Australian mainstream media articles around Australian bushfires 2019-2020, as well as a reaction to the same topic presented via numerous posts at social media and newspaper articles all around the globe. During my travel through Australia in January and February 2020 it emerged that there is a need for this text, as I was faced with the fact that there is a lack of authentic information and a lack of wider critical interpretation. This is tightly linked to this issue and other burning issues connected to the situation surrounding the fires raging in Australia and this is why people who are not from Australia get an entirely different idea about this. On my journey, I was step by step coming across more and more painful background reasons for catastrophic bushfires by learning about the features of Australian landscape, the untold agricultural history of Australia’s First Nations Peoples and political implications of this, originating from the issue of land rights. I found that global climate change is only a partial cause of Australian bushfires 2019-2020, and that it is rather a trigger for other primary causes than a root cause itself. Therefore, the goal of this text is to bring new arguments into the discussion, to find possible solutions that would enable these arguments to meet in a new constellation, in a reshaped discourse. The text is describing the tight, and to non-Australians mostly unknown connection between fire and the Australian ground by explaining the features of the landscape, the soil and plants, as well as the erased Aboriginal practices of maintaining the land. It speaks about the lost Aboriginal land and how Aboriginal fire management is of a crucial importance for wildfires in Australia. This is done here by counterpoising the two fundamentally different worldviews that meet in Australia since European settlers arrived there. The text examines palpable historical and contemporary consequences of colonial times on creating a fertile ground for the hazardous bushfires. Instead of a conclusion, the text ends with a conversation about the Aboriginal fire management, unknown to the rest of the world and yet extremely precious and interesting, called cultural burning deriving from ten-thousand-year-old Aboriginal practices. The complexity of cultural burning is met here in a practical and a metaphysical sense, through its huge potential in the prevention of new devastating fires in Australia and a potential for creating sustainable communities that are able to co-create with the Earth. Full text in PDF available here.
Najbliže što sam došla do onamo bilo je prije nekoliko godina kada je o moj prozor sletio crvendać. Napisala sam: Jutros je sletio crvendać. Imala sam osjećaj da me priziva. Prizemljili smo se oblom bezpilotnom letjelicom. Spuštali smo se po mjesečevoj liniji koja vodi u dolinu kamene formacije. Putovali smo 360 orbitnih minuta što iznosi 4 zemaljska dana. Sletjeli smo u ranu zemaljsku zoru ljubičastog nebeskog svoda. Bukteća žuta sunčeva svjetlost probijala se ispod ljubičaste kape primičući se prema nama, zaokruživši pustinjske hrastove nestala je kao naša letjelica, pretočila se u plavo rasplamsano plavetnilo ranojutarnjeg svoda. To smo mi. Pojavljujemo se u atmosferi kao blješteće bijela kapsula. Snimak prvi Snimak drugi Snimak treći, konačno nadvisujemo klanac Svima su nam srca kucala ubrzano, koliko zbog nagle promjene tlaka ulaskom u Zemljinu atmosferu, toliko zbog susretanja s tim velikim bićem prema kojemu smo letjeli. Ultrasoničnim ultracrvenim zrakama uočili smo ga najprije u našoj vanzemaljskoj noći s novo ugrađenim zemaljskim očima. Bili smo u kozmičkoj tami, noći toliko gustoj u kojoj svemir više ne nalikuje na sebe, a ne nalikuje ni na drugoga. Jer između drugoga i sebe strma je i gorovita mjesečeva linija po kojoj valja znati balansirati, kalibrirati uređaje svog strmovitog spusta. Voljeti treba znati u klancu crvenog razgovijetnog kamenog bića, letjeti posred tanke linije nebeskog svoda i crvenog stjenovitog puta. Put će te često odbaciti onamo otkuda si stigao, iz guste komično kozmičke tame gdje ne nalikuješ ni na sebe niti na drugoga. Prikaz drugi: Spuštanje niz gorovitu mjesečevu liniju. *kalibriraš uređaj *trebaš prijeći naizgled sitan greben, oprezno, ovdje si *koordinate provjerene, preskok *Pogreška! Crveno biće odbacilo te nazad na nebo u beztežinsko stanje u kojem kapsula mora rekalibrirati svoj položaj. U trenutku izbačaja većina kozmonauta pođe izvan sebe, a samo što se događa jest da se nanovo odlazi van Zemljine orbite, daleko od pustinje u vakuumskom galaktičnom prostranstvu van Zemlje. Treba pilagoditi narav vanzemaljsku, usputnom čuđenju običnog jutarnjeg preskoka. Jutarnji preskok. U kamenom crvenom biću stijena je kao more, uzdignuta iznad crvene pučine. Ovdje leže školjke i sjećanje na školjke. Ovo jest bilo more. A crvenom je stjenovitom biću svejedno je li nešto jest ili je bilo, njemu su vremena izjednačena u dubini pustinjskog mora, isto je biti sad ili biti prije, na tlu pijeskom zakopanog mora vrijeme teče u prostor, stvarajući deltu kojom ćemo mi provesti ovu letjelicu. Estuarij putovanja. U Estuariju živjela su bića za neke magična, za nas, na našem putu, samo sporadična. Ta su bića malena stupanjem o morsko pustinjsko tlo stvarala sitna rumena zrnca. Prekrila su većinu tijela crvenog kamenitog bića i ostavila mu samo ramena i uvučenu mu glavu da vire iz milijardi zrnaca, pomno poslaganih jedne o druge, usitnjenih neprestanim stupanjem sitnih koračića malenih bića s dna pustinjskog oceana. Dno pustinjskog oceana. Izdizanje vala. Prelamanje vala. Nastanak pješčane kape. Preletjeli smo iznad vala, odgurnuli se od stijene, u stijeni ostavili rupu odskakivanjem. Tkivo te stijene mekano je poput pudinga napravljenog od kakaovca. Nama se, u našoj kozmično-komičnoj svijesti, u kozmično-komičnom protjecanju vremena, činilo da je od našeg preskoka prošlo svega nekoliko minuta. Prošle su miljarde godina. Nismo ni stigli zapaziti sve bilje koje se razvilo u među-vremenu. Bilje među-vremena. Izašla sam na za mene novonastalo pješčano tlo. Crveno! Postala kozmonautički kauboj. Barem su tako vikali za mnom: Hey, you, space cowboy! Snimali su me. Kako neugodno, potrčala sam, pobjegla sam im, ganjale su me njihove sjene. Do svog slijetanja slušala sam o ljudskoj vrsti, o njihovoj nedavnoj tehnološkoj uznapredovalosti i njihovoj esencijalnoj nazadnosti. Kako im esencija bića ne prati razvoj aparature kojom mjere svijet. Ti ljudi, taj čovjek, taj ljud kamo god da prođe mjeri svoje bivanje. Svijet stvara mjerometrom, ne gradi svjetonazor, već posjeduje svjetomjer. Taj čovjek, taj ljud, ponajviše posjeduje. Kad ga se upita što radi, ljud odgovara posvojnošću. Ljud smatra da posjeduje veliko crveno kamenito biće! Otkako smo sletjeli na Zemlju, savladali smo mnoge fenomene, uz rizik ponovnih odbačaja u galaktičko prostranstvo. Mi, kapsularno galaktičko izaslanstvo, sabrali smo sve podatke ljudskih pripadnosti, unijeli ih u prostorne koordinate. Sve osim posjedovanja. Taj nam je fenomen uvelike stran, toliko nepojmljiv da igle naših kompasa divljaju usred datih koordinata. Naš sustav kapsularne ravnoteže tada izlistava koordinate Mjeseca i izjednačava nas s tom eliptičnom neznalicom. Ali naše je ruho pustinjsko, velebno, neizračunato; naša srca su crveno pješčana, glasna i jekovita. Naš fijuk je onaj crnog orla u pješčanom rumenilu, koji hvata malog skočimiša sakrivenog u duplji kamene tvorevine. Naše je gledanje u svijet termitnjačko, katedralno, isprepleteno, svepovezano, longitudinalno, magnetsko, oponašajuće prekriveno hodom slatkih insekata unutar erodirajućeg tla. Ne pitajte nas tko jesmo ni otkuda stižemo mi smo ptice pjevice nepripadnosti, mi smo lovci na sladostrasje, mi smo nigdje, mi smo svemirski kradljivci ljudske uznemoglosti, mi se pojavljujemo u užeglom danu punom muha, mi smo jato, mi smo čopor, mi smo prodor u bliskost Zemljinog ljubavnika, zemljane ljubavnice, mi smo smrt glupe misli, taoci pustinjskih vještaka, totemske ljepote unutar samog središta ništavila; mi pjevamo, skladamo tvoj suton dok ti izmičeš s praskozorjem, nov, nov, trenutan, neuhvatljiv, glasno životan, oprostiv, duboko u sebi oprostiv za sve što nisi ti, i nismo mi, i nije život, ulegnut u pamučno gnijezdo tvog kamenitog doma! Ti, koji si tu sve, utisnut u lice stijene, ugledan izdaleka, iz bolnog daleka, oplakan naricaljkom pustinjske žene koja je bosa i nikad žedna, koja sanja, a nikad ne sniva, koja vidi i tebe i mene, i vidi sav naš zbor izmiještenih glasova, vidi zbir zemaljske boli, esencijalne, geološke, unutarnje, geomorfološke, nošene, izdužene, nanošene, transgeneracijski prenesene slojeve pijeska nestalih ljudi; ljudi izvornih mjesta, ljudi izvornih jezika, ljudi izvornih shvaćanja i izvornih kretanja ispisanih linijom stjenovitog rukopisa u mom kapsularnom čovječjem nazoru, u jednom trenu, samo tom jednom, dok ja jesam ta koja jesam, ta koja tu sam sve. Hey, you space cowboy, I'm talking to you. Hey, you space cowboy, I'm talking to you. Meni govoriš? Tebi govorim. Moraš hodati ovako. Kako? Ovako. Ovako? Nebaš tako. Ovako? Više tako. Tako? Tako. San po povratku, 17.2.2020. San po povratku, 17.2.2020. Hodam u skupini malih bezvremenih djevojčica, u Australiji smo, u crvenoj pustinji, nebo je izrazito svijetlo. Djevočicama ne vidim lica, vidim im bijele koprenaste halje i čujem jasne, zvonke, zaigrane glasove. Glasovi su prepuni radosti. Koračamo gotovo lebdećim koracima. Bezvremene djevojčice, a tako ih nazivam jer ne pripadaju nijednom vremenu ili kulturalnoj datosti, me vode do Ulurua i pri tom me uče kako se trebam kretati kroz prostor da bi mi taj put uvijek bio prohodan. Pokazuju mi kako da držim ruke, kako da podižem noge, kako da polegnem stopala o tlo. Tek poslije sna shvaćam da me djevojčice uče hodati u promijenjenim uvjetima atmosferskog tlaka, u nekim drugim fizikalnim zakonitostima od onih u kojima se znam kretati. Osim pokazanih pokreta koji su toliko lagani da su skoro šaljivi, cijelo je naše kretanje kroz pustinju i put prema Uluruu popraćen dječjim, zračnim, skoro prozirnim osjećajem sreće u nama, između nas, u zraku, u prostoru, u pijesku i podno fantastično lijepe kamenite obgrljujuće crvene pojavnosti Ulurua. Ostavljam svoje svemirski istrošene sandale, neophodni klošarski dio hodačke opreme.
Da su pripadne crvenilu, jesu. Da su dostojne sveobuhvatne topline ljubavi crvenog pješčanog tla. Creating theatre in nature is a super simple action. It only puts higher demands on you as a storyteller, actor, choreographer, and last but not the least, as a human being. You as a human being are part of a particular worldview created and carried out by the civilization you belong to. You are an intrinsic part of your civilization as well as you are an intrinsic part of nature. Your view and an idea of what nature is, is culturally determined, and there is almost no way out of that linguistic riddle. Luckily human comprehension is not only or even primarily based on language, so that is helpful when trying to escape the big language determinism. What is nature, well, pretty most everything that hasn’t been produced as a result of a human action. But, if we are creatures of Mother Earth the same way as insects and birds which create their nests and architecture, as well as we do; what is more natural, a cottage house, or a house made of clay or termite mounds and bee hives? Basically the only thing that separates us from that what we tend to name as “creatures of nature” is our perception, again rooted in particular civilization worldviews. In my work everything comes down to perception and capabilities of perceiving. The Theatre of Inconceivable wants to be theatrical in the Inconceivable because many of the given cultural presumptions I have found unconvincing. Those presumptions are trying to keep me controlled via language and put pressure on my sheer freedom of expression, the form I am going to use to represent myself. My authenticity is here for no other reason apart from to be. These artificial cultural presumptions create social pain in me and around me. Here I would love that it is noticed how I am using the personal form of writing in this text and I am doing it on purpose so that the written abundance of personal pronouns can indicate that I am the one who is responsible for the language I am going to create here and how searching a concept in performing arts is a topic of existential issue. I, a human being and a creature of nature has decided quite some time ago that I will, during this lifetime, be able to overcome the societal, artistic and cultural presumptions, committing myself to something which for me is, existentially and via my cultural affiliation, inconceivable. I promised myself to be piercing through my perception capabilities in order to perform above or behind or sub something I believe that keeps me in a societal context and expectation. On that road on which I have been,carrying even a painful passion for going beyond the frame of collective perception, I was launched like a racket into multidimensional existence that is in Western civilization, still defined as imagination, therefore, neglected, ignored, mocked and worst of all – spiritualized. I was thinking, it is good that our existence is multidimensional in a core, because it is good for business! Spiritual business and spiritual ego, the GigaMegaTerraEgo. The closest this civilization has come to understanding the multidimensional existence is via collective craving found in people that has been translated into religions, all kinds of addictions (especially the hard drugs addiction) and naming the whole multidimensional phenomena as “spiritual”, rather than naming it a sheer reality. What a pity for a reality! Reality doesn’t sell well, whereas mystery and spirituality does. Naming some other existences spiritual automatically separated our material existence from the non-material which is, then – spiritual. Since Western culture worldview is materialistically based worldview, the non-material existence is already secondary, either non-existent or suspicious. Theatre of Inconceivable, Ti is interested for multidimensional existence, and operates there, but is not spiritual. At least not in a sense that was mentioned in the previous paragraph. Ti is very interested in matter and everything that stirs the matter. As a matter of fact, Ti is dying of curiosity how matter is shaped at all and then noticeable to anyone. Ti is dying of curiosity to find out what you can do at all those levels before the matter is shaped and once it is shaped how the hack to perform with it. So, before the curiosity finally kills the Ti, it is a pure pleasure to be getting to know how one can play in nature, with that nature, within nature, knowing that the actor and creator is that same nature you play with. And there you go, you have your first perception shift done, cleared from spiritual trap, the trap of separation of humans from spirit. The practice that I have been developing within the Theatre of Inconceivable relies on a heightened state of awareness. If we choose not to be taking things and terms for granted, the first question that arises is: what has been heightened here and what does it consider? Every daily capacity of awareness is individual, presenting the first step in perception. Heightened stands here for any kind of state a person is capable of achieving that is broader, more awake, more fresh and more spontaneously interactive than the state of being we have and use to function in our everyday surroundings. The second step around the term heightened and creating in nature considers being in a state of mind that enables detecting phenomena in nature (trees, rocks, flora and fauna, water etc.) as present and alert as you are. Therefore it is highly practical to be alert, for more awake you are, the more visible you are for the world of nature. There we go, I am changing discourse now consciously. Yes, because being present in this theatre stands for being capable of grasping the world of nature as intrinsically vivid, alive, communicative, conscious and above all, joyful. We all are interconnected by the power of elan vitae which is in its essence joyful. This is my direct experience achieved not only by being quite a joyful mere mortal, but by years of extreme and committed work on consciousness and grasping my (spiritual) existence. I say, life is equivalent to joy. Joy is equivalent of life. That’s why the third step of heightened necessary for creating an interactive theatre in nature is the landscape. Interactive stands here for the actor among other actorS (this one is pluralia tantum). The landscape exists as pluralia tantum, as plural, a multiexistent, multiplural and/or multidimensional. Where plural here is not the typical multitude; the one, two, three, four, five multitude, the multitude where all those singulars (one, two, three, four, five) are separated from one another. The plural of a landscape is indeed pluralia tantum, only – multitude without separation, existing multidimensionally and as one. Heightened awareness therefore includes coping with such a worldview and creating in it. Being analytical as I am here, this case goes even further: if I am a creature of nature, and I place myself in the landscape to create some playful act – I become part of that landscape and I am actually the pluralia tantum too, I am the landscape and I am the other actorS; I just have to figure out how to tangle with each new landscape I meet, with each new me. Important approach lies behind questions: what is this landscape, what does it stands for, within what does it stand, what does it want to communicate, and what am I here, what I am doing here at all, what do I communicate, what am I capable of – with a precondition settled in the vain premise that I know who I am, at least for a second… This brassy knowledge of who I am is as well a precondition for performing in nature, but before this text becomes to suspicious and pretentious, I leave this who am I precondition open, like a driving license, it is good for the job if you have it, but you can survive here without it. Ps. I don’t own a driving license. Yet! When it comes to the body, yes, the heightened awareness considers bodily readiness, which means, the more you practice your body-mind practice you will be more agile and more ready, like in sports, your body-mind connections will be more developed, your synapses more visited and your joints more oily. You will be more alert; you will catch the rabbit even elegant sometimes. Still, training the body doesn’t mean anything if the actor is not capable grasping the multitude and to perform within. Then this is just theatre sports. I mentioned earlier in the text how human comprehension is not only or even primarily based on language. Human comprehension comes out of having energy, understanding energy dynamics, and manipulating the energy the same way we use the words to shape an utterance. Our energy centers that are communication centers, and that are perception centers take part in that process. Those energy centers are our own little power plants which represent our comprehension systems. They work, produce, shape, and transform energy into qualities needed for us. There is so much talk (read discourses) about societal norms that create belief systems which manipulate our comprehension. The whole contemporary theories in arts are about discourses, and everything, again stays in and whirls around the language. Boom boom boom, the language doom! Art theories are so afraid to assume that our all-encompassing comprehension of reality and systems we create within it and live upon is based on our energetic potential to grasp something. The amount of energy that someone has and the quality of that energy shall or shall not succeed in conveying a message, in giving a story a certain quality, in shaping a discourse, in elaborating yet undistinguished phenomena. The energy will do the work, not the language! The materialism of western culture is so rigid and deeply interlaced that even art theories that criticize the social structures upside down and inside out avoid lurking into multidimensionality of life and notion that our perception powers are transformed aspect of our energetic powers. Energy and perception are cooked in the same bucket. Comprehension and language shaping and then the worldview resulting as a work of language are a product of our diligent energetic centers that unconditionally work for us, no matter if we are mere morons with destructive intentions or if we are very intelligent goodhearted individuals that work for the humanity. Power plants serve anyone! In order to keep the personal power plants working smoothly… Nowadays a plenitude of exercises on how to bring ourselves into alert state of functioning exists. The 20st century contemporary theatre practices as well as martial arts have nourished us with a rich archive of knowledge and practical know-how in widening our own personal package of steadiness for existence: our bodily, mind, emotional and energetic capabilities. Here I wouldn’t like to get myself into philosophies on what body is or how the body-mind connections establish because they have been elaborated widely in contemporary theatre practices and in critical theories in arts and theatrology as well as among explanations within trainings in martial arts or recent literature that appeared around the term mindfulness. I have entered physical theatre practice learning and practicing the Grotowski training for actor. I was overwhelmed by this technique and to exhaust myself in order to shift my consciousness and behaviour gave me a catharsis and pleasure. A state of light trans makes one more alert and keeps the power plants in shape. My experience is that one can have truly profound experiences and when practicing the Grotowski training, maybe the best technic to encounter another living being without social masks, automatized body gestures, or anxiety, vanity and stupidity that has incorporated in the flesh while growing up. It is very risky to be working conceptually in the multitude, because you end up again easily in another misconception of everything you can offer. To exhaust the mind via body movements that provoke the energetic and societal points in the body and that cleanse the body from painful societal robotization and neural toxins, is a blessing. To exhaust the mind of the participants of your workshop and to do it via body as Grotowski proposed it is extremely handy because one should be a hard knacker or in a superb body condition to avoid the transfer which happens once mind has finally been exhausted. When you are sweating and hardly stand on your feet and have to perform and communicate, it is rarely that one will slip through and pretend to be something. When you’re hardly standing on your feet during such an exercise, in order to go on, you have no other option but to abolish that part of your mind that is telling you that you will collapse. During the exercise you abolish regions of your mind one by one and luckily free yourself from it during the training by entering a state of trans – the highly alert and heightened state of functioning in comparison to your daily habit of communicating. I have been practicing the Grotowski training for the actor for 3,5 years, either in a group or alone. In the same period, I was working with sound playing musical and sound-therapeutic instruments as gongs and Tibetan singing bowls which triggered my perception of surrounding space. I experienced how the space and air bends and flows in many directions like water. While listening to gongs and being exposed to the strong vibrations of it, I could feel the Chi holding my hands in upright position without any muscular effort, without sweating or physical exhaustion I could bend my body in positions that were usually physically demanding to me. These were the years when I for the first time felt energy consciously and learnt to communicate by using energy and the years of intense psycho-energetic cleansing, striving and healing. Somewhere along the way, more accurately 2014 Marko Pogačnik’s work in Geomancy entered my life. In the moment of writing I am still most influenced by his practice and the tools to understand the Earth and earthly cosmos that I have received working with him. Meeting Marko came in the prime time, for I was already practicing my physical theatre in parks and mountains, but not yet performing in nature. It came to me, naturally, to choose my rehearsal space as my performing space, it simply offered itself. By then I have already experienced embracing the vibrational impulses that I would receive from particular forests and landscapes. It all started that way that I was simply playing with forests comparable as I did during the gong baths, letting my body (hands primarily) to adopt a shape and movement that was streaming to me out of that landscape. That was a pure energetic work, an energetic shape adoption taken from diverse locations and experiencing them and learning by doing what I could do with them. Most clear experience of it I had in front of semi-dried (thirsty) dwarflike forest in the mountain Velebit in Croatia during my hikes. I have already been practicing such a game (which is today one of the exercises that I tend to use in Realms workshop) with landscapes when I started doing geomancy with Marko. That is why it was much easier to get in touch with landscapes, to communicate with them, to be receptive, to understand what is going on. That same year 2014 I created a movement frame for my first site-specific one-act play On the Lake. Initially I created my movements using my physical theatre tools, but they spontaneously changed and shaped into a story that started to wind along with the lake and me being and playing daily next to it. The relationship was established between that specific lake in Zagreb and me, and it was then when I started to play that relationship, rather than arriving at the site-specific location and imposing my story upon it. The movements I develop for my site-specific shows are not a coincidence, I search for them, I clean them and try to make them as clear and as communicative as possible. Meaning, it takes a lot of practice. Although I always leave space for improvised movements to appear during the show. When playing outside, that is sometimes the only way to play from already determined sequence to another familiar movement sequence. Those well-coordinated sequences serve as notation, la partitura for aligning to the realms we are interested in. Don’t impose, repose! The whole process starts with an individual being present in the body, and alert within oneself. Being alert is a basic precondition for creating a theatrical event in the landscape with a preceding wish and intention of communicating and co-creating with that same landscape. Firstly, I arrive somewhere. That somewhere becomes my now. I observe, I absorb, I wait, I give in. I try to give in. I receive. I try to receive. It’s not always easy. We all have our mental preconceptions that are necessary for living in collective realities; we have our memories, our personal psycho-energetic frames of existence. I didn’t come to a lake and said, all right, now I am letting go of that everything, I will simply drop my life-sustaining presumptions in the lake or burn it in the gallon. It doesn’t work that way. It demands a lot of work in that I was mentioning earlier, the defamed self-development work. Luckily, nature is supportive and highly interactive. That is the reason I would always recommend starting with an interaction, you give (an impulse), and you receive (an impulse). Like when we were 1,5 years old; someone would throw a ball to you, to a toddler; and you, the toddler would catch it or not, and then you would grab it and throw back to that someone. So start like that, be a toddler, play. The crucial part of my practice is rooted in awareness of the multitude and in surrendering to the worldview which embraces the Earth as multidimensional and doesn’t reduce it to her material existence. Within my work I am ready to state that this worldview is more than a cultural mindset or a discourse, it is a reality, which is not fixed, but transformable, fluid, often highly subjective, intelligent, and acts as a living being possessing multidimensional consciousness. How to abandon a worldview for a reality, for the living being, for a living playful creature? Once this is clear, one can search how to communicate with that breathtaking creature and shape it finally into a performing act. To sum up, I collect the movements in my theatre plays as a result of playful interaction with the landscape or a site in that landscape. In order to live up to the task I bring myself to the state of heightened awareness using the exercises that I have either developed during my work or borrowed from various physical theatre and meditation practices. Work in geomancy has opened and keeps opening to me these never-ending doors of what the space is and how our realities are shaped. While performing I rely on synchronicity. Every story you want to tell, and/ or every story that wants to be told will find a path and will use the energies that stay at the story’s disposal. This time energy is carried by an actor, and by the choreographer and when there are more people involved, by the whole team. Everyone chirp in for the story to be embodied in the flux of energies which flow in the voice, in the bodily movements and in the collective completely unconscious permeation and intention what will arrive to spectators. The play, abstract in its expression will reach the spectator as clear as the energies are directed towards audience. Although I am creating my own shows, I am far way from being a theatre director. I am not, in a way, a director at all. I am aware that I as someone who is creating the story or telling the story, I am only one part of the whole picture that is assembling around the choreography which has been created with the bodily movements, visible movements in nature and invisible moving of the space and landscape. I sometimes arrive with the sequence of a certain movement that I developed upon a course of time, following a peculiar inner impulse of mine that came to me either through an intense psycho-emotional state or through a careless playful state of being and acting in the sense. I try to fix the movements which I have, to know where they begin and where they end. During the performance, by respecting the course of a matter, where I am playing, what is happening around me, I respect the course of time and singular events that interact with the show without any plan. Using playfulness I try to embrace these elements or simply find my path through it. I spend a great deal of time just observing around me, gazing at the space where I find myself, absorbing, receiving. During my practice I would catch myself being lazy in the space; where I would sit and stare in a certain frame of the space, with my thoughts luring around and bringing me away from the given task. I was very irritated by myself interpreting these mental and physical states as laziness and not possessing enough self-discipline. And they were that partially, no doubts. But, then I understood that my observation tools are trying to escape my determinism, my fixed intention that a process must go exactly the way I planned it. I realized that my eyes are relaxing in nature and as if this whole perception machinery that I am equipped with, is acting as a light catcher, a smoothness seeker, a light probe that automatically recognizes its needs. Today it is very clear to me that we humans are highly responsive to light in any shape. Being in the daylight, as mostly I was while rehearsing, I start to understand that my eyes want to relax from the entire stimulus they receive and that they seek their laziness, leisure time in the spectrum of white light. Nowadays we are bombed by artificial light and the intense light of our laptops and mobile phones, it seems to me my eyes are seeking a break from digital era. Or I have just made up a revolutionary excuse for my laziness and procrastination naming it “a leisure time in the spectrum of white light”. A good name for a new show, tough. Nevertheless, light is highly important in the work of Theatre of Inconceivable. Light is nurturing and can help to pierce through the inabilities of perception. Light has a guiding nature, it points out the relevant, it is supportive and it is intelligent. Without light there is no perception. Without energy there is no perception. Light waves your way through, it helps reaching far. The way I cope the landscape depends on amount of light I am able to exchange; my scope to cope the landscape is light-full event. The Inconceivable shows the tendency of reaching far, and then a bit more, and far, to the Inconceivable. To arrive there, and to perform there. As far I am able to perceive, that far I am able to perform. Or put more simply, I am able to perform so much as I am able to perceive. When performing in nature, a performer is dealing with an alive space that is incomparable to usual indoors scenery. You, as someone who chose to create in nature, are caring a wider responsibility of understanding the features of that space. By features I am not talking of the ecology of the system, but of the features when space is perceived as another living being within which you placed yourself. Your responsibility is to live up to the level of that very area, space and landscape where you create, to understand it from a transcendental point of view as well. To try to understand the creative features of the landscape, of that living being within whom you decided to do either your art, or your future habitat, or the field where you will grow your food or simply walk through it. In order to achieve that, one needs to align with the space one decided to place oneself in and one’s performance. In other words, to acknowledge different realities you will have a chance to meet, witness and channel while creating the fable of the performance. To align these newly encountered realities into one Realm – to lead it through you, through what is flowing around you and in you while performing or observing. This is exactly what leads me to the explanation what Realm is or more accurate what Realms are. Realms stand for every dimension we are capable of co-creating within and with a space we find ourselves in. They are a priori creative; therefore they can be addressed as Creative Realms. Creative realms assume the intersecting points of different overlapping levels of existence, similar to thresholds. Meaning, the Theatre of Inconceivable understands the process of performing in nature as playing through the overlapping levels of existence. Theatre of Inconceivable inhabits thresholds in our current realities and hopes to bring novelties of a story and how it can be narrated. Often, during performances, events occur that I haven’t counted with and they match harmoniously into fable bestowing it with motives out of some narrative dimension I haven’t been aware of. I always live space in my shows for unexpected elements of the fable to enter it. Wild animals pay me a visit sometimes, which is my confirmation I am doing something that makes sense and actually creates a whole new sense. ~ ~ ~ ° ~ ~ ~ EXAMPLE OF A REALM CREATED DURING THE SITE-SPECIFIC SHOW This scene has been documented by the artist duo O:Otvoreno during the performance On the Lake at the Javorwood festival 2019 in the Bosnian mountain Bjelašnica. I am using it as an example to demonstrate how levels of seeing contribute in creation of Realms. As well as how a Realm is created from a side of a spectator. This is happening at the very beginning of the performance, when this character in brown cloak, The Limping Elephant, has already appeared in between the festival visitors, walked pass the children playground and the restaurant’s terrace and eventually came down the stairs that lead close to the water. The moment when The Limping Elephant appears in front of the water is synchronous to the moment when it appears on the lake and in the lake. This photo shoot documented the character walking down the stairs. This is the following reality of the narrative which has been spotted and documented: we can see The Limping Elephant and random audience lurking at what is going on there; a person in a blue jacket sitting next to the lake, two men standing (one in a yellow shirt, another in white-black shirt); in front of them two young people squatting, a girl in a red jacket just behind The Limping Elephant. On the left side, there are two little girls and couple standing between them, and a girl with a hat walking down the meadow. We can as well see the blue banners, the bar tables, the parasol. Behind people there is a dark green forest. This is what we see. Still the realm is created in spite of what we are capable of seeing. The play actually takes place and time, its places and times, other way round too. The primary dimension of the play takes place in the lake. The Limping Elephant has appeared in the lake. The lake is mirroring the character’s appearance as the character establishes itself in the new watery dimension. The water is still, so is the watery character. At this rotated image, The Limping Elephant catches your attention and all the perspective lines meet where the character is standing. All of a sudden there are two almost equal looking characters: one shaped of matter and one shaped of water. All of a sudden there are two synchronous plays: one shaped in air and matter and one shaped in water. Two levels of the play have been created that are traceable by human eye and camera. Short on Water-Matter relation: Marko Pogačnik elaborated at one of his lectures in 2019 that I was lucky enough to attend, that water as being the one that stores information has capacities to take over the role of the matter. He names this phenomenon The Cosmic Crystal Water. Those multidimensional existences that yet haven’t taken shape in matter are capable achieving that via watery substance. As a matter of fact, according to Pogačnik’s words, it is the The Cosmic Crystal Water that plays a crucial role in the overall transformation that Earth is going through and that is essential for the leap of consciousness the Earth has started to take. Just mentioning, The Cosmic Crystal Water was not to be found in that small lake that was actually artificial. If I get back to that part where I claim that landscapes are alive and have consciousness and possess rhythms of an organism, I may as well mention that that small artificial lake that resembled more a bigger pond hasn’t still been completely recognized as a lake from the landscape itself. That old deep forest, beautiful birch and spruce forest from that part of mountain Bjelašnica recognizes that artificial lake as water, not as a lake. Since On the Lake is a site-specific show that takes part on and in the lake, I was challenged to deal with that situation. Now I am glad I have had that experience because I have learned additionally how to work with the element of water in a way that I haven’t had tried by then. It was again a self-taught method, but not completely. It was the landscape and the forest that was teaching me. When I write something like this, I mean it. It is not a metaphor or a cheesy way of expressing. It is a method. To get back to the rotated image. Look at that scene. Do you see that something or someone is missing? Where is the man in the yellow shirt? Where are the blue festival banners? Where are the bar tables? I didn’t photoshop that photo. I only rotated it twice counterclockwise. It was a proposal. Exactly this is how I propose a spectator to observe and think. Keep rotating your thinking. Think counterclockwise. I propose you to question what you have seen or what you are capable to see. You are the spectator, after all. In the lake, at the watery level of reality and narrative, the optical perspectives that normally occupy our senses are not present. Those perspectives are the one that create the picture for the spectator at the level of the matter. It is those perspectives that are taken in consideration when narrating, when understanding the story, when interpreting the story. The reversed perspectives, in this case the watery ones, stay intact. Still, they exist and narrate their dimension. Later in the play I, the actress, enter that water. The character enters the water. The dimension of the matter overlaps the dimension of water. I play in the lake, with the lake, and the lake plays with me. The water responds all the time, it is my most responsive partner I have ever had a chance to dance with. Our existences overlap, we exist within each other, we meet at the intersecting points of different overlapping levels of existence, those similar to threshold. Follow the link What Realms are_ We play together, and we are a priori creative, therefore we can be addressed as Creative Realms. Meaning, everything recognized in the photo and all the narratives (inner ones as well) that can fit in the photo are part of a new realm that was created at that very moment as The Limping Elephant approached the water and created that watery character that plays along. Everything that can fit a mirroring picture of the lake is part of that realm, although we may not notice it, but it still dwells there. As an author and choreographer of that performance I am choosing that a primary role is exactly The Watery Character that reappears and vanishes again and again taking different shapes and forms. For me the scene seen in the rotated image is the primary scene and all the stories of the site-specific show On the Lake in the mountain Bjelašnica coincide in that character. It is hard to tell who the protagonist here is when there are so many characters overlapping. Nevertheless, the intersecting point flows through the actress and via her energetically charged intention to call out the multidimensional narrative of nature to establish itself. She does that by using water and by aligning herself with the landscape, with the alive scenery she is part of. And exactly that phenomenon is something, that I as an author of such a theatre have named The Living Scenography. Therefore: Theatre of Inconceivable, Ti creates site-specific shows based on The Living Scenography co-created in a certain play within the Realms of that play. The last, but not the least. This photo has been taken by the artist duo O:Otvoreno who were at the festival spot creating an interactive installation next to the water. With their courtesy I am using this photo and the photos which you can look at in the gallery below. It is important not to neglect that photographer is a diligent spectator. Without a photo there would be no trace of a play and no evidence to continue the narration. The photographer is the one who chooses the initial position of the upcoming narration because the photographer chooses the perspective. To be continued.
Some weeks ago, I witnessed, at Croatian-Slovenian border a mild act of what would belong to “Banality of Evil”, by Hannah Arendt. I witnessed a very unimportant event, almost an everyday circumstance of yet another uninformed driver passing through Slovenia. I was sharing a ride with a driver from Europe, driving through Slovenian highway, who was stopped at the border for not having a vignette (The vignette is a tolling sticker that enables usage of Slovenian motorways and expressways during a limited time period to all drivers of vehicles whose maximum permissible weight is up to 3.5 tones., description taken from official site of DARS d.d.). Driver, according to my experience was obviously an inexperienced driver who hasn’t informed himself about the tolling system of Slovenia. I didn’t doubt his honesty at the border crossing for he was very surprised and disturbed when he found out that he must pay 150 EUR fine at the spot. Being uninformed in 21st century has its price. His documents were taken away from him and he would receive them only after he pays the fine. Without a driving license he cannot continue his journey, and without an ID for sure he cannot cross the Schengen border with Croatia. --- while writing, I am using the impersonal form of writing – a passive form in English his documents were taken away from him, obviously for no reason, cause that is the way something is simply done in writing, that is a proper way of informing in many languages, that’s a norm prescribed by the expository style of writing --- In reality, the documents of the driver couldn’t just jump out from his wallet, jump out there in the place of the great Unknown. When you work with children, you start getting it again, cause they ask you, Why? Or How? And the story can’t continue without an answer, or developing another story from an initial story. So WHY and HOW did those documents jump out of the wallet somewhere out in the unknown Universe. The European driver handed his documents dutifully in the hands of fine lady working for DARS, a Slovenian state company that is in charge in tolling system of Slovenia. The lady employer of DARS was very kind, although the driver obviously was very upset by the fact that there was no easily visible sign that anyone using Slovenian highways is obliged to buy vignette. The lady even agreed with him trying to soften his growing anger caused by a belief of injustice. There was no visible sign! How could I know?, he almost yelled. I understand you mister, but these are the rules and I cannot do anything about it., said the DARS lady. You will be given your documents back after you pay the 150 EUR fine. --- You will be given. --- instead of --- I will give you back the documents. --- for it is the lady who has the documents, who is entitled to (somebody obviously must have entitled her too) take and return the documents. --- The photo was borrowed from https://internationalman.com/articles/the-highwayman/ So this everyday drama through which DARS is collecting money from ignorant drivers went on for some 30 minutes until the driver finally gave up, paid the fine and drew away. The DARS lady employer was kind up to the moment she got irritated too, using the very well-known discourse of many working at similar positions: Mister, you are complaining to me in vain, because I have nothing to do with making up the rules. You are free to write a complaint. I have absolutely nothing to do with it. She has absolutely nothing to do with it. The same way the driver had nothing to do with his inexperienced act of entering a highway without informing himself on time. In good old times we had highwaymen; today we have taxes and tolling systems. In good old times, if someone robbed you; if a highwayman robbed you and he or she was caught, he or she would be responsible for the act of crime; later on punished or killed. But the injustice of fines in a tolling or tax system cannot be punished or killed. And all those working in that system are highly NOT-responsible for the money they are collecting from the travelers. The Story of The Young Man8/21/2018 0 Comments Some weeks ago, I witnessed, at Croatian-Slovenian border a mild act of what would belong to “Banality of Evil”, by Hannah Arendt. I witnessed a very unimportant event, almost an everyday circumstance of yet another uninformed driver passing through Slovenia. I was sharing a ride with a driver from Europe, driving through Slovenian highway, who was stopped at the border for not having a vignette (The vignette is a tolling sticker that enables usage of Slovenian motorways and expressways during a limited time period to all drivers of vehicles whose maximum permissible weight is up to 3.5 tones., description taken from official site of DARS d.d.). Driver, according to my experience was obviously an inexperienced driver who hasn’t informed himself about the tolling system of Slovenia. I didn’t doubt his honesty at the border crossing for he was very surprised and disturbed when he found out that he must pay 150 EUR fine at the spot. Being uninformed in 21st century has its price. His documents were taken away from him and he would receive them only after he pays the fine. Without a driving license he cannot continue his journey, and without an ID for sure he cannot cross the Schengen border with Croatia. --- while writing, I am using the impersonal form of writing – a passive form in English his documents were taken away from him, obviously for no reason, cause that is the way something is simply done in writing, that is a proper way of informing in many languages, that’s a norm prescribed by the expository style of writing --- In reality, the documents of the driver couldn’t just jump out from his wallet, jump out there in the place of the great Unknown. When you work with children, you start getting it again, cause they ask you, Why? Or How? And the story can’t continue without an answer, or developing another story from an initial story. So WHY and HOW did those documents jump out of the wallet somewhere out in the unknown Universe. The European driver handed his documents dutifully in the hands of fine lady working for DARS, a Slovenian state company that is in charge in tolling system of Slovenia. The lady employer of DARS was very kind, although the driver obviously was very upset by the fact that there was no easily visible sign that anyone using Slovenian highways is obliged to buy vignette. The lady even agreed with him trying to soften his growing anger caused by a belief of injustice. There was no visible sign! How could I know?, he almost yelled. I understand you mister, but these are the rules and I cannot do anything about it., said the DARS lady. You will be given your documents back after you pay the 150 EUR fine. --- You will be given. --- instead of --- I will give you back the documents. --- for it is the lady who has the documents, who is entitled to (somebody obviously must have entitled her too) take and return the documents. --- So this everyday drama through which DARS is collecting money from ignorant drivers went on for some 30 minutes until the driver finally gave up, paid the fine and drew away. The DARS lady employer was kind up to the moment she got irritated too, using the very well-known discourse of many working at similar positions: Mister, you are complaining to me in vain, because I have nothing to do with making up the rules. You are free to write a complaint. I have absolutely nothing to do with it. She has absolutely nothing to do with it. The same way the driver had nothing to do with his inexperienced act of entering a highway without informing himself on time. In good old times we had highwaymen; today we have taxes and tolling systems. In good old times, if someone robbed you; if a highwayman robbed you and he or she was caught, he or she would be responsible for the act of crime; later on punished or killed. But the injustice of fines in a tolling or tax system cannot be punished or killed. And all those working in that system are highly NOT-responsible for the money they are collecting from the travelers. I was irritated on the other hand, from both sides, drivers ignorance, and Lady employer’s indifference, and tried out a little trick while translating free of charge and informal for the lady and for the driver – yet fully responsible for my translation! And fully responsible for the act of provocation I did to see what would happen. After the driver paid the fine, while receiving a receipt, I informed the DARS lady that we are planning to write a story about this event in the newspaper. In that very moment, the DARS lady changed her behavior completely, yelling at me as a threat: I give you no permission of publishing my name in public! If my name ends up in newspaper I will sue you! There is my name at this receipt and if you publish it, I will sue you! I, the irritator, responded: But how, if you are not responsible for what is being pursued here, Mrs. XY, I read her name from the receipt. It’s just a name and you’re only a worker, you said it yourself so many times. You have absolutely nothing to do with how DARS is charging fines, you’re only stopping cars, taking documents and collecting money. You have nothing to do with it, indeed. You are not, by your will, part of the action that seems suspicious from another perspective, and maybe even from your own perspective. You are kind and full of understanding and you are just working here. I wish you a good day Mrs. XY,, for your task is not easy at all! I understand you! In comparison with so many others, we can consider ourselves lucky that we could cross the border at all. You’re lucky as long there is someone unluckier than you; that will say, someone who was made or even born unluckier than yourself. This situation with DARS is actually ridiculously unimportant even to be mentioned. Still, it carries something universal in itself for many border crossings: that someone tells you what to do and what not to do. State borders are the best places for the demonstration of power. And this power, as a very abstract phenomenon in its essence, channels through all those individuals who have absolutely nothing to do with it, those individuals who are performing the power consider themselves not be the source of the rule they are performing, or the source of the power. They claim not to be having any responsibility while being directed by a certain rule as puppets without further influence. They are equal to machines that receive a certain input and create an output. Similar to family separations in USA; there is a puppet at the border crossing who has to separate a child from a parent, puppets who have to use their hands and engage their body musculature and the central nervous system in order to take the child from a parent who is crossing the border without a permit. And we will read the news: Children were taken away from their parents. --- A certain individual separated families having absolutely nothing to do with it. --- An individual diligently following the given task. The given task, more precise put, the task another individual passed on to him or her, from a puppet to a puppet. No responsibility at all of grabbing a child and driving it to many unknown districts where they have been kept for months. A cruel act, an inhuman act, an act of crime, an act of evil, separating a child from a parent, legalized from the state. And some individual puppet did it, without any problem, as Hannah Arendt put it, through thoughtlessness and inability… to think from the standpoint of somebody else, another ordinary bureaucrat or an ordinary performer of rules, normally performing a given task without questioning it. Photo borrowed from: www.politico.com/story/2018/06/07/family-separation-border-lawsuit-630368 Recently on Facebook this photo popped out. A photo of special troops of the state Brazil moving the Kayapo tribe from their ancestral territory. This photo captured very clearly a young police officer performing a given task, removing people from the land that according to law of Brazil obviously doesn’t belong to them anymore. I am stunned by the clarity of this young man’s face. I am sure if someone sues the state for deportation of Kayapo people from their land, this young man wouldn’t have absolutely anything to do with it. His personal decision that he will be recruited for this job wouldn’t play any role whatsoever. Although his hands were crucial in taking away a Kayapo person from the land, his body musculature and his will to use his body musculature in exactly the way which would result that not a single Kayapo tribe member would be standing on that piece of land anymore.
The clarity of this photo captures me! The clarity of this photo captures me through the clarity of the young men’s personal responsibility in the same way the photo captured the young man in his personal decision to support the given order; the order someone gave him. The clarity of the photo is the clarity that a personal responsibility is equal to responsibility of a highly ranked individual who created the rule; is equal to the responsibility of the communion and is equal to the source of the power. The only difference is that capturing the young man (or any other individual system puppet) as it used to be done with highwaymen, wouldn’t solve the whirling source of power wrapped and supported with violence and terror. The abstract power beyond you and me. The power you serve to. You and me, only ordinary thoughtless highwaymen, bureaucratic highwaymen, servants, mechanisms and well programmed puppets are channeling the abstract notion of power through a violent act. We will be living lives knowing the power is not in us, and will spend lives chasing that power which is out of us, somewhere out and will be playing power games and will be trying to capture the power. To capture the clarity of power. The closest we can get to that power will be only by identifying ourselves with the power, and the definite proof for that will be that under us in hierarchy there are many individual puppets who have absolutely nothing to do with source of the power. The source of the power which, by some chance and through many acts of violence, treasury, societal vampirism and deceits has been borrowed to us – borrowed to the picture of us, the picture of me, to self-notion, to our identification. In that moment I am the one who has captured the whirl of the power, I am Hitler and Staljin and Mao Tze Tung, and The Young Man from the photo. I am the One! I am responsible! I have the power! I! The power is mine! The picture of power as a picture of threat and welcoming death, the photo captured while I was performing, it is I, The Young Man and my hands that separated the children and parents, pulled the triggers, moved the tribes, killed, enslaved, raped, made the rules. We are the same. We are all caught in one photo. The responsibility is only one. The clarity of responsibility is only one. And that is an individual one, a personal, that one which has absolutely everything to do with what I have done and what I have used my body for and my hands and my legs, my eyes, my mouth, my words and occasionally, my own driven thoughts. The photo captured me the same way I captured the people from the tribe. I am the One. I am responsible. And You! You are responsible too! You! --- while writing, I am using the personal form of writing driven occasionally by my own thoughts --- More on Kayapo people: http://www.kayapo.org/index-3.html AudAbility technique or Sea-shore in a Sea-Shell. Read it here. To experience the Soundscape Narratology go HERE. Sea-shore in a sea-shell is a story I wrote in 2014 for my friend’s children, an endeavor of soundscape narratology achieved primarily by text and reading it out loud. The Audability Technic deals with the audible and the scope of the audible using narrative images to expand the reading perception into a readable soundscape. That what was readable becomes audible.
Travel into the rose garden HERE. ***random thoughts on my journey through Sweden when staying at other people’s houses in exchange for some voluntary work***
- selected paragraphs from Insecurity of the Text, 2010
by Iva Korbar *translated from Croatian by Urša Vidic |
More of my texts, but in Croatian are to be found at this LINK.The only truth about the nature of texts is their endlessness. Archives
February 2022
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