“How does one listen for the groans and cries, the undecipherable songs, the crackle of fire in the cane fields, the laments for the dead, and the shouts of victory, and then assign words to all of it?”
“How does one revisit the scene of subjection without replicating the grammar of violence?”
- Sadiya Hartman Venus in Two Acts
October 7, 2023, marks a permanent crack in the hyper-simulated systems of the 21st century. It exposed an upgraded warfare the world never witnessed before. The unverified, dehumanized body evokes an intimate horror, one that transcends borders. The world turned into a US Sci-Fi Paradigm ever again.
A select few have looted the world's soul, with their ventures—Meta and Telepathy—stretching endlessly at both ends of this new phase in human existence. This infringement technology results in state surveillance, which is the worst of all. Now everyone’s handy machine is a time bomb, any part of your body could explode by operating remotely. You can’t run away!
Physic-sonic-psychic phantoms greeted me as I entered the third decade of life—a permanent rupture. For my generation, the notion of a plague or pandemic was historical, almost fantastical. A constant, evocative power that stirred me to explore Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty during my time in theatre school. "On November 28, 1947, Artaud declares war on the organs: To be done with the judgment of God, for you can tie me up if you wish, but there is nothing more useless than an organ." Embodying this practice required an intense level of self-indulgence, skirting the line between discipline and self-torture, as I strived to break the boundaries of mind and body through the radical expressions he demanded (Artaud, "To Have Done With the Judgement of God," in Selected Writings, ed. Susan Sontag, 1976).
To travel deep through time - meaning, overcoming the notion of time with bodily embodiment one must transgress identity and power—whether economic, institutional, personal, or mental (which is also biological and intergenerational). Unity over duality is a kind of empirical transcendence. The more one approaches divinity—meaning, the more one sheds the ego and identity (or vice versa)—the more one becomes like a spinning vessel caught in a relentless sandstorm. In this state, you are contagious, yet almost hollow, trapped in ever-expanding loops and notations.
This process an away from Descartes' notion of mind-body dualism. We discover moments where body and mind integrate, revealing fragments of intergenerational memory or forgotten aspects of ourselves. These revelations are crucial for finding catharsis—much like accessing deep mental imagery from a subconscious or dream-like state.
This need for unity is reflected in what Patricia Reed has proposed as a “meta-crisis between thinking and doing”. Resignifying Alan Badiou's concept of "organized disorientation,” for a mind-body integration one has to let go of the body, giving the body its autonomy, otherwise surpassing mind power. Unfortunately, we live in a state where we feel compelled to act but lack the orientation to do so meaningfully, unable to align our actions with what we know. This decoupling of thought and action tendency could be seen as some sort of effect after all kinds of human civilizational revolutions/progress. Ever widening gap between mind-body, like a crack in the ozone shield, or a permanent rupture in our primordial skin. Obstructing catharsis and deepening the disconnection between individual and collective experience.
“This meta-crisis between thinking and doing leaves us in a state of disorientation, a space of pure reflex, where we feel compelled to act, but have no sense of orientation as to how we may act successfully to overcome the impasses endemic to what we know. What Badiou has called ‘organized disorientation’, this meta-crisis thrives on a certain disavowal of knowledge, where we don’t believe in what we know, and so what we know carries inconsequential bearings on our actions.”- Patricia Reed, Diagramming the Common.
Physical Theatre resides in how the movement becomes both an external spectacle for the viewer and an internal transformative journey for the performer. It invites everyone—whether performer or audience—to experience these revelations in their own, often deeply personal, ways.
Native communal gatherings have always embraced this unique space for mind-body alliances, as a way to find equilibrium through varying means—whether for self-discipline, expression, or spiritual purposes. In these practices, the mind is often subdued to free the body in these spaces, equilibrium is found—a point where the mind and body are released together, creating an integrated state. In this state, personal revelations are not merely individual but resonate communally and hold deep local relevance, even for policy making.
In today’s world, Silicon Valley technologies have stretched the concept of the "local" into something that is globally interconnected, but with a fragmented and distorted sense of community. These technologies present a form of primitive touch, yet they fracture the intimacy of real communication or a “robust reality” of one’s own. What was once an authentic space for shared, personal revelations is now hijacked—gamified, miscommunicated, faked, or destroyed—through algorithms, platforms, and surveillance systems. These technologies trap the mind-body experience, preventing full integration and obstructing true catharsis. As a result, individuals are left yearning for deeper connection and wholeness, but this desire often remains unfulfilled, leading to jealousy, emptiness, and alienation.
Denise Ferreira da Silva’s analysis of the "global" offers insight into how these technologies operate within broader mechanisms of power. In her interview, AN END TO “THIS” WORLD, DFdS argues that the global is not an abstract or universal concept but rather a material context shaped by juridical mechanisms of total violence, economic systems of expropriation, and symbolic tools of raciality. These systems reinforce violence and exploitation while defining the ethical reach of what is considered human. In this context, now familiarized/communized AI technologies are part of a larger framework that facilitates the extraction and commodification of human experience, distorting the global into something that perpetuates systemic oppression rather than fostering genuine facilitation of being in the world.
DFdS’s concept of fractal thinking—which seeks to escape dichotomies such as interiority/exteriority, self-determination/affectability, and temporality/spatiality—becomes especially relevant when considering how tech innovations often collapse or distort these very boundaries. By thinking across multiple scales (cosmic, historic, organic, quantic).
The corporate appropriation of ancient spiritual names and appropriated with modern symbols invokes mythical or fantastical pasts to legitimize their innovations. These companies often present their technologies as tapping into the timeless, almost mystical realms of human history. Are they merely appropriating ancient as a way to legitimize their creations, or are they, seeking to tap into the fantastical beliefs of the past in search of something deeper? The Deep Mid-End could be ironic and surely confusing!
Scientific inventions are often shrouded in the allure of mythical mysteries or derived from the imaginative realms of science fiction literature and cinema. This narrative serves as a powerful form of propaganda, creating an atmosphere of wonder and forging a deeper emotional connection between consumers and creators. By invoking fantastical, mythical origins or futuristic visions, inventors and tech companies effectively blur the line between reality and fantasy, allowing large-scale public investments or private enterprises to tap into the collective imagination. In many ways, this media-driven narrative helps shape what societies yearn for, at different stages of civilization and determines how they perceive technological progress. This manipulation of popular imagination through mythic or futuristic metaphors also gives inventors and corporations a degree of authority, allowing them to craft entire histories or futures, creating a convenient mythology that justifies their existence and expansion.
Sami Khatib’s analysis of myth and barbarism sheds light on this process of mythologizing technological progress. Khatib explores how the Age of Enlightenment, which sought to break free from myth and superstition, paradoxically leads back into a mythic temporality. He argues that the Enlightenment's drive toward rationality and control produces its form of totalitarianism, creating a dialectical reversal where myth becomes enlightenment and enlightenment reverts to myth. This process, which Khatib describes as "culminating objectively in madness," mirrors the political realities of today, where the clear boundaries between progress and regress, civilization, and barbarism, become unified.
WIP..:)
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