particles of active love : dispersal, scattering, constellation

« The indifference of things is perhaps just the face turned towards us of a tenderness that can not reach us. »

Roger Munier, Le su et l’insu, 2005

With a mucial contribution by Eguiluz Trio (Ontologies, 2017) : absolution


This text is inspired by particles and parcels coming from:

Audrey Rousseau, Di Ponti, Géraldine Eguiluz, Estela Lòpez, Gein Wong, Isabelle Fortier, Irmgard emmelhainz, Kai Cheng Thom, Kisha Montgomery, Lamia Yared,  La Métisse, Marie-élise L’espérance, Maude Caron, Nosotrxs, Pedro Soler, Saša Susana Pacara, Shandi Bouscanier, Sylvie Tourangeau, Taniel Morales, Toino, Veronica Raven, Victoria Stanton, Violette, Virginie Jourdain, Y
 gratitudes

Since several months I’m learning to sooth the suicide of Veronica, a friend, an artist, a healer, Cree and two spirits

Mourning is a love that has lost its correspondence and is wandering slowly, listening.

In our garden, a wigwam resulting from our collaboration, would take the form of whale’s rib cage, precious lair gatherer of rituals and care.

By asking what Veronica had left us, particles of active love appeared.

We had collaborated in 2012 with my friend Isabelle Fortier and students by co-building a wigwam, at CEGEP de Maisonneuve, in Tio’ta:ke, (colonial known as Montreal). This traditional Kanien’kehá: ka  house was then moved in the garden the bullionie, the collective house where I live.

Veronica was Cree, two spirits, ceremonial bearer, artist & wounded healer. In their childhood, like many Indigenous people in Canada, they were torn from their very young family, placed in a residential school, violently and sexually abused. Their family members suffered from depression and various addictions. Veronica opened circles of words, and assisted other wounded human, in long and deep healing rituals. They were part of a interdisciplinary theater and puppetry troupe, with a strong Catholic presence, focused on reconciliation.

After a painful divorce, Veronica returned to Saskatchwan, their land of childhood In the summer of 2016, he is coming out as a trans woman. Véronica wanted to return to Montreal this summer 2017 to be supported in her transition. But in December 2017, a few hours after we exchanged online, she committed suicide. I was devastated by anger, guilt and a sense of failure. We had lost a friend, a spiritual guide, one of us, for a lack of us. I do not know how to mourn. I did not know how to make sense, how to make room for this mixture of rage towards the ramifications of collective assassination orchestrated by the white colonization, catholic shame and transphobia, while bearing a deep respect for their choice of departure.

My first vision was related to the need to make more room for our hearts too full: it would take a rib cage of whale. I searched. Until I realized that it was precisely and exactly the shape of the wigwam. We were going to dwell and surround it with three days of performance, installation, care, mourning, healing, love, dance, rituals. Rituals of which we had lost the use and that we retraced, fumbling.

The second vision was that Veronica had both joined and left something, a form of link to harmony. They were cynical, but in the interstices of dark moments, they saw beauty everywhere, in life, in the city, and in death too. Veronica had experienced 3 borderline death experiences, and spoke about it with great peace and communion. I wanted to commune with his death. And understand what she had left and joined. The link, which is a link between him, her, her, between us, between our ancestors and our descendants. And in particular, our queer ancestors and descendants: these non-parental transgenerations. What I had left, I felt, I could see, very alive, in the air: particles of active love. Something that carries restorative energy and that I wanted to understand better. This would become the title of the evening of performance and rituals in the Bullionie and the wigwam. It will also be the title of the project that would follow in Mexico.

The third vision was a kind of dream. I saw the call of this festival organized by Pedro Soler (for Transitio), and whose question echoed in depth: how do we say beyond genders? Como Decir Nosotrxs? In my dream, there was a lot of chaos, a red house, walls in ruins. I was preparing something with Taniel Morales and Geraldine Eguiluz. We were struggling to join, as if we were never quite in the same room. A strange way to tell us.

 (last drawing by Saša


Definitions to embrace some of the possibles


Dispersion
Movements from a center in uncertain directions
Simultaneous momentum of a diversity of vanishing points in variable radiation
Insult for instructing the hyperactive structure whose general trajectory is unreadable from any known point
Release after a sustained order or suspended time
Effect of wind on terrestrial and celestial particles
Optical phenomenon of division of the spectrum of light
See:
     Diaspora
     Takeoffs
     Breezes

Scattering
Dispersion that lost its center
Set of movements with origins and uncertain directions
Intention at high risk of energy and sense loss
Concentration of fragile encounter probabilities
The Milky Way was born one day from the scattering in the space of a drop of the precious liquid sprung from Juno’s breast (Huyghe, Dialog with Visible, 1955, 219).
See:
seeds
trajectories
turbulences
dissipation

Constellation
Selected and multidimensional reliance of scattered light points on a background often obscure or deep.
Celestial and terrestrial drawings allowing alignement
Attempt of association between distanced sensory points
Mutual attraction of scattered intuitions
see:
projection
retro-futurism
compass
refuge

Particles
Infinitely small matter.
Very thin parcel of a substance or a material body.
Portion of material small enough to be considered as punctual
hereditary potentialities contained in the cell nucleus
Wave-particle duality: a particle can behave as an elementary, composite, subatomic wave
They can expand with heat, and possibly change shape, become liquid, repel. And then shrink, disappear and reappear in their own dimensions.
See:
parcels
substances
spore
trace

Active love(s)
love: masculine noun who becomes feminine in the plural
form islets that sometimes constell
escapes anthropocentrisms
active love: through which one does not fall, nurturer and healing warriors
decolonial loves: which lovingly overthrow, in the space time of a momentum, a colonial system and the cultures of the rape applied to all the universes
mourning is a love that has lost its correspondence and is wandering slowly, listening.
See:
All about love, bell hooks
Islands of decolonial love, Leanne Simpson
Queering nature: the liberatory effects of queer ecology, caitlin doak

Reliance(s) and tremor

Occurences

Many things have occured. Others not.
A disarticulated set of things and receptive forms have occurred.
Disarticulated because it did not look like expectations and projections.
Disarticulated because jostled from the center and the bark.
Disarticulated because left as such, for want of better.
Disarticulated and cared for as such.
Here, gathered, some parcells of what remains in the memory of Goldjian

Winding & unfolding

From June to September 2017, the trio Taniel Morales, Géraldine Eguiliz and Goldjian proceed to an electronic exchange of active particle perceptions, in view of the festival Como Decir Nosotrxs, directed by Pedro Soler, for Transitio, (CENART), Mexico.


September 16, 2017, I arrived in Mexico on, inhabited by two questions, in addition to that of the festival:

How do we learn to love?
What do we do when we do not know what to do?
How to tell us? ( Como decir nosotrxs?)

September 18, 2017, first working meeting at CENART – with Géraldine and Taniel, to weave the continuation and the intentions of the particles.

September 19, 2017:

That morning, Taniel, bedridden, announces that he is too sick to work.
11am: seismic alarm tests of the city, commemorate the Tremblor of 1985
2:17 pm: I take news of Taniel, he answers.
2:18 pm: the earth quake at magnitude 7.1

20171026_193955
A telluric anger. Something in me strongly agrees with her. (Maybe because I have the luxury of being safe) And then I realize the chaos in the city, the adrenaline in the kneecaps, I walk the streets to see, know, know what to do. There is terror, panic and death. In front of a collapsed building, we will transport buckets of stone and clothing, in chain to undo huge block of a collapsed building. Chain and fists raised to silence and listen to those below. Later, help centers get organized, get busy, lovingly. Self-management emerges from the rubble.

September 22:

Assembly with all members of the festival, the artists and the artistic director, at Cozadera, a feminist art space open for the occasion. We learn that the CENART is too damaged to receive the Transitio festival. But all the participants and the artistic director are convinced to hold the festival, in a conscious link with what has just happened. The event is maintained under the title « Como decir nosotrxs? »: It will be moved and we will work with what is there.

 

September 23rd:

Discussion and self-organization of the radioparlamiento and the festival. We learn that Taniel Morales has atypical pneumonia. For a week, we fear for his life. We keep in touch. With other members of the festival who know him, we think of him with hope and love.

September 25th:

The festival opens with an opening ceremony in the park of the Anthropological Museum. Como Decir Nosotrxs? will take place at Casa del Espectro Electromagnetico from September 26 to 28.

September 26th:

Throughout our stay, we collected plastic bags and styrofoam cups, which will be painted black. We clean the garden and prepare the space and us, among dogs intense presence. We think there is no overhead projector, so we leave that vision aside and focus on video projections. That of Petropolis on the tar sand of Alberta, in reliance on one of the petrochemical origins of the plastic that flows here. This 15-minute version was edited to accompany Neil Young’s « Honor the Treaties » tour in 2014. The film is by Peter Mettler (2009, 43 minutes). Another film by goldjian was to be screened (the cedars of the massacre island) but the remote control of this projector was gone, the moment of the performance came.

On September 27 at 8:00 pm, the « Particulars of Love Activas » open a ritual duet between Goldjian and Geraldine Eguiluz:

A circle of corn intertwined with gleams, and four forms composed of recovered styrofoam glasses, cleaned and painted black, filled with water and light, tried to protect what was coming.

Géraldine plays the guitar.

In the center, a black ball, illuminated from the inside and threaded with needles. I wanted to bring up a luminous constellation and join everyone in the sun. But most of the threads were tangled inside and I only managed to pull 4.

I distribute Mica powder to everyone stammering a quarter of the circle: We are told that what transmits from generation to generation are traumas. I believe it. But I also see transmissions of strength and incredible love. In particles.

Géraldine undressed and slowly and proudly dressed in plastic. It’s the trumpet that takes over. Geraldine suffocated under her bags. Goldjian helps her undress again by covering her with a blanket of white cloth stained with black.

Naked under the canvas, Géraldine found her guitar. Goldjian offers small instruments to some people in the circle to accompany him

I offer each one a small spool of gold thread

The sand tar movie was replayed because it was looping.

I bury the spotlight under the cornstarch, and it’s bright yellow like a little fire.

Thunder rumbles.

I bring a clothe to Geraldine and surround her with tenderness.

The particules are stammering in different ways.
It results from many dispersions
They escapes in scatters.
Can we honor them?

We hear about particles, as if they had their own life. We meet and we realize that other forms of particles emerge. Active love particles have also spread to the creation of a care space within the festival, especially among Bolivian community radio activists and artists. It is realized that besides being a performance, the project of active love particles is perceived as a form of relational art, which emerges as infiltrators, in the link with humans, animals, minerals, plants and earth as lover.

The meetings are deep. They are particularly concentrated with the animation of a radio space. We listen to Bolivian activists, including Susana Pacara and Sandra Cossio Colque, who tell us about patriarchal and capitalist violence, and their relationship to the land, the need to seek permission.  We also listen to Irmgard Emmelhainz, who talks about decolonizing ways of thinking about relationships and relations. Who tells us that the West is looking for show, that decolonization is humble, listening, receiving.


On October 2nd, we meet up with Geraldine. We renew a discussion to know if everything makes sense, or if we have the duty to make sense happen. And if these vision of sense making diverge, can we live with a big nonsense, or a depression, or a chaos that coexists with the clear meaning of others. Can we coexist and make sense together without trying to convince eachother. We touch on the question of us. To tell us is a process, a perpetual question, a listening, a difficult reliance, a dialogue of mutuality. Calling for us is a love challenges.

In the afternoon, a meeting with Taniel Morales allows us to makes sure of his condition but also to close the ritualistic work with him: we finish a ball of light particles, pierced during the performance by gold threaded needles). Together we weave links of meaning, healing and continuity.

Dia7_Bolas a particules_ Con Geraldine Y Taniel morales_2 Octobre


Questions and fumblings

The original questions would be subdivided into sub-questions. In letting go, appeared, some snatches of answers / revelations:

  • How do we learn to love?
    • by mimicry?
    • by intuition?
    • by instinct of healing?
    • against the current, despite everything?
    • for the desired futures?
  • What is transmitted from our ancestors to the future through us?
    • intestinal flora?
    • spores?
    • traces metamorphosed?
    • phosphorescent molds?
    • genomes?
    • trauma?
    • dreams ?
    • moles?
    • water drunk, pissed, evaporated, rained, polluted, filtered, repelled?
    • family stories?
    • unlearning?
    • some scattered wisdoms?
    • visions to know what to do in front of the unknown?
  • What do we do when we do not know what to do?
    • Not knowing what to do as an artist, it kneads the ego.
    • It reminds the need to end the heroism, it does not prevent to stand up right or lying down), but it opens the possibility of falling, disarticulated.
    • it knows that we do not know anymore how to do rituals
    • it knows we can do it anyway.
  • How to tell us?
    • By what language (s), from what place, what urgency, what posture?
    • With whom and why?
  • Who are we ?
    • Those inside us
    • Those behind us
    • Those who come
    • Those who meet
    • Those who recognize
    • Those who know that all learning is mutual.
    • Those who like to listen
    • In assembly, in restorative circles, in constellation ?
  • Why tell us?
    • When the meaning finally escapes to the grip of brains
    • When the meaning finally escapes from the empress religions
    • When religions become reliances again
  • How to call on us ?
    • Entering the woods
    • In workshops with queer and DIY methodologies
    • In rituals, in silence, in circles
    • By bowing to our enemies, as a leaning practice
    • By constellating between the particles

Morphogenesis

Particles of active love do not form a performance.

They have a distant kinship with performative utterances,
(the acts of languages)
but it’s the opposite:

They do not perform anything
They were already there
They do not say anything
They do not proceed from human language.
They decenter the antropos of the story
They put him at the service of life
like all the others

They are active from the depths of time
They hear the asphyxiation of trees under their coats of chewing gums
They splash the waste to be taken out of the rivers
They animate the living from the top to listen to those who are caught under the rubble
They bathe in the queer queer queer performativities of nature
They generate islands of decolonial love
They carry the spores of our ancestors,
some transgenerational traces
of visionary fiction
and wave of telluric loves

They reconcile with golden thread
the rips of the world,
and form bridges between parcels

They smell like after the rain
They weave links of meaning that are anchored in the future

It’s hard to talk about them because they disperse easily.
They move away and scatter in desperation
They disappear from the experience
and even from memory sometimes
when the chaos, the shock of the plates, the violence of the nonsens
create depressions.

In depression, the brain enters its lair,
making sure that a diaphragm septum cuts it
from all emotional affluence – emotional

But, these particles are affective,
they weave canvases by affinity,
paths through the wicked
they durably tie ephemeral constellation
they are momentarily embedded in the neural connectors
to blow
small beams of light

they disperse,
or scatter
it’s their modus operendi

so
before the chaos,
learn

to call on us,

telluric us
myceliums us
us who do not know, so often
and who, humble, ask
listen, wait, hear, together,
what speaks,
those who speak
and those who don’t
those who remember the buen vivir
those who know,
that higher self is earth itself

to get on
constellate

becoming an antenna

to navigate the intergenealogy of the territories of senses
and find
what is escaping the big shows
and connects silently
lovingly,
the dispersion

Inspirations

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