| Ontological Street Theatre, Cosmic Fear and the Multiverse: ... |
|
|
| Escrito por Paul Miskin | |||||
| 02.08.2002 | |||||
|
...preparing modern cities for extra terrestrial investment... Many scientists and philosophers of Physics including David Deutsch (The Fabric of Reality1997) believe that we inhabit a multiverse. This is deduced from fairly simple but precise experiments in quantum physics, which show that very small particles of light are extinguished when more light is let into the experiment through slits. This strange observable phenomenon of 'interference' is explained by 'negative photons', which are considered to be a part of one of the many other unobservable universes that impinge on the universe we inhabit at the quantum level. This sounds to me like 'phlogiston' (with its negative weight) which was a concept considered useful to medieval scientists who were surprised that oxidisation made things heavier. The idea of a multiverse is attractive for scientific and philosophical reasons. It seems to oppose predestination because 1. Full mechanistic predictive descriptions of our universe (segment of the multiverse) become impossible. 2. Processes are continuously interfered with by inputs from other universes. 'The flatworm theory' portrays human consciousness as analogous to the consciousness of a worm that while inhabiting a three dimensional universe only perceives in two dimensions and thus has no idea why it constantly has to correct it's world view to fit incoming data. Perhaps in one of these many hidden universes or dimensions there hides the explanation of a meaning or purpose of the universe we inhabit, but what would that imply?
Minkowski's developments of Einstein's discoveries in 1909 relegated space and time to the status of ghosts and competing ontologies are now part of the envelope. Before explanations of the world it often seems that we do not know the 'facts'. As Simon Altmann (Is nature Supernatural 2002) says, ontological hallucination is one of the most common of human conditions. On a societal level we endure ubiquitous Orwellian double talk. We have a world picture presented by the state media machine conflicting radically with an investigative based world picture of universal terrorism masquerading as justice as described by John Pilger (The New Rulers of the World 2002). Naomi Klein (No Logo2001) describes a similar duality that exists between the constellations of meaning and subjectivity created by the hype of brands and the slave camp revelations that underpin the Nike swoosh. These dualities, physical uncertainty and double talk, all contrive subjectivities (Chaosmosis an ethico -aesthetic paradigm Felix Guattari 1992) including propaganda rendered conditions of ontology concealing other radically different and often vicious ontologies. This ontological confusion puts all humans in a situation like that of Truman in The Truman Show or that of the hero of The Matrix. The feeling that we inhabit a universe or monoverse of depleted meaning is widespread. We ask ourselves. 'Is this it? Is this really it? ' The question has the recurrence and tenacity of an endemic fungus. In the nightmare soap world of product placements and commercial exploitation of The Truman Show at least Truman's mind was still free and thus the possibility of escape existed. How do we wake up from the world we inhabit without adopting the interior narrowness and depletion of a religious framework?
Hakim Bey writes (TAZ The Temporary Autonomous Zone Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism 1985) For me Bey's words revalue the vacuum of meaning in our universe. This vacuum is an opportunity. This is not a justification of the senselessness of history nor the cruelties of the human condition. It is to note the paradox that if there was a point to life there would be no point, because if there was a ready made rationale for life available (from for example another universe) it would disable art and bestowing acts of wonder, bravery, beauty, and creativity. We need the vacuum of meaning it is a playground. I am interested in Street Theatre that raises ontological questions by the interrogation of the fabric of reality through many kinds of special relationships between art and reality. In the formation of an art/life hybrid there are many ways in which the fictional implant relates to its host. Street Theatre can stand out from, participate in, absorb, frame, transform and even provide an escape from the surrounding reality. Ontological Street Theatre can create what Hakim Bey calls Temporary Autonomous Zones. (TAZ) These are areas of freedom from the imperatives of the inherited conglomerate, freedom to play with, and within its strata. Bey invites us to create Street Theatre where different universes collide, where we can channel hop between universes, where things and people become separated from their labels, where the normal repetitious assumptions of life are on hold and on display for what they are, where an abundance of meaning can suddenly be poured into an empty space, where space itself can be created. Ontological Street Theatre implies the collision of universes. How this cosmic event is handled depends on the performance. The 'blurring' of art and life is just the beginning. An area of warped reality is created, a lobby with doors leading to many possible universes. I do not have the space to develop this concept here but I note, in passing, that in Street Theatre there are many forms of the paradoxical inversion of the context, which leads to my next observation. Earlier this year my company performed for a corporate launch of an American style holiday camp called Centre Park. The zone was replete with nature and wonderful plants and trees and yet the camp created such a feeling of artificiality that when a jet passed through the sky and left a white trail it was not hard to imagine that it was, like the sky in the Truman show, a rent in an enormous curtain. Our performances in this zone were unusual in that our giant furry artificial ostriches with alien riders seemed to be the most real thing there. The increased ontological density of our characters became burdensome and we had to adopt contingent strategies to reduce the impact of the performance, like avoiding our normal invasive tactics and talking through the mask. When you release into the quotidian a hallucinated being, a character that has been created with a high degree of plastic density, in other words a strange creature that looks, in some insane magic- realistic or carnivalesque sense, 'convincing', there is always a risk that some people, mainly adults, will be frightened. Even though the entity is benign, the fact that it is a 'simulation of the unknown' and nothing quite like it has ever been seen before can be frightening. The performance both introduces and dissolves a fear of change and of the cosmic unknown thus launching an attack on the roots of xenophobia, and human small mindedness. Adults are weird. Whilst performing we have noticed that parents, after containing their own fear, often introduce fear into the minds of their previously fearless children 'Oh look isn't that scary'. In Japan we found that parents offer their children sacrificially. They placed the baby in the mouth of our giant birds to harden them up, as it were, to the supernatural. This I am sure fits with the Japanese tradition of hiring people to pretend to be ghosts and frighten their children. The Japanese are also delightfully prone to absolutely hysterical fits of laughter. In Italy the parents usually caress the ostriches to show the child how to enjoy the fluffy visitors, and in Poland the adults tend to have fully developed interactions with the fictional beings themselves, behaving like children. In Sweden a policewoman in a temporarily induced hallucination chased my ostrich and pulled its tail right off purely for her own amusement. In Canada my ostrich induced a 'fully-fledged', if you will pardon the phrase, attack of orniphobia. To my astonishment an adult collapsed in a heap crying. Thankfully that was the only time that that has ever happened. In the USA our giant birds, Les Oiseaux, were threatened with court action. The situation in which a passer by is threatening litigation against a giant polka dot ostrich is vastly entertaining, and is typical of the many situations in which the performers are participants and the city dwellers are performers. Eduardo Mendoza (Sin Noticias de Gurb) describes an alien walking undetected through the living statues of the Ramblas in Barcelona. Simulated aliens have become a quite popular adornment of the contemporary urban streets, and real visitors from other planets can now walk around perfectly unnoticed. Street Theatre practitioners should take great pride in helping create this extra terrestrial tourism friendly milieu with all the economic benefits of extra galactic inward investment, filled hotel rooms, etc.
Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.12 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved. |
|||||
| < Anterior | Siguiente > |
|---|
 |