Self-instructions for a performance at 'Unhooked Thinking Two - Love and Baggage' conference, May 10th 2007, Bath Guildhall (see www.unhookedthinking.com)
1. Face black sugar paper on flipchart; say, ‘let this
be darkness, space devoid of visible features’
2. Lift stick of chalk; say ‘let this be light, electromagnetic
informing’
3. Now, say ‘let darkness include light, and light include
darkness’
4. Draw dashed outline of human ‘gingerbread man’ on black
paper, saying, ‘here is a dynamic configuration of light as an inclusion
of and in darkness – a local ‘somewhere’ distinguishable but not isolated
within non-local ‘everywhere’
5. Now redraw figure’s arm into a waving gesture, drawing
attention to how this reconfiguration involves the simultaneous, reciprocal
transformation of the shape of space within and around the figure, not the
movement of the figure alone.
6. Now ask ‘How can the light figure make a dislocated
object of its self by excluding darkness and becoming all white?’
7. Fill in the interior of the figure with solid whiteness.
Say, ‘here is the basis for objective rationality and all kinds of discrimination’
8. Take pair of scissors, cut out figure, leaving behind
hole, and scrunch up figure, saying ‘here is the basis for existential fear
and the need to impose barriers to love by fixing self definitively in place,
in opposition to other’