AFRODIXIT
TRANS ANIMUS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE ERA
Organiser of [t]ERROR on Tour 2021
Terror on Tour 2018 is an online conference hosted by Malmö University - Institute for Urban
Terror on Tour is an international network of interdisciplinary academics and artists whose research practices engage with intersections of terror and travel. After five successful interventions - at the University of Roehampton, UK (2015), the University of Chichester, UK (2016), the University of Innsbruck, Austria (2017), HEAD – Genève, Switzerland (2018), and Trinity College Dublin, Ireland (2019) - Terror on Tour continues to cross physical, conceptual, and disciplinary borders. In bringing the conference to Nordic Europe and placing it in the “borderscape” city of Malmö, we aim to develop new intellectual and creative synergies that interrogate the “North” as a utopia/dystopia/heterotopia, particular through the notion of the “stray”.
Drawing on the etymological origins of the term “error” (errare ‘to stray, err’), we focus on the notion of the “stray” as a thread running through the various interventions. Whether treating Nordic/northern spaces as desirable utopias, nightmarish dystopias, or inherently contradictory heterotopias, we anticipate contributions that engage with liminalities, transgressions, fringes, hybridities, edges, and borders. These concepts will be pursued in relation to: issues of belonging; fear of the stranger; nostalgia for non-existent pasts; and moving between two or more worlds in a widely-conceived “North”.
Coming to the world
Today man is the strongest living being, the one that has overwhelmed other species, has conquered the planet and now rules with its laws.
But did the man really deserve so much success?
In 2012 Damàsio, neurologist, Portuguese psychologist wrote "Self comes to mind"
For a very long time the planet was dominated by endless colonies of bacteria, single-celled organisms that contained genetic material within them. After 2 billion years these beings began to unite forming first single tissues, then joined the different tissues forming the first organs, and finally the various organs were combined to create complex functional systems;
bacteria dominated the earth, were autonomous and able to provide for themselves; yet, suddenly, they went into action of their own free will. It seems that there was an awareness in them that much more could be done at that moment. Everything happened as if we already knew that an evolution was possible. These cells, according to the author, have been shown to have "a firm and unwavering determination to stay alive, as long as the genes within their microscopic nucleus ordered them to." Although lacking the rationality of modern brains, they have expressed behavior.
Survival has always been guaranteed by the interaction between internal mechanisms and external conditions experienced.
Depending on external circumstances, the internal body is redefined to allow for its adaptation.
However, it seems that every little function of the cell is very careful about what needs to be done at a given moment. The author seems to venture the hypothesis that, even in the smallest living organism, a particular form of awareness directed at the perception of one's own body and space has always been rooted.
Damasio reverses the traditional ideology of conscience. He states: "... so that the implicit knowledge of the management of life processes precedes the conscious experience of such knowledge." The idea of ​​constant desire with which those cells have prevailed represents a contact between the organic reality and that of our Self.
Both the single cell and the complex organism feel the same need to find the energies for proper functioning, but above all to find a certain balance in the interaction between the internal state and the external environment.
According to the researcher Damasio, the aspects that have decreed the success of evolved beings and the transmission of genes to subsequent generations are movement, detection and above all the reaction protocols.
- Movement is a capacity that has certainly influenced the life expectancy of the organisms with which they were endowed. It represents a skill that allows living beings to move, seek better conditions or avoid possible threats
Sensing deals with the intuitive ability to identify changes in physiological conditions both within one's body and in the external environment
The reaction protocol consists of a set of rules by which decisions are made to move or not. They can concern both the internal dynamics of the body and the surrounding environment.
The diversity of the environments in which our species has thrived can make us imagine the high variability of the mechanisms used for survival. Although their biological nature, human adaptive mechanisms are considered very advanced compared to the predispositions of any other animal. In animals, in fact, what causes you to lose control is an overwhelming instinct.
However, this does not happen to man. He is a "Social Animal".
Our behavior, although always of a biological nature, necessarily manifests itself within social and cultural systems. Education and social life are the main areas in which conventions are passed down through the generations.
African masck
The African mask as a connection to a spiritual, vegetal and ancestral world.
In African cultures, the omnipotent, omnipresent creator, God, is never represented as the image of him because we try to imagine ourselves in him.
So, if God is all and all things at once and we the human being, the hornet, the butterfly, the grass, the tree, the wheat, we are all different expressions of that singular essence which has our peculiar experiences, which are all interdependent on each other for survival.
Sobonfu Some, was a Burkinabe teacher and writer, specializing in topics of spirituality, encloses in the declaration the importance of nature in African societies in all sectors of society, including its systems of spiritual knowledge; “Nature is everything in Africa”.
The reference to Nature is not limited only to vegetation and soil, but also to animals and the earth itself, including the four elementary sources: air, water, fire and minerals / rocks.
This by no means excludes planetary bodies and the universe in general and the constellations within it, many of which also inform particular ritual ceremonies as evident in full moon rituals or the appearance of interstellar objects such as comets or meteorites visible in the atmosphere. terrestrial.
The mask combines the two elements determined in the African ancestral and spiritual ecosystem: what is hidden, the one who is masked becomes the means through which these entities are made manifest and visible: he literally transforms himself into something else; his identity, his face, his body are erased to make room for another body, for another presence, that of the being represented by the mask; what is shown (the mask itself and what it represents). This connection is presented as an alternating and ambiguous game of dissimulation and revelation, of transformation and convention.
Through this union, the masked body and the mask that also represents a symbolic value that reflects rituals, cultural crerdences and metaphysical reference, a real transformation of the individual into a spiritual being is achieved, an instrument that allows man to get out of personal identity and to undergo a metamorphosis.
The goal is to connect more and more to the universe, to the primordial cell or to the creator.
Scarnification:
From covering his face and body with anthropomorphic masks, to approaching the One, to primordial existence, through metamorphic transpositions of the soul, the human being has started a new era, that of the anthropogen: the modification and transformation of Nature, through the conditioning caused by human actions.
The concept of stripping, understood as the creation of incisions in the skin in such a way that decorative scars are formed, in the anthropecenic era, the use of this technique, was used against Nature. If initially this type of skin decoration was widely practiced in the past among some African populations to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood, and still today in some parts of Africa it is a type of extreme modification of the body that symbolizes beauty and Welfare; now it is no longer man who does it to himself but to nature, disfiguring forests, coasts, river courses, the biosphere.
The body has taken over the soul and man has distanced himself further and further from the Whole of himself, from the creative universe.
Castration
The geological era named anthropocene is characterized by traces now visible even to the human eye, such as: atomic explosions, which created radiation; the use of fossil fuels and the increase of carbon dioxide in the air; the use of new materials such as aluminum, concrete, plastic, pervasive for the environment; mining, drilling, deforestation, urbanization, coastal erosion and agricultural activities have caused the earth's soil to change; the use of fertilizers, which have caused the increase in nitrogen and phosphorus levels; global warming and therefore the increase in temperature; finally, the mass extinction, not only of animal species but also of humans, caused by violent environmental changes or too much urbanization.
The evolution of production processes have created a state of well-being and body comfort, they have not been able to control time.
Time was reorganized following the technocratic and productive rules.
Doing it as soon as possible did not consider the time of the mind and soul.
Performance anxiety or blocking of performance is a widespread symptom in the contemporary era, because it is no longer possible to control and manage stimuli, personal and real situations of everyday life: We must be competent and always ready to what others expect from us.
Castration is understood here as the removal of the soul, replaced by the technology produced by humanized electronic impulses in controlling the social mass.
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The anthropocene, the era of the new man
Man and mask, man and the pandemic, an uncontrolled virus that has scourged the entire planet, man and his fears for the future.