crystal jiko

Working on a project about simple digital collaboration and how to build long distant kinship. Will go live thru Peripheral Forms online and in PDX, incorporating some live performances in July. This Blog will serve as Archive; check for media and exchanges, updated throughout the summer. 

When did this affinity with spiders begin?

evidence 1: I was born under the sign of scorpio,

evidence 2: I loved Charlotte’s Web as a child, and spent a lot of time in the garden,

evidence 3: I got scabies, which is part of the arachnid family, when I took an impulsive trip in search of my mother’s spiritual home in grass valley,

evidence 4: I got a spider tattoo on my torso in 2013,

evidence 5: using my email search box I discovered that in 2007 I was asked by a potential roommate which insect I would be, & I answered spider.

evidence 6: in 2013 I wrote a short story that featured a cunning woman who told a myth to her lover about a princess and a giant spider

evidence 7: in 2016 I went to an ancestor workshop, I followed my fathers mothers’ line into a large dugout where I met a giant burgundy spider who protected my ancestors

evidence 8: in 2017 I applied for my first artist residency, with a proposal to explore lineage, nature reverence, interspecies relating, mythology and improvisational dance techniques thru my connection to spider.. I got it, and here we are...

It was October of 2016 when I went to Daniel Foor’s Ancestral Medicine workshop in Portland, OR. For three days we went in and out of trance, and I developed a deep connection with spider in relation to my feminine Japanese lineage. I had visions of a large ground spider as a familiar, and warning from flying skulls in the forest. I had not heard of the Tsuchigumo myths until I moved to Portland 6 months later, and began my residency at New Expressive Works. I was humbled by my psyche’s inheritance of this story. Tsuchigumo is positioned in japanese folklore as a yokai, a giant ground spider who is also part lion part oni, and uses illusion to trap it’s human pray. Tsuchigumo is also positioned in history as the derogatory term used for indigenous Japanese, esp. those in the mountains, who did not show allegiance to the Emperor. I choose to read Tsuchigumo as protector spirit, and a feared energy that can be harnessed for resistance.

During my residency I also became close to Anansi, a well known Western African trickster deity. When Anansi was brought to the United States and forced to shape-shift for survival, he became Aunt Nancy. I could trace a chaotic connection with the name Nancy back to my early childhood, when I was traveling with my mother on sketchy humanitarian adventures, many of which were in Kenya. Nancy was our code word. I’ve never been able to trust a Nancy, still. I found myself grounded, strengthened and kept in check by my fearful and respectful connection with Anansi.

Another mythic creature I connected with was Jorogumo. Also a Japanese Yokai, Jorogumo or woman spider, is part of the femme fatale lineage. A shapeshifter connected to water. Often told to live under the beautiful Joren waterfall, and take the form of a beautiful woman who steals your heart, before she eats you. There are accounts of people worshipping Joro as a protector from drowning, and warnings in her image against trying to retrieve something you’ve lost. I could liken Joro to my kinship with Medusa, and relate from my societal position as a bold, femme, half Japanese Scorpio. I choose to read Jorogumo as a symbol of desire as creative force.

Arachnophobia is uncannily common. It reads to me as a culturally reinforced prejudice for something one doesn’t understand, or something one has been trained to understand as dangerous. In reality Spider’s are almost entirely harmless, and even protect your house from infestations. Youtube is full of scary spider videos, with a light sprinkling from those trying to debunk spider terror. A colleague once told me that fear can be respect. How we handle that fear is a real telling point.

For my body, for any body, to claim affinity with spider, risks immediate stigmatization. I admit that I too can be startled by spider’s form. When I try to relate biologically I feel a deep foreignness combined with a microscopic familiarity, which is unsettling. On the mythic level, spider is so often demonized and exotified that it’s hard not to frighten myself a little when I embrace it. 

I have been listening to a lot of Donna Haraway lectures while in the studio. It was just summer here in Portland, and our backyard shed became a temple of Araneus Diadematus webs. I spent a fair amount of slowed and alerted time with them, hypnotized by cycles of stillness and agility, learning all the facts I could.

Some take aways,

1: Web building Spiders quickly alternate between using multiple varieties of silk in their building process. They create a web in an average of 30 minutes, often making and abandoning several a day. 

2: they can recycle their webs by eating them as a protein boost, 

3: spiders molt,

4: baby spiders are usually born from egg sacks by the hundreds, and ride the magnetic currents of the wind to disperse like seeds

5: even adult spiders can ride these wind currents, sometimes over entire oceans, by making and hanging from balloons of silk.

6: female spiders do sometimes eat their male partners, if the protein is needed for the birthing process. male orb weavers have a special pattern they play on the web, so the female knows they are kin, there for loving first.

7: Two special ground spiders; Wolfspiders carry their many babies on their backs, Jumping Spiders are responsive to sounds heard with their leg hairs.

8: Arachnids are one of the most far reaching and oldest species on the planet earth, with a huge variety of form, and new species being discovered contemporarily. An example is the silkhenge spider, whose never been seen as an adult, but whose stonehenge-like silk structures were discovered a few years ago scattered along the south american equator line. Unusually, a single spiderling was born from the center of one of the structures earlier this year.

~

I began mimicking/becoming/relating to my earthly spider friends, and my mythic spider familiars, thru improvisation scores in the studio. I filmed some of these improvisations and started watching myself like I was watching spider, picking out pieces that appealed to me.

In the beginning of my days in the studio, I had used a scroll to check in with myself, drawing body-maps and taking notes, in a sort of reporting I found quite exciting. As I pulled from the improvisation videos, I edited things down into small movement clumps, and translated them into drawings, creating my own notation system. Inspired by my grandmothers interest in elemental science, spiders’ dispersion via wind, and with an desire to test my indecisiveness as adaptability, I devised a divination ritual to disperse the cards, leaving only a small handful for me to work with. These cards inspired much of the final movements in the piece.

There was so much experimentation and research that came with this project for me. To honor it I am putting together a Zine, with images, spider info, myths, my own writing, and visualization scores. They’ll be available at the show (12/15-12/17 @ N.E.W, pdx), or you can contact me if you’d like me to send you one!

with love,

I chose the South, My fathers mothers side. 

Fumiko, my first grandmother, had passed from her body about a year before. I have a lot of trauma with my father and am not really a part of that side of the family. They are a large japanese family who assimilated quite well. My grandmother and grandfather met as teenagers in the internment camps, their parents being the generation to arrive to California. When they were released from the camp they got married and bore 3 sons. Not one of them was taught Japanese. Two of them later married white women and bore mixed children, who also spoke no japanese, nor retained nearly any Japanese customs. I stopped seeing the japanese-american side of my family at around age 9. Fumiko and my father were the only ones I'd see, and always separately, and only about once every other year.

Still, Fumiko had a strong influence on me. Her parents, my great grandparents, were still alive when I was a child and part of the family. They were very giggly old folks with sparkling eyes and somehow had gotten along in Albany, CA, communicating with their neighbors, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while speaking very little english. Fumiko had some of their gayety. She was very sarcastic in a discreet, smiling way. Her brother, Nobu, my great uncle was openly gay, which was a big deal in the 50's as a Japanese-American. And her sister, my great aunt Emi, was a sweet smart and spacey thing that you could imagine would secretly be very good at poker. At Fumiko's funeral I was reunited with many family members I hadn't seen in 10 years, not since her husband, my grandfather Ichiro passed. Cousins, who were now adults like myself, some married with children, asked me about my life casually. Her brother Nobu talked about how much of a big sister she had been, always looking out for Nobu and Emi, who were much more of trouble makers. My father was the only son who didn't speak. But in the pictures they included several of me and some of my brother (who isn't related by blood). I was sitting in the front row with my father to my right, his recently adopted son Joshua to his right, and his wife Stacey next. Stacey was the only one of us noticeably crying and she was also the only one who spoke at the podium.

After the funeral I went to Sacred Well and bought a pendulum, a forest green stone that called out to me and when i went to purchase it was told it was a stone known for its connections to the spirit world. I wore it around my neck most the time during the fallowing couple months, estimating it to be the amount of time to cross over in tibetan buddhism, according to what id heard. I wanted to connect to her, and i wanted her to feel supported in her passing. But I didn't want to get to 'serious', nor did I know how to.

I remember the last couple visits to the convalescent home she was living at. Her "alzheimer's" coming in and out of view. She playing along, almost winking along, saying in sudden bursts of comprehension that she was "just waiting to die" with a slight chuckle. I realized that I wanted her, I wanted her as grandmother to tell my life to, to ask her about hers, and I never did that, not really. The New Years after her passing I was invited to spend with that side of the family in San Jose. I went down for a few hours, it was for me a very big deal. It took a lot of courage and convincing. I can feel myself still hiding in bed not wanting to, talking with my friend Andrew, and him telling me to take his car, to go, that I would regret it if i didn't. This friend being someone Id known for 8 years, but mostly because our mutual best friend had killed himself. It was a classic scene, I watched my fathers adopted mexican-american son fold origami like I had never learned, and at the end of it I drove back home, to a home I have no longer, but can easily feel in its winter whisky blankets. I was dating someone at the time and I had asked him to drive me down but he had declined, saying in so many words that it was too much of an undertaking, that he didn't want to be involved in my trauma. I knew then and again and before that that relationship was based on science fiction.

A week after New Years, I was flying to Berlin. I had decided a month before that I would Not be moving there as Id originally planned, but that I would use my ticket to go for a short visit anyways. In the security line I got a phone call from my father, he had decided to give me part of Fumiko's inheritance, the money would be in my bank sometime that week. I see it now as a form of payment for a little bit of family work. In a similar gesture, a week after working with her ancestor line (which was not known to him), I received an email from my father saying that he would be getting a new car and, would I like his old one.

The last time I saw my Grandmother I was with my father. It was about a week before her passing, she had broken her hip, and they were going to let her die from it. This was the first time the three of us had been in the same room in many, many years. This was also the most time my father and I had spent together since I was about 11 years old. He picked me up from my house in Oakland and we talked about science, society and agriculture for the couple hour journey to san jose and on through lunch. I asked him about his feelings around his mothers death, and set strong boundaries around talking about my mother. Fumiko was lying in her bed barely able to speak, barely awake. Her nurse was a black woman who had been working with her for a while now, they seemed to be good friends and this woman had genuine feelings for my grandmother. I remembered my mother telling me my father was secretly racist. I realized they were probably closer then Fumiko and I were, and I was jealous and also glad that Fumiko, who actually went by Helen, had several different lives. There was a moment when she was awake. My father and I were with her and I tried connecting with her really, and I tried being sincere but it felt like a performance of sincerity and that my father was playing along and I was returned to a memory from childhood of helping my father restrain my mother from running out of the house in the night in an effort that was performed as the right thing to do but was hollow and very damaging to my mother. Fumiko, Helen, was not interested in our performance, intact i felt she was disgusted by it. She didn't want to play our make believe game of goodness and even the hope that seeing us together might bring her joy felt like a stretch. My father and I were not mended, we were just pretending. Ichiro, her husband, my grandfather, said goodbye to me before he passed. I was sitting by his hospice bed in their old house and he reached out his hand to me and looked me in the eyes and said goodbye. My grandmother, his wife, did not say goodbye to me. and so i had to find a way to say goodbye to her.

*

I chose south, when I was hovering in this direction, watching my lineages from my canary bubble of safety I felt her grasp on me, I felt how I had tried to carry her and how I had helped her not to pass but to stay. I had to push her away, scolding her like a child or a pet. I saw her mother watching us, I heard her asking me to help now to let her go so they could go and to help them find their way. When it came time to choose a lineage I was the least interested by this, because it was doable. The other directions of lineages offered secrets Id never examined and yet I knew what was needed, that in a way I was haunted. That I expected her death to bring me closer to her family, to my own family, that I might be able to mend my relationship with my father, all things that she could not help me with until she was able to become an ancestor, until I was able to let her become an ancestor.

I looked deep down the line and searched for an established well ancestor. I was shown a whole village, deep in the valley of a mountain, volcanic green, women using twigs for everything, smoke stacks and comings and goings through thin entryways. a saltiness in the air. I asked for a representative but no one was paying attention to me. I asked for guidance, for someone.. I waited outside the entrance to the village and a young woman, almost myself, presented. She seemed to just be smelling me out, and I could not tell if she was to be my guide. There was a young child in a field to our left, we were not directly outside the village anymore, but in a small grove, near a wild school yard.  we looked at each other for a long while, I explained myself and she listened half amused.

When I returned it was to this grove, and I was with my dogs this time. Two black dogs one at either side, not particularly vicious in fact quite loving but dutiful. I called out again and no one came for a long while. I stretched my voice far over the mountain and into the village and still everyone was too busy for me, the young lady was no where to be found and I called and called again and then waited. An old woman arrived, upper back slightly bowed, but with strong black breaded hair on either side of her crinkly face. though she was always a bit vague in form. I asked and listened and she was the one. I was more fearful of her then the young lady, she had a trickster presence but I accepted her as the one by watching of her body and recognizing my ancestors movement. I had had to go back 12 generations to find the twig women, the well ancestors.

The old woman sat with me and told me things without words I can't remember, she showed me her feet bottoms and I showed her my feet bottoms, she slapped me around when I got too curious and then she left me. A large hole, a tunnel formed in the clearing ground and I knew to go in it, one of my dogs came with me and one stayed. The tunnel smelt and sounded like the village but at the end of it we came only to the bottom of a large dugout. The village was obviously above us and we were not allowed. I waited. What appeared was a large spider, much larger then myself, crawling on the walls around me, looking at me with its many eyes but not directly. I and my dog were humbled and waited. I became more eager and the spider fed me visions of my grandmothers' traumas, the silence, the fires, the husbands who had raped in foreign countries, the psychological prisons, the dis-ease and the bombings and the aftermath of rotting loss, the separations and the constant pull of an invisible string holding them in place. suddenly it was time to go. Now, time to go and we went and at the top of the tunnel my other dog was barking, barking loud and calling us back.

The old woman was there waiting. watching me. another young lady, unknown to me, maybe not even my kin, was walking through the field to a flag pole, I followed her there with my dogs, the old woman watching from a distance. the young lady approached a dial and began to turn it indecisively, anxiously, she turned it this way a bit and that way a bit and I began to see that the dial was connected to a raised burnt corpse. The young lady, far from me, not in this dimension kept trying and the old woman eventually came up laughing and knocked the head of the corpse off. The head rolled into the forest and i tried to follow it until i realized there was something growing out of the burnt corpse and the dogs began to bark and i knew this thing was also not with us and to not let it enter my mind to not even acknowledge it or bring its attention our way so i ran back into the grove growing all the more suspicious of my guide. who had disappeared again. My ancestor, my guide, waited as i eased my dogs, one on each knee and as she appeared again i realized they appeared as dead. they were themselves corpsing and i knew that they had no power over the spider.  that my ancestor was the spider or was in some way connected in worship. she was teaching me respect. And the thing in the corpse was nothing but to teach me that my indecision was inherited from this lineages trauma's, which was not what i had thought before, and that there was a distinct difference in the spirit world between and that i should sense it. My ancestor was showing me how to know when it was clearly an other and how to avoid being sucked into it. My dogs were back to their healthy selves and my ancestor was feeding them steaks. My canaries, which had been waiting in the trees, now fed on her hair, which was a nest on the top of her head. she stood apart from me, lovingly and happy with herself.

The next time we tapped in it was to ask about our blessings and challenges. I had already been shown some trauma, and the inheritance of indecision in the face of their being nothing really to be done. But i was shown more, that there was this deep fear that had creeped in, been learned and reinforced with each generation. fear of the grotesque, of the men becoming possessed, of toxic manmade evil, fear to go anywhere cause each place you went was infected, unsafe, and kept pushing you around. Fear to stand out, to fight back, and a nasty streak for tricking others into being more vulnerable then you. This fear continued after death and was keeping my grandmothers' from being able to take their journey to their village, to become well ancestors. I was shown that the blessings were in the feet somehow, that they were strong feet that carried much weight with a lightness. in a shapeshifting quality, the spider going about her business in a sort of easy quiet and in a sense for detail.

it was easy to find the not yet well ancestors, they are all moving very slowly around a darker emptier forest. my ancestor guide gathered them, in their half wake state. i stood at one end and she at the other and they were wrapped in a cocoon of spider webbing, light and filled with warmth. they were being warmed, nourished, they would stay there for a while. at some point i recognized that i was giving and i pull back, i need not give anything there. but my acceptor and i stand on either end holding space.

I am told that i am to give offerings of insects to the spider, here in the physical plane. This means that I must kill, engage in ritual sacrifice. I make an offering during the break. I am in the park singing and dancing and I understand it must be done, and i am shown a special bug and it knows. It is a very difficult task for me, this time i use a stone, the next time i will use my hands. I am weary but I understand that it will help me shed the indecision and fear I have inherited from this line. That part of my job may even be in the killing of livestock, since I speak well with animals, tread in this liminal space, and have an affinity for the psychopomp Hekate.

When we do our partner witnessing I tell them its okay to go, i tell them i understand, that their fears are valid, that they can move now. this exercise brings it all closer to drama therapy and i understand some psychological/spiritual holistic approaches to healing. I still crave a bodily component but understand the rooting into the body and the variance in abilities in a workshop setting.

I am told by my ancestors to start to draw again. reminded the details are part of our blessings. I am told to go the clearing, not the village, when i want to make contact now. I am told to have strong feet and to dance with my hands.

After Berlin I went to Paris with a friend and then to PAF, a performing arts retreat in the agricultural north of France. We were there for a dance gathering wit ch happens every summer. Many interesting things came out of this adventure but the most notable is the work of Anna Gaîotti http://cargocollective.com/annagaiotti , Siet Rae http://www.nonlocalsociety.org/siet-video-tube, and Melbourne based queer dancearts. It was also interesting that I didnt but once in a week feel the need to leave the Monastery, and then, jsut to go to the forest. and that I had almost no desire to drink/party in the night, being so full of luscious exploration were the days.

From PAF I went back to Italy to meet my friend Evie, and the two of us went together from Venice to a Matriarchal gathering on a mountain farm. We were the youngest women present and the only ones who did not speak Italian. But it was one of the most nourishing and freeing settings ive encountered. WOmen of all ages and orientations and amounts of clothing talking about alternative economies and ritual, with the dogs and cats going about their business in the heat.

From Italy it was back to Germany to attend Tanzmesse in Dusselfdorf. 

here’s some simple notes from that :

TANZMESSE 2016

-Large scale organizing, how messy it is and how quickly i try to help make it understandable for the masses

-the international scale, collecting the business cards, the scary exhibition hall

-the idea of needing to be mentally sound to engage shifting methods (practice form budapest)

-Rianto's erotic presence, soft machines project http://www.ka5.info/prospectus.html

-culture recognized through choreography, southern italy

-simple and effective methods: the one material world, the paper masks

-Reut Shemesh

-kyle abraham and my political readings

-the trans installation Angie Hiesel http://www.angiehiesl.de/eng/index.php?page=cat&catid=189

review : http://www.angiehiesl.de/eng/?page=art&artid=174

things left out: the translator

melissas dancing

-appreciating the technique, carte blanche, slo mo, E-MOTION

-Priyer' Si Priyer (reunion) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miMxtibkhS8

And then it was HOME, being Oakland, CA and into the house of my lover, lover? who id barely known before europe, had excitedly made all sorts of weird plans and promises with against my once upon a time deciding to do absolutely anything but this and to whom I was now returning to create some sort of healthy balance between total integration and deep separation in the form of an artistic-spiritual-nutritional-sexual life with, outside of the city yet still nourishing communal and virtual activity; YES and, after 3 months of internet poetry, love and fighting. typical. well perhaps not so typical. 

Anyways that journey has begun and weve been going up and down the west coast and will continue to do so until the end of the year when we fly to Indonesia for an undetermined future. 

We were going to the Shwules Museum.

 The first thing we saw out of the Ubahn station was a surrealist circus, the dolls and crooked signs napping behind the gates. Bleached out, stripped tents sagging with promises. We took a right at the corner. Stilettos and shiny skirts started popping out from the sidewalk. Mesh fabric and cigarette smoke sneaking from behind long hair on either side of the road. A picturesque lean into a stopped car, engine running. We took a left at the corner and a sign greeted us, "Am I Dandy?"

This was the opening to the first exhibit at the Shwules, Berlin’s LGBTIQ museum, which has been growing an impressive archive since 1985. 

'Instructions on How to Lead and Extravagant Life' took us on a walk through the history of Dandy Culture. Including Manifestos, photographs, fashion displays, literary portrayals, the femme dandy movement, the Congolese dandy and the modern day dandy. They even provided a mirrored catwalk with a video cam and a rack of costumes. 

The display took us into Lady Drag, or the beginnings of the drag king movement. Pictures and stories and fashion displays of 1920's - 1950's drag kings filled the room, a record playing jazz pulsating in the middle.

We were very inspired. Time to buy our suits. Prepared and pretty for the next two exhibits,

On our left: millionaires can be trans* // you are so brave*

(The title of the exhibit is in sarcastic critique to celebrity trans obsession.)

We walk in, welcomed by this title on a large glazed board hung in the middle of the room. I started to my right. This is a group exhibition, confronting traditional transgender narratives. The first display I find is a small book. A white glove is provided for flipping through its pristine pages. (the museum is very interactive, it was a little shocking) I put on the glove and explore the stories. They are clips of the stories of transgender accounts throughout history that the author found. Accounts that may or may not refer to actual people. Some personal and emotional and some uncanny.

The next piece that stands out to me is an audio track, two audio tracks in two different headphones, actually. Each with two interweaving monologues; personal politics, seductions and abstract poetics come in and out of consciousness. There are also two dirty mattresses, one slightly resting on the other, for the listener to sit on, so should they dare (which I did).

Just to the left of this is a video display. An erotic monologue, eco-sexual in flavor, curious versus political in tone, tracing the narrators longings, through their life, to be both sexes. An Indian accent, brown fingers exploring white lips in a closest to be recognizable shot. It’s hypnotizing, and feels like a bathtub.

In the middle back of the room there is a geometrical jetty. Black walls, white text and the occasional photograph provide a timeline of transgender history. Starting with Sumerian culture and ending in 2016, it is an immense feat, well done and very informative.

There is a video chat room piece on being a webcam worker and an artist.The artist talks about societies judgements and contradictions towards payment outlets and accessibility (Okay to be paid for playing a sexy character in art, except theirs no money in art, not okay to be paid to be sexy character for webcam, where theirs an absurd amount of money) They speak a lot about the drag and theatrical elements of sex work, creating a self for the fantasy.

 A video collage about police treatment in rural america, as a transgender woman of color, and several panels of raw, self contemplative and critical writing on personal experiences and society enliven the next wall.

The exhibit was amazing, and I was both exhausted and inspired when I walked out of the room.

On our right: Ken. To be destroyed

A photography exhibit where Sara Davidmann has altered old photographs of her aunt and uncle. Davidmann was given an archive of letters between her aunt and her mother, which go in depth into her uncles personal life. Davidmann's uncle was transgender in the 1950's. They never came out in public, but lived their true selves in their private life with Davidmann's aunt. The photographs were altered with paint and pen to portray the public life Davidmanns uncle wasn't allowed.

In the back room there was another exhibit on the life of the amazing stage designer, Peter Kothe.

Honestly at that point I was at my museum maximum and no new information was going to stick.

I went to the cafe to have a tea and smoke and dream about drag king and drag queen explorations and the power in transitioning from woman to man to woman to man again. About the theatrics and economics of art and sex work. About my own comfortability in a state of ambiguity, the small fluxuations and how exaggerating them might effect me..

THEN we made our journey back home, through this “multi-culti” gothic city of clubs and spas and vegan restaurants and turkish food, parks and third wave cafes. We also ended up seeing some lovely sloppy drag sometime later in the week. We have been cruising the queer bars (so far the favorite is SILVERFUTURE, next up THE CLUB).

Our next journey to a museum would be the Pergamon to see Ihstar's Gate and all the Antiquities. We had to wait in line for an hour to get in, on the epic historical museum island in the center of the city. Berlin has long been, since it's Prussian days, a city of the arts and sexological research. Frederick the Great was queer himself, but upon discovery of this his father beheaded his lover in front of him, very harsh. Frederick spent his life closeted and never married.

Ishtar’s gate, the 8th gate into the city of Babylon, was glorious and also devoid of the sacred. The history of Ishtars references as mistress to the rulers, and the building of the gate at the time of transition to Marduk worshiping (the gate portrays Ishtar’s animal symbol and Marduk’s together) muddled intentions.  And here now bundles of tourists take pictures in front of the reconstructed gates, all of us bumbling around with blue audio tour headphones on our head. But what did we expect really?

And today I say good bye to the city, for literally greener pastures, 

http://www.xplore-berlin.de/index.php/en/xplore-what-is-it-en-16

This festival is put on by Compagnie Felix Ruckert Berlin e.V., which also puts on http://www.schwelle7.de/NewCivilization.html and http://www.schwelle7.de/EURIX.html, though they are moving from schwelle 7, the festivals continue

PART 1, soft thoughts::

I felt a bit like there were 2 festivals happening. (and actually there is another Xplore festival which takes place in Rome http://www.roma2015.xplore-festival.com/index.php?lang=en&Itemid=137 with a whole different interesting set of presenters, though minus a symposium) But even within the festival in Berlin, there was a splitting occurring for me. One side was very interdisciplinary, about disintegrating sexual taboos, incorporating multiplicities, somatic discourse, queer theory, and ecophilosophies. Working on expanding the borders of erotic energy work, experimenting with non verbal communication, humanness, healing, the subtleties of power play, and the range of possible interaction states the body/mind can be brought towards, etcetera.

Then there was a side more dedicated to the approachability of kink. This work was more partner oriented, and many of these couples tended to be hetero couples in or above their 40's. Which, as an American, was unexpected. This side of the festival took its blue print from play parties more than dance classes. Orgiastic, hedonistic and voyeuristic, it explored techniques for deepening sexual pleasure and psychological play.

can you guess which festival i want to be at? Though I really appreciated the unique space the relationship between them provided. And perhaps the first could only have been born of the second. I was coming in as a dancer, so was a little intimidated being surrounded by hetero stranger sex, being more used to queerer sensual spaces. I wasn't really turned on, but my mind was lit, and my body was busy digesting and filtering a lot of energies.

Ive never been so able to run my finger on the static edges between sex, intimacy, sensuality and erotic energy.

Sexual intentions thickened the air, the flavor of alertness mixed with excitement on a microscopic level, a sprinkle of dread. It didnt make my hair stand on edge, but I could feel it behind my ears and I couldn't be around it for too long, its a very intense wavelength to receive and not filter somehow. I was at a loss for a filtering mechanism, since I didn't feel like joining. (and luckily, though it was off-putting and otherizing for all involved to have to curb people away, no one was pushy)

There were experiences of spontaneous intimacy, especially in the first and last workshops, which required a different sort of guarding, on the psychic level. This was almost more exhausting, because I wanted to engage in this way, so had to be constantly reinforcing my boundaries. "Yes, and" requiring more finessing then "No". But Intimacy is the gateway to the sharing culture.

Placing it in a sexual container somehow freed it from the undercurrents of sexuality which always creep in where they are tickled and frowned upon. By being juxtaposed against the sexuality of naked couples bound and slobbering in elongated ecstasy, the sensuality was allowed to stay so. Where as, when it's the dance, the eye contact, the touch is the most radical thing happening in the building, sensuality can be squashed by paranoia. Paranoia that we've all inherited for good reason, sexual violence and psychic sexual violence is a normal experience for many, and this is a problem, on all levels.

In the erotic energy I could dance and I could keep this going for a very long time, even as it pushed the edges of the sexual and the intimate, if it was grounded in erotic energy i felt safe in my power. which makes me question my need for control, but i won't attempt the work of unpacking my sexuality in this blog post.

What do I mean by erotic energy? I believe I mean an active sensuality, if sensuality is a qualia. Or perhaps the erotic is a tuning of the sensual. if the sensual is the experience of the world thru the senses, this erotic channel is an activation from the internal brought out thru the sensory plane. One would not just be enjoying the intoxicating smell of the rose, feeling its petals, etcetera, letting memories and visions appear, but would be being moved by being with the rose, you are finding your self in conversation with the rose by being as active as it is..  this doesn't mean that erotic energy has to be in constant movement. one can be quite still. If we need a spectrum we can place sensuality at one end, intimacy and erotic in the middle and sexuality at the other. Though they are probably more like different densities of gases moving around an atmosphere.

for example I'm trying to parse out where dance comes in. when the borders blend, where they blend. it may be in intention, different levels of action, of interaction, as in borders between erotic and sexual.

Part 2, THE FESTIVAL::

Day 1

we began the weekend by going to a lecture,

Queer Embodiment: Shapeshifting and Wildness, given by Caffyn Jesse

The symposium section of the festival was curated by Sacha Kagan under the tittle Embodying Enlivenment. You can find the list of speakers and topics here. http://www.xplore-berlin.de/index.php/en/symposium-en-16

Caffyn is a sex therapist and teaches somatic sex education training in Canada. She is looking at desire as a driving force for creativity and reflection. 'Queer' as a way of life and the his/herstories we can use as inspiration. I pause at the use of the word 'queer' here, wondering how different from the category 'artist', or 'witch' it is in this context. Caffyn is talking about sexual/ gender orientation, yes, but also about queerness, as in outside the mainstream, queerness as a choice, queerness as shapeshifting.

Caffyn went thru some historical moments. We spoke of noah's arc and the saving of one of each sex of animal, the power dynamic of noah saving the animals. The moment of separation between human (savior) and animal (pet). Help as power play. She talked about how we interact with 'nature' thru the screen, 'animals' thru the screen, the otherizing, the illusion this provides us.

We learnt of an all female species of salamanders, and other queer creatures. She spoke of the witch burnings and the fear of the idea of "wildness" in the catholic western world.

Cathyn called us to break the human/inhuman divide by practices of animism, and by queering the mainstream. We were reminded of the greater percentage of 'alien' bacteria that reside in our body and given an exercise: stand up and pat your body and say welcome home, welcome home bacteria. I actually found it quite relieving, perhaps because i'm indecisive and shifty in character. We ended the lecture with another exercise. Each of us pulled an image and a word from bags and then free wrote with the prompt "I am the one who.. " We then got into groups to discuss. I found myself with Medusa's head and the word Judgement in my hands. I heard it as a warning.

Next we found ourselves at a workshop

Microsexes - Alien Couplings, led by Jaime Del Val, an academic and performance artist exploring Metabody.

There were about 60 people in the big room. We were given a brief introduction to the practice and told we can wear/ not wear whatever amount of clothing we wish to. Then we were instructed to begin walking, to feel the space, our bodies, our connection to the floor, each other, and then to slowly slow down. slow down until our movement was almost imperceptible. From this state we tuned in to our bodies microscopic movements and then amplified them, working with sensual impulses. exploring surfaces (of floor, air or the skin of those around us). We were told to touch as strangely as possible, if it felt weird it was right. We were trying to expand our ideas of contact. Coming from contact improv and butoh workshops, I found the work quite familiar in ways. What was interesting/different was the prioritization of the sensual and embracing of the sexual energy. I found myself in many sensual exchanges with people, sometimes quite intimate, but it never crossed over into the sexual realm for us, and only felt erotic in relation to myself. I think though that the acceptance of the sexual made it easier to tap in to a space of more genuine improvisation and connection. (Ive found in my own experience with contact and other somatic dance practices, a paranoia about the sexual, arousal, romance, the erotic, intentions, accidents, to cut into the flow.)  I stayed with my energy, keeping with the dance, not getting sucked in to the orgiastic masses, but very much engaging with various bodies and the atmosphere. I let myself close my eyes from time to time, disassociating from which character bodies I was in contact with. There were several moments when I had to reinforce my boundaries, or hold for someone else's impulse healings. There were people moving in and out of the groupings, taking space as they needed it. I felt safe and physically satisfied.

After the workshop we ended the day with another lecture,

Queering Communities: Becoming (With) Plants, given by Cate Sandilands

Cate is queer theorist, out of York University. She is co-editor of Queer Ecologies. Her talk covered a wide array of topics in an hour. We were introduced to lifeforms that change their sex over lifetimes, and many queer biological plant practices. Ideas of queer communities finding communion in interaction with plants. Tying in with Caffyns bringing up of the natural/unnatural, where as the natural worlds order is often seen as unnatural in human society. Cate gave several examples of queer land projects and eco communities. Then she dipped into some film theory, with a critique of the film Otesánek, or Little Otik. Otesánek is a Czech film, based on a fairy tale, made in 2000. The film is about a couple who desperately wants to but cannot conceive a child. They end up adopting a log and treating it as their baby. They believe and desire the log to be a human child so greatly that the log takes on a human living quality, with a growing appetite. Otik begins eating animals in the town and is eventually fed humans to eat (based on the neighbor girls moralistic judgement). Eventually he eats both his parents. Only when he eats a cabbage patch does the neighbor decide to kill him. Cate brings up themes of taming nature, of cannibalism, of obsessive desire and transformation. And of humans fear of plants with autonomy. We begin looking at other examples of feared plants and the erotic exoticisation of the plant world. The discussion brought to mind a scifi book by John Boyd I read a few years back, The Pollinators of Eden, in which a botanist and her husband fall deeply and physically in love with a plant species on a nearby planet.

We discussed agriculture as a sort of prison, which brought me to Alkistis Dimech's recent post on Re-Wilding : http://scarletimprint.com/2014/06/rewilding-witchcraft/

Cate had us do an exercise as well. We all stood and imagined our body as a plant body. We were led through feeling our stem and leaf systems, reaching towards the light for nutrients, our root system extending into the soil. We focused on feeling one or two root tips and then tried to comprehend that we would have thousands. It was an exercise in embodying, something between mimicry and becoming.

Day 2

We learned the hard way that California time and German time, are not the same thing.

after missing the morning workshop by a few minutes, we went to

Sacred ,,Yes'' , led by David Bruce.

Bruce is a practitioner of traditional Chinese Medicine. He is focused on east asian holistic healing, sexuality and goddess worship. The workshop was on how to use bodywork to increase arousal/ arousal to deepen body work. It was interesting in theory and potentially useful in practice but its rhetoric was full of hetero-normative assumptions and I personally found the energy quite domineering/appropriative. My sensitivity could be in part due to my familiarity with this sort of environment (southern california's take on yoga). Never the less, we were given a demonstration where Bruce and his female assistant both stripped naked, told each other there fears, boundaries and desires, painted there own sacred symbols on the massage table with a japanese brush and oil, and then got to work. The woman lay on the table and Bruce demonstrated different sort of arousing massage techniques. The general rule was that for a female, you work your way around the hot spots (nipples and "yoni") and then spiral in. And for a male, you begin with the groin and work your way out. after there ceremony was complete (about 30 minutes… which he reminded us could take several hours), we got with our partners. The partner exercises focused on the neck, there is a central pathway along the main artery in the side of your neck that is apparently a center for sexual arousal (it did feel very good to have worked on). another move that I appreciated was the sweep up under the back, a wave that arches and releases. Bruce talked about how the build up of sexual energy can actually cause more tension in the body if its not spread/released through the spinal system. This idea of circulating the energy made sense.

after the lunch break we headed to the

Silent Space

The sound space, guru supermarket and massage/shibari lounge where open to all anytime throughout the festival. The Silent space was a wordless space, draped in white, where musicians came and went playing organic sounds. Even here there was no escape from the hetero ramming going on in the corner, and the finger banging massages being explored and offered on various matts through out the shrine like warehouse (sorry medusa, no judgement). There were a few rings set up and some shibari being practiced. A couple of women were lap in lap practicing a sort of sound healing on each other. a couple people were asleep under tables supporting intimacy between others and then there was a small group of us sprawled out throat singing. 3 women in a row and a man apart lying on our backs playing with each others melodies and tones and interjecting strange sounds into the music of the accordion playing, body suited prankster. While a young woman dressed in veils was banging on various metal percussion boards that hung from the ceiling. finally a tapping in to that resonated. after an hour or so in this way, i left to find a strange haunted room with an old dusty car sitting on top of a storm grate, and then into the big hall where various cement blocks had been set in a sort of pathway sculpture and i danced it out here, to the pulse of the room on the other side of the wall. It was the most activated I felt during the 3 days.

Then to the Breathing Slimes workshop, led by Maranta Rubiera.

Rubiera is a yoga teacher and erotic writer.

We all (about 40) sat in a circle in the big room. Rubiera explained to us her fascination with slime molds; single celled organisms which come together into a collective consciousness from time to time in order to establish new pathways for food and share resources. She was interested in the potentiality for aloneness and togetherness, and in forgetting about our brains. We were to try to embody a version of slime existence. We were shown 3 ways of breathing and physically connecting, and told to leave our brains out of it. One way for a water environment, one for an earth environment and one for an air environment. we were broken up into 3 groups which rotated, exploring all these environments. at the end we ALL came together in the water environment, swaying slightly and breathing thru the sides of our ribs, connected with one hand to another there, time dropped off and the collective sway took over. It was a very simple way to tap in to an infinite sensuality. meditative and resettling. It was not about connecting with someones whole self, but about creating a whole self amongst us that had nothing to do with our egos. This theme of bacterial/microbial motivation was building on itself.

The last workshop for the day was

Movement and Immobility, led by Kristina Marlen.

Marlen is a Physiotherapist and Performer, who has been working with the sexual aspect for the past 8 years.

The workshop began as a typical somatic dance workshop, we all circled up and acknowledged each other and the intentions of the workshop. Marlen was one of the only facilitators who mentioned consent as being necessary, but still struggled with how to incorporate this in a casual way between all of us participating. We then began walking around the room, feeling the space, seeing each other, interacting with each other in some way. We all rolled down to the floor, and walked around on our hands and feet, being encouraged to bump into each other in a play full way which inspired much laughter throughout the room. We rolled back up through the spine and settleed to watch a demonstration.

Marlen demonstrated bondage techniques with her partner. She was the dom and she used nothing but her body and motion to bring her partner into various positions of exposition and boundedness. She emphasized the movement from one position to another, the power play, the nurturing and the tease. we partnered up and tried it. I found it quite interesting, from a more proactive/experimental take on body manipulation/sensory anatomy training, to the subtleties of intention communication, and the fluctuation between aggression and nurturing while listening.

The next exercise was similar but incorporated rope. My partner was much more interested in the way we could dance with the rope then in being bound in various positions. so we explored that. which was fabulous and kinda silly. I was vary inspired by the rope as a prop to propel and restrain movement, and am continuing these explorations now in my practice.

I was also very impressed with Marlen's practice and teaching.

Day 3

We arrived early this morning, and attended

Mind and Body Awakening, with a twist led by Ysel and Shadow

Ysel is a practitioner of Ericksonian hypnosis, and Shadow facilitates workshops in presence and energy work.

We all waited outside as Shadow and Ysel cleansed the space and then one by one we were shown an ∞ gesture, received the symbol on our wrists and were told to repeat the phrase "to see and to be seen" while walking around and orienting ourselves to the space and each other. We were told to look at each other as we passed, to stay for a time with those who drew us. we were told all this over a distant amplification, one speaker repeating "to see and to be seen" the other instructing, never sure who was who. we moved amongst each other, passing, engaging and continuing, for a long while. Then, after this introductory meditation, we partnered with someone, following intuition. Evie and I decided to be drawn to each other for this first exercise. Our eyes were closed and we were led through a series of loose associations, we were there to feel each others energy, to see and be seen without eyes. Knowing Evie very well, it was interesting to pretend I didn't, to try to sense her as a stranger. It would work for a while and then she would sigh or id catch her scent. The tried disassociation helped me re-gage her as she is now, 4 years after our meeting, and 5 days into our second or third or is it fourth travels. We changed partners, this time eyes open or closed, this time more imagination in the exercises, I paired with a small older woman, strong dark eyes, she reminded me of my best friend in high schools mother. Though again, I tried not to associate. We both went in and out of knowing smirks, trying to take it all seriously, and once we did it got a little too serious for me and I had to withdraw slightly. Then to a final pairing. This time my partner was a larger creature and much sillier. We got clownish and it was fun. I felt a genuine bond and while they kept me from getting to serious, I kept them from getting too ridiculous, which kept us in a trickster space. We hugged a real hug, agape between strangers. Then we all circled up and went around giving a word or a gesture. (My word was witness, my last partners word was magic).

The workshop threw me off because I was expecting to get a massage that morning. Instead I had to expend a lot of energy deflecting the psychic energies I was weary of, while keeping myself participating. I had to believe enough to get through the hour and try to have an actual experience, but I couldn't be fully open. I was told later, surprisingly by one of the facilitators, that I was doing it just right. I believed enough to be weary of other peoples psychic baggage and to feel the potentialities of being a receptacle for said baggage. It, like so much of this festival, was teaching me about my boundaries, about the levels of work I feel comfortable engaging with.