How to Have a Thought Before It Has You: A Metaphysical Forum on the Logic of Collective Imagining
June 27th, 2015 at PIMA Summer Institute, 25 Broadway, NY, NY.
http://howtohaveathought.splashthat.com/
Powerpoint slides from "Waste Management" interactive lecture, performed at the PIMA Symposium on Collaborating with Resourcefulness. February 14, 2015.
Audio excerpt from "Waste Management" on spells and things heard:
"Dream Reading" interactive lecture at Greetings Reading Series @ Unnameable Books, Brooklyn, NY. November 20th, 2014.
Excerpts from script for "Autophagy" interactive lecture, delivered at Bohemian Grove, Brooklyn, NY. January 22, 2014.
(photo of dismembered grapefruit skins used in interactive lecture)
"Autophagy is a biological phenomenon that involves cell degradation of unnecessary or dysfunctional cellular components. It is one of the animal body’s most basic survival techniques. It is, as its etymology implies, really our bodies eating ourselves. “Auto” is the greek for “Self” and “Phagein” is the Greek “to Eat, to feed on, or to devour.” Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved process in which the cell degrades its own components. It is critical for the intracellular quality control of proteins and the maintenance of metabolism during starvation and involved in development and differentiation as well as in anti-bacterial and anti-viral defense."
...
"In Corinthians 11:24 we hear Jesus Christ, son of the Christian Lord, proclaim “Take, eat; this is my body.” The eating of god-flesh is not unusual in the mythological world. Dionysus famously favored being eaten and imbibed in order to be reborn through his followers. The common fact of human sacrifice throughout early cultures of all regions, including the Hebrews up through the time of early Christianity, often included the cannibalistic eucharist, or sharing of the god’s body and blood after the sacrifice. In response to ages of impenetrable theophagy, the act of autophagy becomes a reclamation of the spirit, a violation of the hierarchy of matter, a violent acceptance of oneness.
This brings us to the subject of surrogates and the grapefruit which I have peeled in front of you and distributed segments among many of you. The grapefruit itself has an interesting story, with its discovery as an 18th century hybrid first bred in Barbados. It has all kinds of unusual fruit properties including blocking the formation of certain enzymes at the cellular level—but none of this is really of interest to us in our usage of it as a surrogate for the Self. Most importantly this is a fruit of many skins. And even more importantly, these layers are relatively easy to separate from one another. And even more importantly than that, to do so, direct, unfiltered contact with the flesh is required. Each of you that has a grapefruit segment, I will lead you through the initial consumption of the inner pulp which will in turn unite your flesh with the flesh of the grapefruit, rendering its skin your skin. It require some delicate handling of the fruit, and some slight stickiness on the fingertips and mouth. If this is problematic for you, feel free to pass your grapefruit on to someone else"
