 Hi everybody. Thanks for coming to the second iteration of Performing Knowledge. I'm Cori Tamler, and I'm Margaret Edwards. So Performing Knowledge, this is the second year that it's happening. It was conceived and put together last year for the first time by Amir Farjoon and Mara Valderrama, who are both students in the PhD program in theater and performance here at the Graduate Center, collaborating with Frank Henschker, who's the director of the Siegel Center. Margaret and I are also students in the same department, and so we've taken over it over the event this year and made it our own and built on the structure of the event. The idea is that it will be an annual thing that aims to build a community of scholars and artists and interdisciplinary folks who are working with ideas around knowledge and how we shift our relationship to knowledge, how we share it with each other, how we know what it feels like to know something, what it feels like to share knowledge, and all of those kinds of things. So it's a very open space, and part of our idea is that knowledge isn't passive. Knowing isn't passive, so we do really encourage you all, as audience, throughout the day. For however long or short you choose to stay, to talk to each other, to interact with each other and to engage with the kinds of questions that these lecture performances, knowledge performances, now and earlier in the day, in other spaces throughout the grad center have sort of brought up. And there's not time for, it's pretty rapid fire, there's not going to be time for formal audience talk back or discussion, but we'll be encouraging you to talk with each other during the 10 minute transitions from one piece to the next. So don't feel like you have to sit and be quiet. You can talk, you can run to the bathroom, you can engage with your neighbor. And there's also an audience response station outside by the table in front of the theater. And we would love if you jot down some questions there or respond to some of the prompts as a way of also kind of like activating that in lieu of a formal talk back. And finally, there will be a reception at the very end of the night, which is some hours from now. But if you're still here at 8.30, after the last performance goes off, please join us in the green room, which is the theater department lounge. It's upstairs on the third floor, room 3111. And there will be some snacks and drinks and another good place to talk. So we don't want to talk for too much longer, but the way that this process works, we've been working on these pieces in a kind of collective dramaturgical process since the beginning of this semester. And so some of the pieces have their own dramaturg, and, but we also have all been in conversation throughout and we've had several group meetings and a lot of exchange back and forth across the projects as well. And sort of we're thinking of dramaturgy. You might be most familiar with dramaturgy as a term as something that refers to the structure of a piece, the structure of a play, if it's a term you're familiar with at all. Many of our participants were not. But we are thinking in a kind of expanded form of dramaturgy and thinking about dramaturgy as something that really deals with the relationship between ideas and current events and ideas in the space that they're in, ideas and the body. And that's sort of where we're coming at how knowledge comes out and is expressed and is shared, sort of thinking about the dramaturgy of knowledge. So even if pieces don't have a specific dramaturg listed or attached to them in the program, they have been through some of this kind of dramaturgical process. And you'll see a lot of the strings showing throughout the day. We're not hiding any of the transition, any of the things we're doing. These are all works in process in some way. So just embrace that and feel free to take part and be loud. And just finally before we start, we wanna say a huge thank you to the Siegel Center for supporting this and being a good collaborator in this work. The theater department, the doctoral students council, the doctoral theater students association, the university student senate, who else is it, the Sydney Cone chair, and all of our incredible volunteers. We've had a ton of volunteers help us out throughout the day and who are continuing to help us out. And Mike, who's up in the booth, who's making all of the tech magic happen. Thank you so much, Mike. And May, who is also part of the Siegel Center and is doing amazing support and some dramaturgical work too for this whole thing. And did I forget anything? All right, all of these performances, one more thing. All of these performances are about 20 minutes long and you can come and go. You don't have to stay for the whole part. Other people will probably be coming in so that's also part of it. But we hope you'll stay for as much as you can. And with that, do you wanna introduce the first one? Yes, so I will introduce the first knowledge performance by Tomo Imamichi, dramaturg by Elio Akinchi. And it's called 20 Minutes on a Treadmill. Hello, welcome to 20 Minutes on a Treadmill. I am Tomo Imamichi and my field is environmental psychology which studies the relationship between people and their environments. One way to do this is exploring it via challenging tasks and challenging environments. Now, this is somewhat of a challenging task and this is somewhat of a challenging environment. Running is one thing, running on a treadmill is another. Also, facing all you wonderful people is also something quite different. I feel that I'm a little underdressed today. Usually, I would dress up a little bit more but this is also one major thing about the transforming relationships because over the course of the next 20 minutes I'll be getting much warmer even though you'll be still not so warm maybe. So one of my projects involved looking at marathon runners and how they basically deal with the task of training for and running in a marathon. Running in a marathon and then to look at the transformation that occur over the course of training and over the course of racing. An important part, of course, is to pace yourself. Something that I'm trying to do right now. Because as part of this performance, of course, I would like to talk about running but I would also like to demonstrate running and in order to do so, I set myself a goal. To basically go at an eight minute per mile pace which would allow me to cover about four kilometers or 2.5 miles, which is not that much of an accomplishment but considering that I'm also trying to run give a presentation about running, I think that is a pretty decent performance. Actually, if I were on the road right now, I probably could run up to Queens. So going back to pacing. In the beginning, the same pace will seem easy when I first set the pace. I was wondering, am I going to slow? Now, I don't think that I'm going to slow anymore. And of course, I'm only doing this for another 15 minutes. So I think I'll be able to manage. However, in the marathon, it's really key that you have to hold back at the beginning even though it seems slow. Then eventually you settle into a pace and then it almost happens by itself everything. You fall into this rhythm where everything sinks like the rhythm of the feet, the breathing, they're all going in sync and it becomes easy and it allows me to look around, taking the environment and this is actually also what most of my participants reported. But that is not the defining aspect of the marathon. Usually at around 20 miles, so the marathon, you would have another 6.2 miles to go. This is usually when it becomes challenging. This is also known as the wall. And then that pace that seemed easy suddenly becomes very challenging. And then you have to really push forward and there's this disconnect between objective time and distance and then the experienced time and distance. So that last 6.2 miles or the last 10K are usually the hardest part of the marathon and what makes the marathon a marathon. But of course, this isn't the only time and only aspect that I explored about running. I have also engaged in other project that could be situated in something that we might call moving methodologies or moving epistemologies because it is through moving through the environment. Well technically, I'm not really moving through the environment right now. I'm definitely moving though. But anyway, by some form of embodied activity it allows us to know more about ourselves and the world. And in a way, I'm using this performance not only to perform knowledge but actually also to generate knowledge. Because I usually do not run on treadmills and certainly not on a treadmill in front of people. However, in a way, I was looking forward to this experience just to get a sense of what it feels like and it feels pretty hot. I'm noticing that I'm beginning to sweat and I'm the only one in the room here I guess. Of course, the other part that I was looking forward to was in generating some knowledge in the Q&A session that we'll have for the last five minutes because oftentimes I can get inspired by some good questions or comments. And the thing is what better way to answer questions about running when you're running? Because you can take runners and have them talk about running but when they're not running how well can they talk about running? And I always notice that with myself too because some of my best ideas happen when I'm running and that might be in part explained by the activity of moving but it could also be that I'm inspired by the environment as well. What happened? I might have exhausted the treadmill and I still have ways to go but I'd rather have the treadmill break down than myself because that was also one of the concerns that I had is usually with a presentation. I also was somewhat concerned about not just the presentation part but also about the running part and then of course there are a couple of things that can go wrong. Sometimes it's the runner other times it seems to be the treadmill but I'm glad that it's you and not me. Yes, yes, so unfortunately I'm not on the treadmill anymore but I was going to do a little sprint too. There was definitely a moment after you talked about falling into a rhythm with the breath in the body that I saw you fall into a rhythm. There seemed to be a moment that your body, your rhythm, the words, everything seemed to kind of and I wondered if you, when you felt that moment if you felt that moment because I definitely saw a change in your body. Yes, there was a point as I was warming up that I was finding my rhythm and I think that also helped my presentation and it's quite interesting when sometimes people when they think about things how they like to pace up and down for example I think it has something to do that our thoughts sometimes come when we move. One thing that fascinates me about the transfer of embodied knowledge is that once it leaves the body is it still knowledge and then what is it exactly that gets passed or maybe a more pointed way to ask is what knowledge were you hoping to share or to perform specifically for us today? And I'm not sure whether I'll be answering your question but one thing is also that sometimes when I have certain thoughts and they occur while they're running they seem very specific to that activity and to that environment and then once I'm somewhere else and try to re-articulate them it seems very difficult that there's almost like that sometimes it seems that I leave my best thoughts on the road. So that was something that I think your question slash comment inspired that I find is very key. And also now that I'm off the treadmill it doesn't seem as genuine anymore to talk about the running. So I'm just sort of building off some of the other ideas that have come up I think it's really fascinating that idea of finding a rhythm and yes I think we've all had that moment of that kind of clarity that can come in physical movement and I'm wondering what you feel like how much of that is psychological and how much is physiological or whether it's perhaps impossible to... It's very interesting that people pick up on that because it's also, I should have mentioned that I also think of the concept of flow and I think this sort of like experience you could also call some form of synchronicity and I think where those boundaries between self, body, environment seem to disappear so I think it's contingent on that holistic experience which in a way a treadmill indoors is not quite the same as running outdoors I think Okay so I think we are out of time so thank you very much for running with me and yeah too bad for the treadmill Alright thank you Take the treadmill to its grave Quotidian ritual and festive, thank you Festive performances where food is a key feature and my focus is on ordinary people, the practices of ordinary people because I don't really care about rich people but for the purposes of today we're going to talk about rich people Also colonialism is a wonderful, magical thing for my work because it's responsible for the transnational diversification of food practices in this time period so that means I get to have some dissertation chapters and also that food in Europe during this time has something we call flavor but we're not going to talk about those things today either Today we're going to talk a little bit about the early modern aristocratic kitchen a little bit about banquets some things that we encounter when we examine our recipes and we're going to do a little bit of cooking so we can guess from someone's excited we can guess from printed books during this time period printed books about household management that mostly in ordinary households women did the cooking but these books were printed for women who had servants so literate women were expected to read these books and impart that knowledge onto their staff basically it's only in the 18th century that we have evidence of independent women actually making a living as chefs so surprise, surprise in noble early modern households the chefs were mostly men and he had loads of helpers he was paid very well he had dozens of meat as a bonus on holidays and if you've ever read any early modern recipes you know that these people really loved their meat and the head chef would have complete freedom when it came to hiring or firing staff for his kitchen lords would treat these chefs really, really well so that they would remain loyal so it's no wonder that no one ever got poisoned or entire households never got poisoned so banquets during this period were quite theatrical and could incorporate entertainments with allegorical themes and elaborate centerpieces also music this painting for example depicts the Lord Unton who was a diplomat during the Elizabethan period and here he is presiding over a banquet while a court mask is performed for his dinner guests the staff that worked with the banquets were also very specialized and very large for example you would have a special meat carver who would suspend an entire bird on his carving fork and slice pieces into a plate and it sort of looked like this there was also a specific person who bought preserved food specific person who bought the fruits you had a butler who would buy the dairy and the cheese and you had a wine steward and then beneath all of these special guys you would have an army of pages, servants and water bearers so at a typical banquet you definitely had more people serving than people eating food was also quite elaborate and spectacular at the banquets written by Vittorio Lanzalotti who was a food writer is from a banquet at an Italian court the first cold course consists of a veal pie in the form of a shield bearing the arms of the king there is a sugar glazed ham surrounded by pastry baskets with pistachio pastry stars touched up with gold and silver next is a roasted turkey larded with candied citron the ends of which are gold and silver as are the sugar pastry wings, neck and tail the second credenza course consists of an egg and sugar sculpture composition with a pastry crown, garlands marzipan rosettes and gold and silver touches there is also the curious invention of gelatin columns filled with little birds and fish suspended within as if alive and probably my favorite is the third credenza course where they had dueling marzipan germans as well as a little scene of dancing rustics molded out of butter so when it comes to presentation the early moderns were not playing around especially when it comes to birds particularly the peacock which was often roasted whole and then afterwards they would sew the feathers back onto the body for presentation the other thing they did with peacock was to use the head, wings and feathers to decorate meat pies that's an example of one that's another there are quite a few issues that come up when we're dealing with early modern recipes for one a lot of them look like this this is a page in the recipe section of a commonplace book belonging to a man named John Crophill who is a medical practitioner and a bailiff and it's dated between 1430 and 1485 somewhere on this page is a recipe for tarts of flesh so do we have some early modernists in the room? can any of you read that? alright do we have real early modernists in the room? I'm kidding I can't read that either because I haven't done the paleography training but even if you could read it you would have to wonder what some of these words even mean and we have resources like the OUD and lexatons of early modern English which help us figure out what the words are neither of which I used for today but I will tell you anyway what it says it's take the flesh of capons or of hens and pork and mix with figs, raisins and ground hard boiled eggs add raw eggs, saffron, ground ginger, cinnamon, gallangal sugar and whole cloves and maces then put them in a case made of thin pastry make another course from turkey or clover or other heavy game bird and another course from ground meat and eat them together well menj here either means mix them together or eat them together I'm hoping it means eat them together anyway today we're not making tarts of flesh because we're in New York we're gonna make the pigeon pie but New York pigeons are fucking vicious and really hard to catch I brought a chicken this recipe for pigeon pie comes from a lady named Hannah Woolley who is an English writer and she published books on household management the short title of her book is The Accomplished Ladies Delight and here she is looking very accomplished and here's the recipe we're gonna follow today trust your pigeons to bake and set them and lard the one half of them with bacon mince a few sweet herbs and parsley with a little beef suet the yolks of hard eggs and an onion or two season it with salt, beaten pepper cloves, mace and nutmeg work it up with a piece of butter and stuff the bellies of the pigeons season them with salt and pepper as before take also as many lamb stones seasoned as before with six collops of bacon the salt drawn out then make a round coffin and put in your pigeons and if you will put in lamb stones and some artichoke bottoms or other dry meat to soak up the juice because the pie will be very sweet and full of it then put a little white wine beaten up with a yolk of an egg when it comes out of the oven and so serve it we're gonna break all of that down in just a minute but just note that we're not given any measurements so to make a pie we need to have a crust first and for meat pies early modern recipes call specifically for a paste for thin baked meats this is a recipe for a paste for thin baked meats from Joseph Cooper chef to King Charles I so this is some royal crust alright? the paste for your thin baked meats must be made with boiling liquor as follow-up when your liquor, which is water boil it put to every peck of flour two pound of butter but let your butter boil in your liquor first in contemporary cooking we call this a hot water crust pastry and it's ideal for meat pies because it doesn't leak soggy fun fact pastry crust was never originally intended to be tasty it was meant to be used to carry food around in a safe little packet like a bento box kind of anyway we're not exactly told how much boiling water to use but I'm a much better cook than I am a scholar so I wasn't too worried about that and two pounds of butter is a little bit insane but what's more important is what is a peck of flour so according to manuscripts cookbook survey a peck of wheat flour is an understood weight of 12 or 14 pounds however in other recipes a peck of flour is a volume measurement of two gallons which would weigh only 8 to 10 pounds so a peck of flour is 12 or 14 or 8 to 10 pounds and I don't know if any of you bake but that's a big crust that would require quite a few chickens never mind pigeons so I've reduced it just a little the thing with hot water crust pastry is that it needs to be formed while it's still warm the top of the crust didn't make the subway ride so it needs to be formed while it's still warm so I made the coffin at home and I brought it with me now to make things go a little bit faster I'm going to need your help so I've broken down the rest of the recipe into these numbered steps so I'm going to start with the first one and I need you to read them aloud to me and I'll do it as I go okay alright so number one trust your pigeons to bake trust your pigeons to bake and set them and lard the one half of them with bacon so this is the chicken I've baked it already in the name of food safety because you know we're in the US and you guys can be fussy about that and it's been basted in its own fat so this is the chicken okay next please okay so for sweet herbs I mean I'm not sure what that means really but I use tarragon I use rice and I think some sage and I used the entire egg because I'm a graduate student and I'm not throwing away a good egg white and parsley so we're going to mix that all up and then where's the butter here we go a piece of butter how much would you say is a piece of butter all of it all of it there we go this is why I brought the big spoon because I knew someone was going to do that alright so we're going to mix that up that's good so now we're going to stuff the belly of this chicken that's good enough next step please with this alright next please okay so the juice that Hannah is worried about lamb stones and sweet breads can be a little bit divisive so I decided to soak up the juices we would use some potatoes now in the early modern period around the beginning of the 16th century potatoes were imported from Peru and north, north, north, west Bolivia but today our potatoes are imported from the exotic land of Idaho and that's what we're going to use to soak up the meats so we're just going to chop that I think that's great I think so last step please alright so since we don't have a top crust right now Margett is going to go make it in the back and she's also going to stick our pie in the Siegel Center's wood-fired oven thank you Margett don't forget to brush it with the wine and egg when it's done it doesn't tell us how long to bake it but my educated guess it's going to be like three to four hours so we have just enough time for some Q&A so would anybody like to ask a question yes testicles lamb testicles anybody else well actually time's up you're never ever going to know so thank you not done yet because the early moderns did not send a naked pie to a party and and I tried I really really tried to get peacock for you guys today but they didn't have them at Whole Foods so I brought you a crow trigger warning it's about to get graphic so if you're like the queasy type you should probably leave so here are the wings maybe one here does that look even to you great then where are my special tools there we go so if you're around at 8.30 today please go up to the green room for the reception where this pie will be served you guys were a great audience thank you so much so just as we set up for the next one again I encourage everybody to talk to each other in the transition but also just a warning about the next performance that if you have sensitive hearing this one has some very loud feedback and sort of high pitch sound so anyone with sensitive hearing might not want to stay for this one and we are going to start in about 5 ish minutes and so if you need to run to the loo and come back you have time thank you if you'd like we can have a few minutes for questions for our early modern chef if you would if you have any further questions for her that didn't get answered what was the one that okay welcome back we are ready to begin our next knowledge performance so I'm actually really encouraged to see all the conversation engendered I hope by the performances that you've seen so far our next knowledge performance is by vered engelhardt and carolin heiter and it's called a tuning detuning and retuning self our score and we're going to pass it around so that you can look at it yes it's plexiglass it's been carved a piling I guess we it's a pile of a series of scores that we did over the periods of rehearsals we one would start with a certain proposition and we would try it out see how we feel about it things we like things we don't like as far as control and improvisation and then we would come to the next rehearsal with a suggestion about how to frame the piece more and different things that we could score and other things that we would leave open to interpretation improvisation so the three systems of lines on the staffs are our vocal score that we were following in a cyclical repetition and then the duration or the amount of times that we would do each system is in the grid underneath the grid is a series of repetitions that layers up with the different sort of variables that we start adding on to other things in between technologies of the self technologies of the self it's a way of performing knowledge of the self oftentimes I think the performance and working on a piece of somebody else is a way of understanding yourself and when you are in collaboration together then it becomes about exploring and understanding the different ways in relation to one another that you process and internalize and then express whatever is open to expression and then the way that you adhere to the scored material as well the form of the duo also the duo format is such has such a history in therapy and other forms of self knowledge we are saying like what if composition and performance and tandem could help us achieve that sort of form in a mutual way but also against self knowledge so there is this constant coming together in a part I guess yeah it's a kind of collaborative creation of knowledge of the self and interpretation of knowledge of the self and performance of that and generation of that where it's all happening obviously in this sort of cyclical feedback loop where you kind of can get trapped in any other questions? what are the the context of our artists when we work together? what are the context of our artists when we work together? other artists that do this Paulina Rivera concepts that we read it over to well through co-assay technologies of the self it was very foundational in the creation of this piece yeah there was a Foucault there and then there's Pauline and then there's Pauline the different ways through which she scores her material yeah you had a question it wasn't exactly the question and some you know wasn't just yeah no I mean just a short response because we're out of time but when you're in conversation narratives always arise it's the way you tell yourself to the other so that was today's narrative it was just today thank you everybody should we go back in? let's just go in oh I have one welcome to How to Human Future Form would like to thank you for joining us today here in New York City for a very special one-time only event a training in Disruptor Mechanism Protocol brought to us by Elle shit I can't pronounce this Elle Something yes a very special training with our guest put your hands together folks these different places and when we're not able to live in these divided ways we're going to develop better communication devices that remove those blockages so there is some pure sound stuff that's gonna happen and that isn't our topic for today but we could have a whole other session about that if you go out in the lobby there's some really interesting posters from Future Form about their post-linguistic technologies super interesting so but that's not what we're here for today today we're talking a little bit about something unfortunately most of us have missed that's how to human how to human we forgot to learn you forgot to learn we figure it out a little later this could be you successful feeling confident in your humanoid body mind I'm here today with a little protocol set called the Disruptor Mechanism what's a Disruptor Mechanism anyway it might just be the answer you are looking for Systemic Collapse Planetary Collapse humans love the word Planetary Collapse well alright you worried a little bit worried maybe about the sixth extension pretty concerning but I also have bad news and so the good news is that a protocol like the non-linear alchemical Disruptor Mechanism may be able to forestall us moving in that direction but part of the good news is also that actually the word Planetary is kind of inaccurate because the planet will be fine and the planet and everything on it including some form of yourself will emerge again as the Earth figures itself out all of the organisms and all of the energies that are here are infinitely capable of moving itself through another system of homeostasis and restoring balance all humans may die in the process don't worry no one but you is really worried about that in the same way but that's a capacity that you as humans have developed it's an emotion it's a flag and the fact that you're having it now is part of the other good news the good news is that those flags are here to help you they are an evolutionary device that you have evolved to have so that when you get here you can start to say hello we may need to do something else unfortunately the sort of problem that in not really ever learning how to human like how to use your body which is something that in any other thing that you do you'll learn you're not a computer scientist if no one's like here's a computer here's how it works but unfortunately the form that you have no one really ever gave you many tools to use so we're here today to talk just a little tiny introduction in the nonlinear alchemical disruptive mechanisms are an intelligence augmentation embodied cognitive field technology from a set of books a long set of books from the fuken operating systems manual specifically volume 3 which is humanoid body mind systems lots more to talk about with that today but oh huh wrong way funny that nonlinear mind thing scurs me up every time alright so as humans we have incredible capacities but most of them have not been developed today we have three different types of protocol that I'm going to introduce to you that are going to help you develop some of those capacities and even though we only have a few minutes if you add these up it's like that adage that humans love so much it's kind of like water breaking away from a stone yet a little bit at the time and if systematized in your daily life these will add up to something that can create change and the ability for you to auto evolve the first of these is the diachronic biophilic recode and it's great to come into this talking about water on a stone because the diachronic biophilic recode asks us to remove from ourselves what that means for us to think about humaning verb I want you to think what it is to stone what is it to stone what is it to mycology what is it to animal what is it to rhizome these are the things that you want to start trying to get into your body because you have the capacity to be there so moving into spaces to ask the question how would a mushroom map this environment how might an animal see this room it isn't the way you see this room but it's hard for us to not think that our understanding of it is a priori accurate it's simply not the case we're stuck in that mapping yes the map precedes the territory someone in your century or so said that so number one diachronic biophilic recode and you know plants have been trying to help you with nonlinearity for a while a lot of your indigenous peoples also helped you out with that the language that we used to have did not always have the causality that we are now stuck in we're going to get there again forward which exists in that place you as you which isn't mushroom or mouse but in this humanoid body form goes into a room and you have an experience but you don't have an experience anymore because you have a word that's attached to that experience and you can't get rid of that word and so you're stuck here and so in order to move us beyond the stuckness that we're in we've got to work with that those words that stick us there yeah we're just stuck in them we walk around and we're just in this word soup and so amazingly we have a cognitive plasticity that is activated when we use different kinds of words so if you use words different from the words you normally use your brain actually becomes more plastic and you start to adapt and evolve so by attempting like an active use speculative language you will move yourself into a future that is liminal that doesn't yet exist thank you to the non binary people and everyone using the new pronouns they are living in a speculative space that does not yet exist but through the use of that language we facilitate a body that is prepared to be in that space and then the space follows the language use employing this in your life on a daily basis creating neologisms and living in a liminal space that is semi cognitive starts to move us out of where you're stuck great all right stuckness it also lives in the humanoid body in a way that if you don't work with agentively none of the other stuff is going to work the next problem is you've just got all this stuff in your nervous system it comes from trauma it comes from your experiences and you as a humanoid body are different from the other things in your biome the other plants and animals are phylogenetic which means that they will learn all the capacities of their body no matter what you are not like this which means that you will only learn if given the capacity to do so that kind of sucks but luckily if you know that this is the case and you remember that this is the case and you start to actually be like hey what are the capacities of my body how can I control my parasympathetic nervous system how can I know that in this moment I'm feeling fear because I learn to feel fear here and I can tell myself that that fear is not actually something that's happening fear structurally true but that immediately I am not being chased by a bear and so I can breathe in a certain way so that my mind can work better and my blood can work better and I can make a good decision and so when you learn to do these things you are more able to take on the other disruptor mechanisms and put them into place because you're not flailing around with your heart beating out of your ears hyperventilating which is much more convenient and easy to do but it isn't your fault that you don't know how to do this with your body in fact the whole Cartesian problem that's been happening for centuries where you were taught to separate your body from your mind and you learn that in school which is where you're supposed to be educated and it's all that's all right you've been told to silence you've been told to ignore it you've been taught to be intelligent parts of yourself everything that your body is saying to you everything it's saying to a kid saying move around that kid should move around everything it's learning will only be learned if it moves and yet we tell that kid to sit tight not a first relearn the semantics of our bodies if we're going to be able to put the other mechanisms into place that's kind of where you're going to have a choice because before the good news is planet is fine but maybe none of you will be there none of the emergence the plants, the animals, the machines and you but not cognitively because you haven't developed this nonlinear capacity yet are working towards resetting we're overpopulated a lot of people have to die it's not an emotional thing it feels like one because you have a ball to have that capacity you are sad no one else is sad not in the way that you understand sad but maybe that sadness can help you stick around a little more I wish I had time to stay here with you today we could talk about this for so long and you'll probably be thinking about it for the rest of your life how do human is really complicated but on a daily basis we can bring in these little mechanisms to perhaps stick around for the next chapter thank you so much hello so welcome back our next performance knowledge performance I should say is by Simone Johnson is by Simone Johnson dramaturg by Stephen Cedars and it is called the oceans are changing yes but to me it feels like strong drawn out changes I can't really articulate my reasons for being drawn to the abyss reasons hope things make sense this is their home these gelatinous creatures possess luminous organs to frighten off their enemies feel deeper 1000 meters below the surface in the ocean twilight we find as a form of force these are the largest kinds of plankton some measure up to 50 meters their organs are not spread out but grouped together on one side they have their stomachs on the other they use to float between the two they deploy a net to trap any food which falls from the surface descending into the abyss is like traveling back in a biological time machine there are maybe 2000 species of abyss dwelling fish a terrifying beast cheery fiber fish that can eat things larger than themselves helper eels that gobble everything which passes survival is tough at 1500 meters deep at around 3000 meters there is no more light it's the kingdom of the vampire squid a prehistoric cousin of the squid the vampire squid has blue blood laced with copper its enormous eyes detects light variations in contrast above it towards the surface its vision is entirely adapted to the shadows drawn out changes the abyss reasons what am I doing here poetic oceans poetic oceans merging imagining myself as the sea the sea imagining itself as me this is their home I wanted to say thank you to Steven the drama character I looked with and to Leah for making these wonderful algae lamps these are actually an algae culture in here and in here and I most of my oh I I wanted I wanted to say thank you again to the drama character I worked with Steven and Leah who has created these wonderful algae lamps there's actually algae culture here kind of algae that Leah knows more about and she actually created these with her hands so I was just like this is so cool and what I was working with was just I make a lot of work around water and I tend to want to make things that make sense and that are logical I was telling people earlier like shaping and strategizing because I want to get a meeting across and I wanted to be purposeful and I really I've been exploring surrealism and magical realism as loads of research and in surrealism they explore like the unconscious and intervening in things making sense so it was really hard for me because I kept trying to say does this make sense is this and I use like the the eggs came from a dream I had about a bat and I know in surrealism they use dreams and I researched bat symbolism and like it was like rebirth so I thought of eggs and so it's just really interesting to kind of I feel like I've been doing a lot of surrealist work but it's I so much want to get something across so that's what I was playing with and this is all in the context of trying to think about the relationship of oceans and climate change and I haven't really heard a lot of conversations about like I didn't realize ocean plays such a big role in absorbing carbon and I could go on and on but it's going to be a year long project and I'm just really grateful for all the people I worked with and for Margaret and Corey for organizing this amazing festival so thanks LG plays a role in taking carbon dioxide out of the air so that's one thing I started looking into with LG and then I started looking at ways to use it as a material for art making as lamps and as ink because there are a lot of sustainable uses future uses for LG people are looking at it well thank you and thank you Simone for your work thank you everyone we are going to take a break now our next this is the end of part 1 part 2 we'll begin at 6.30 please come back or send your representatives at 6.30 and that half of the evening will go until till about 8.30 and then the reception upstairs so thank you all very much I'd like to give a big thank you to all of the knowledge performers who presented this afternoon thank you very much