Nana Bilus Abaffy
NON-APOCALYPTIC 3D PRINTED THOUGHTS
/SALVATION+NECESSITY/ Let’s start again, from the beginning, let’s go back to the big bang and re-write what happens next. Poof! Next thing you know you’re looking down at your bipedal human body and you understand that it is a consequence. That’s ok there’s a lot there to work with. We shall take the body, and we shall extract as much information out of it as we can – with cutting-edge technology it is now possible to 3d print our own bodies so that we can observe and dissect them from an objective distance. We shall learn from them – the body will tell us how things are, or how they ought to be. We’ll next 3d print our thoughts (WE HAVE TO MOVE QUICK). They’ll appear small, no larger than the average-sized skull, and very condensed, so we will need magnifying glasses and detailed charts. Why? Well because it’s difficult, edging on impossible, to speak with any amount of precision about what the body, which includes the brain, whose pictorial impressions we have 3d printed above, knows. The magnifying glasses will help us to better see the confusing details, and the detailed charts will not be charts but dances. ‘What do you know?!’ we will ask the body and the brain, ‘because we want to know it too!’ is what we’ll say. Precision is what we’re after. The body, a consequence of the big bang, etcetera, is a great intelligence, but its mysterious silence can no longer be tolerated. ‘We need answers! Help us! You are the only hope we have left!’. And saying that in a raised voice will not be over-dramatic, because this really is critical and we will go extinct unless we figure out where we went wrong. So, these dances that will happen will carry mass amounts of information, and not just jumbled senseless random information, but precise blueprints which will contain within themselves the entirety of the world – from the bang and the expansion of space and the cooling and solidifying and cell division and monkey forefathers and mothers, to language and city planning and nature devastating and the looming apocalypse. The blueprint will be consumed in its own flame.
Then we will begin again, the big bang, expansion, evolution, etc. For a long time, the world will unfold and end in a relatively similar fashion. There will be blueprints in which instead of the big bang banging out the world, it will be god and darkness moving upon the face of the deep, then light, then firmament, then land, then plant, etc, etc. This world will also blow up in apocalypse. This will not stop us, however. We will keep 3d printing our thoughts and the thoughts of others until we discover something that works, some work, something previously unthought of. Throughout the residency we will 3d print thousands upon thousands* of people’s bodies and thoughts – of these, we expect to find at most two blueprints worth keeping. These two blueprints, plan (a) and plan (b), will be the key that the two artist researchers will use to unlock a NON-APOCALYPTIC FUTURE.
AT THIS POINT IN TIME, THAT’S ALL WE’RE LOOKING FOR: NON-APOCALYPSE.
/PROCESS+METHOD/ The two artist researchers will come into the studio and each lie on a metal operating table situated across the room from one another. We will picture a rapidly evolving world and human species. This might take anywhere from between 15 minutes to 2.5 hours. When the world is about to be annihilated in whichever manner we foresee, we will rise from our operating tables and run away. When we’ve run until exhaustion (most likely up Princes Street and around Melbourne General Cemetery, located just up the road from Dancehouse) we will begin the 3d printing process – this will be a birthing of sorts – a new body will be born in the shape of our own and we will use this body and its thoughts for the construction of the blueprint which will be something like a notation for the dance. This is how we will begin each day that we are in the studio for the first 3 months of the residency. The blueprint birthed on each occasion will determine what will happen for the rest of day.
For the last 3 months of the residency, we will begin the day at the cemetery and lie in a space between two chosen graves. This time we will start with the apocalypse and work backwards. Right before we hit the big bang we will float down to Dancehouse and keep contracting until we have 3d printed our bodies and the tiny blueprint is birthed in the safety of the studio. This will make for a much smaller but more concentrated dance. The 3d printed thoughts of the body will here appear almost as if they are solid matter. On closer inspection we will see, however, that the solidity is in fact just density and density can be unravelled and deciphered, provided we look closely enough.
At the end of the 6 months’ worth of research we will stop and go back to the operating tables and lie there until we have fully consolidated what we have discovered from the laborious half-year investigation. We will lie there for as long as it takes. We expect the consolidation to take anywhere from 3 days to 3 months – in which case this would be the performance, since the marketing etc, has already been pre-arranged. Most likely, however, it will take around a week**. Once we have fully consolidated we will do a final 3d printing session, out of which the two blueprints, plan (a) and plan (b), will emerge. The dance, the nature of which we can’t yet begin to speculate on since nothing of this nature has ever been attempted before, will then be ready.
*maybe only hundreds, as we only have 8 months to do this.
**during this time we will be pure body in thought, and we will do some sort of Abramović style quasi-zen lifestyle where we will need PA’s to feed and toilet us.
/CONTEXT/ Nothing of this nature yet exists in neither choreography nor performance; if successful, the piece proposed can only be compared in terms of ambition to what Duchamp did with the bottle drying rack in 1914.
/WHY/ We're trying to figure out what needs to be done – on a larger scale – we believe in a totalist approach to artistic endeavour – and the body is a totality – a multiplicity in unity – we think the body knows how the future will unfold – and is able to communicate more precisely than language – and is the real key to making humans more ethical – the body has more intelligence than your deepest philosophy, is what Nietzsche said, and then he stopped calling himself a philosopher - it is out of necessity that we have come to it. YEAH!
/SALVATION+NECESSITY/ Let’s start again, from the beginning, let’s go back to the big bang and re-write what happens next. Poof! Next thing you know you’re looking down at your bipedal human body and you understand that it is a consequence. That’s ok there’s a lot there to work with. We shall take the body, and we shall extract as much information out of it as we can – with cutting-edge technology it is now possible to 3d print our own bodies so that we can observe and dissect them from an objective distance. We shall learn from them – the body will tell us how things are, or how they ought to be. We’ll next 3d print our thoughts (WE HAVE TO MOVE QUICK). They’ll appear small, no larger than the average-sized skull, and very condensed, so we will need magnifying glasses and detailed charts. Why? Well because it’s difficult, edging on impossible, to speak with any amount of precision about what the body, which includes the brain, whose pictorial impressions we have 3d printed above, knows. The magnifying glasses will help us to better see the confusing details, and the detailed charts will not be charts but dances. ‘What do you know?!’ we will ask the body and the brain, ‘because we want to know it too!’ is what we’ll say. Precision is what we’re after. The body, a consequence of the big bang, etcetera, is a great intelligence, but its mysterious silence can no longer be tolerated. ‘We need answers! Help us! You are the only hope we have left!’. And saying that in a raised voice will not be over-dramatic, because this really is critical and we will go extinct unless we figure out where we went wrong. So, these dances that will happen will carry mass amounts of information, and not just jumbled senseless random information, but precise blueprints which will contain within themselves the entirety of the world – from the bang and the expansion of space and the cooling and solidifying and cell division and monkey forefathers and mothers, to language and city planning and nature devastating and the looming apocalypse. The blueprint will be consumed in its own flame.
Then we will begin again, the big bang, expansion, evolution, etc. For a long time, the world will unfold and end in a relatively similar fashion. There will be blueprints in which instead of the big bang banging out the world, it will be god and darkness moving upon the face of the deep, then light, then firmament, then land, then plant, etc, etc. This world will also blow up in apocalypse. This will not stop us, however. We will keep 3d printing our thoughts and the thoughts of others until we discover something that works, some work, something previously unthought of. Throughout the residency we will 3d print thousands upon thousands* of people’s bodies and thoughts – of these, we expect to find at most two blueprints worth keeping. These two blueprints, plan (a) and plan (b), will be the key that the two artist researchers will use to unlock a NON-APOCALYPTIC FUTURE.
AT THIS POINT IN TIME, THAT’S ALL WE’RE LOOKING FOR: NON-APOCALYPSE.
/PROCESS+METHOD/ The two artist researchers will come into the studio and each lie on a metal operating table situated across the room from one another. We will picture a rapidly evolving world and human species. This might take anywhere from between 15 minutes to 2.5 hours. When the world is about to be annihilated in whichever manner we foresee, we will rise from our operating tables and run away. When we’ve run until exhaustion (most likely up Princes Street and around Melbourne General Cemetery, located just up the road from Dancehouse) we will begin the 3d printing process – this will be a birthing of sorts – a new body will be born in the shape of our own and we will use this body and its thoughts for the construction of the blueprint which will be something like a notation for the dance. This is how we will begin each day that we are in the studio for the first 3 months of the residency. The blueprint birthed on each occasion will determine what will happen for the rest of day.
For the last 3 months of the residency, we will begin the day at the cemetery and lie in a space between two chosen graves. This time we will start with the apocalypse and work backwards. Right before we hit the big bang we will float down to Dancehouse and keep contracting until we have 3d printed our bodies and the tiny blueprint is birthed in the safety of the studio. This will make for a much smaller but more concentrated dance. The 3d printed thoughts of the body will here appear almost as if they are solid matter. On closer inspection we will see, however, that the solidity is in fact just density and density can be unravelled and deciphered, provided we look closely enough.
At the end of the 6 months’ worth of research we will stop and go back to the operating tables and lie there until we have fully consolidated what we have discovered from the laborious half-year investigation. We will lie there for as long as it takes. We expect the consolidation to take anywhere from 3 days to 3 months – in which case this would be the performance, since the marketing etc, has already been pre-arranged. Most likely, however, it will take around a week**. Once we have fully consolidated we will do a final 3d printing session, out of which the two blueprints, plan (a) and plan (b), will emerge. The dance, the nature of which we can’t yet begin to speculate on since nothing of this nature has ever been attempted before, will then be ready.
*maybe only hundreds, as we only have 8 months to do this.
**during this time we will be pure body in thought, and we will do some sort of Abramović style quasi-zen lifestyle where we will need PA’s to feed and toilet us.
/CONTEXT/ Nothing of this nature yet exists in neither choreography nor performance; if successful, the piece proposed can only be compared in terms of ambition to what Duchamp did with the bottle drying rack in 1914.
/WHY/ We're trying to figure out what needs to be done – on a larger scale – we believe in a totalist approach to artistic endeavour – and the body is a totality – a multiplicity in unity – we think the body knows how the future will unfold – and is able to communicate more precisely than language – and is the real key to making humans more ethical – the body has more intelligence than your deepest philosophy, is what Nietzsche said, and then he stopped calling himself a philosopher - it is out of necessity that we have come to it. YEAH!
