Letting NOTHING do itself by Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano

Western thought emphasises rival schools winning or losing debates: it speaks of knock-down arguments, fatal inconsistencies, of destroying, attacking, and defending positions. 'Philosophical triumph' is a sublimated mode of WOUNDING and SHAMING any opposition. The ancient Greeks used the word aischuné to talk of an opponent being 'put to shame' – a feminine noun. The 'loser' of an argument is (dis-)figured as less rational, less human. Their Otherness is amplified until they capitulate. Canonical references to thinkers as midwives, nurses, or mothers of ideas are rare: such metaphors imply intimate co-operation and the fleshy, impure materiality of thought. Yet attempts to vanquish the canonical masculine-dominator style of thought with some version of a non-wounding, compassionate mode of thinking readily mimic the power-structures and gender-binaries they seek to oppose. This 'war-model of thought' is ultimately nihilistic – it characterises differences as antitheses, then seeks to destroy the 'opposition'. Such is the problem we seek to address. During the last two years we have explored philosophical, theological, and aesthetic issues via a praxis-led 'Ornamentation' method. Starting from NOTHING, we allow elements which seem meaningless in themselves to ‘flash up’ (Barad 2017), entangle through intra-action, accumulating and complexifying the material 'on its own terms', becoming poetic, scholastic and ecstatic. Unknown to one-another, neither contributor has any 'territory' or 'position' to attack or defend. This is not a dialogue, a dialectic, nor even 'two persons making something together'. It is a trans-human performance, a method for allowing the space and material between the contributors to “endlessly open [...] to a variety of possible and impossible reconfigurings” (Hinton 2013:182); “blasting, bursting open, and scattering […] to effect a complete reorganization of meaning” (Barad 2017:41); becoming a/live environment - an ecology in which the world can create itself.

LETTING NOTHING DO ITSELF (2022 b)

For the 2022 IFTR Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland,

the Performance, Religion, and Spirituality Working Group

20-24 June 2022

Presenters:

Dr. Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano, PhD, Performance Philosophy (Sweden)

Dr. Mark Price, PhD, Performance Philosophy (UK)

ABSTRACT:

Western thought emphasises rival schools winning or losing debates: it speaks of knock-down arguments, fatal inconsistencies, of destroying, attacking, and defending positions. 'Philosophical triumph' is a sublimated mode of WOUNDING and SHAMING any opposition. The ancient Greeks used the word aischuné to talk of an opponent being 'put to
shame' – a feminine noun. The 'loser' of an argument is (dis-)figured as less rational, less human. Their Otherness is amplified until they capitulate. Canonical references to thinkers as midwives, nurses, or mothers of ideas are rare: such metaphors imply intimate co-operation and the fleshy, impure materiality of thought. Yet attempts to vanquish the canonical masculine-dominator style of thought with some version of a non-wounding, compassionate mode of thinking readily mimic the power-structures and gender-binaries they seek to oppose. This 'war-model of thought' is ultimately nihilistic – it characterises differences as antitheses, then seeks to destroy the 'opposition'. Such is the problem we seek to address.

During the last two years we have explored philosophical, theological, and aesthetic issues via a praxis-led 'Ornamentation' method. Starting from NOTHING, we allow elements which seem meaningless in themselves to ‘flash up’ (Barad 2017), entangle through intra-action,
accumulating and complexifying the material 'on its own terms', becoming poetic, scholastic and ecstatic. Unknown to one-another, neither contributor has any 'territory' or 'position' to attack or defend. This is not a dialogue, a dialectic, nor even 'two persons making something together'. It is a trans-human performance, a method for allowing the space and material between the contributors to “endlessly open [...] to a variety of possible and impossible
reconfigurings” (Hinton 2013:182); “blasting, bursting open, and scattering […] to effect a complete reorganization of meaning” (Barad 2017:41); becoming a/live environment - an ecology in which the world can create itself.

Ref.

Barad, K. (2017). What Flashes Up: Theological-Political-Scientific Fragments. I: Keller, C. & Rubenstein, M.-J. (eds.) Entangled Worlds. Religion, Science, and New Materialisms. Fordham University Press, New York, 2017. Pp. 21-88.

Hinton, Peta (2013). The Quantum Dance and the World’s ‘Extraordinary Liveliness’: Refiguring Corporeal Ethics in Karen Barad’s Agential Realism. Somatechnics, 3.1:169-189.

Performing philosophers’ bios:

Dr. Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano (voice artist/priest candidate/performance philosopher) allows her performance research to diffract through contemporary vocal studies & 17th century vocal music: She is a recipient of the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society (2005); was awarded a PhD in Performance in Theatre and Music Drama for Performing Nothingness through Operatic Mad Scenes and Lamentations, Univ. of Gothenburg (2011); supervisor and examiner through ‘performative methodologies’; investigating the Art of (Vocal) Ornamentation as an intra-active research tool for measuring Nothingness and the Unknown. Currently on the track of becoming a priest in the Church of Sweden, practicing pastoral care and existential counselling. Dr. Laasonen Belgrano’s artistic research portfolio: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/378762/430811

Rev. Dr. Mark D. Price is an independent researcher in aesthetics, philosophy of religion, mysticism, English Alchemy, and political thought. He is a practising poet and musician. His exoteric achievements include two PhD qualifications (2002 BIHE, Violence andValue in Post-Kantian Philosophy and 2016 MMU, Form and Force in Poesis and Apophenia). Poems set to music include the 2019 series 'Language' (see Mark D Price on bandcamp) and the 'Dekalog' collection, 2021, Black Box Record Label). Since 2017 Price was lead researcher for the Lenkiewicz Foundation and sole author of “Lenkiewicz: The Life. ‘All Are Welcome’ Vol. I” (2021). Vol II will appear in 2022. From 2020 onwards Price has worked with Dr Belgrano on the 'No Self Can Tell' project to develop 'counter-nihilistic ornamentation techniques'. Preliminary findings indicate it is a transferable, repeatable method for cross-disciplinary communication and int/er/ra-faith/no-faith creativity.

To ’No Self Can Tell ‘Exposition

Tip

Tip