Through its atmosphere, the entering subject experiences space and its things as emphatically present. Not only do they appear in their primary or secondary qualities, they also intrude on and penetrate the perceiving subject’s body and surround it atmospherically3.
“Vault after vault” keep “open[ing] endlessly” Inside . And in each vault a zillion questions keep looking at me. Poking me. Tickling me. My jaw drops…from its hooks on each side of my face. And the soft palate is higher than ever behind my nasal cavity. Neck grows long and wide, and head is keeping a direction forward and upward. A memory of fingers carefully touching my forehead as well as on the very lower part of my spine. Under my armpits. Lifting my upper body up… up… up… and legs trop deeper and deeper into the ground. Finding the root system. Far, far, below my feet. Reminding me that in between fingers, feet and ribs, spaces in between vertebra after vertebra keep opening endlessly. “Vault after vault”. There is a sensation of becoming longer. Bodily sensation within. A cathedral within. Skin and muscles being walls; constructions becoming wider. Filling with air. Air finding its way into all cavities of face, head, lungs, allowing muscles and every part of the body to expand. To grow. To live. Trembling. Vibrating. A cathedral within a cathedral within a cathedral… endlessly opening…
Curatorial work in progress...
We enter the cathedral. It’s the mother church of the diocese. The air is cool, the shadows deep and in the silence sound reverberate. I believe in God. Who is God or this God? What does this appellation signify? What is this God? How do we learn to use words in this way and a name like this? How do we invent the literary genres that disseminates these words, this naming? The word God softly implodes, becoming meaningless in its density, its fragrance. Its meaning opens and closes, vibrates like a vast diaphanous forcefield that enfolds this place with its elevations, tall curved arches and attenuated sight-lines. It draws us into its circulations making of this space a heterotopia: a different kind of space 2.
1 I tell my students to open. They ask what I mean. I search for words than can explain what what cannot be explained. I turn to the prayer God has taught is. To the words: Let thy will be done? What happens in the body when trust finds its place within a body. How can I explain my own sensation, learned through many Alexander Technique lessons where a word-led mantra is repeated again and again: To let the neck be free. To let the head go forward and up. To let the back be long and wide. To let the body grow in every joint. To let and to allow. This is the sensation I try to make this group of students experience and to become aware of. To let God’s breath fill each body. To let the air find its way between every vertebra. And while all this opening goes inside the body, inspiration will slowly turn into a long and soft expiration on the letter Ah!...