"No Self Can Tell" by Laasonen Belgrano, E. and Price, M.D.

The research explores 'ornamenting' as a transferable method in inter-disciplinary studies, inter-faith dialogues and artistic/therapeutic practices. Adapting techniques of Renaissance musicology, the processes we have developed de-create and re-create vital connections. It is a communica-tions strategy for times of crisis. Starting with simple sonic relations we extend the method far be-yond its traditional musical setting. The practice utilises 'Nothingness' as a component of creativity, providing a novel response to figurations of nothingness as mere negation. Preliminary results sug-gest its potential as a counter force to nihilism and social dislocation. The work divides into four areas. 1. Primary research on relationships between sound, meaning, and the sense(s) of self, exploring how sense is made of Otherness via processes akin to musical praxis: consonance, dissonance, 'pure voice' and ornamentation. 2. To apply this new perspective to a range of exile experiences – mourning, social disconnection, ex-communication and aggres-sive 'Othering'. 3. To investigate the cancelling of normal time-conditions in crisis situations such as trauma, dementia, and mystical experience, relating non-linear temporality to creative practice and healing. 4. To widely disseminate our results and methods as contributions to the methodology of artistic research via journal articles, live workshops and performances, and a book of original, praxical, testable, and teach-able interventions.

Behind the of no-sound. May we find ways "to investigate relationships between sound, meaning, touch and the sense(s) of self. This sense of self of course implies 'the sense of an encounter (or being touched) by/with/through the 'Other'". In the thick wondrous spatiotemporal experience. On a horizontal scale there is no end to what appears. An eternal line stretches into the next and the further.

Before the beginning...

The project title ''No Self Can Tell' is a reminder that ''the'' self is a grammatical fiction. Any self

exists relationally, which is to say: subjectivity is ecology. The ''I'' is formed by complex inter -

dependent networks. Any 'borders' between inner and outer systems are of necessity porous.

For these reasons, aesthetics (conscious or unconscious sensate encounters with an 'Other')

seems the most fruitful zone of exploration for trauma-related disorders of identity. The words

'no self can tell' suggest that resources for healing and re-connecting damaged psycho-social

ecologies exist. The world, the Other– the 'not self' – can tell us what these resources are... if

we connect with them in appropriate ways. As Terence McKenna said of Sartre's ideas of the

exiled and excommunicated individual - ''It is not nature which is mute [as Sartre claims] - it is

we who are deaf''. (Complete project description)

"To investigate how we make sense of Otherness via processes akin to musical praxis: most notably consonance, dissonance, 'pure voice' and ornamentation."

Leaning towards the very last, stretched-out extreme. Not failing to see what may not be visible; not failing to hear what may not be heard; not failing to sense what may not be sensed.

"Shock flourishes within arts of time and particularly within such temporal problems of those of boredom and habit. Shock is a rejuvination withing fatigue systems of representation and thought. [...] With shock we face all or nothing, the Russian roulette of a mind or a system at the end of its rope. It is a last rather than a first move within experience" (Fisher, 1998)

Hear my prayer, O Lord (2017)

Sunset mission: Prowler (2000)

O magnus mysterium (2017)

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