Plasm

Reading Antonin Artaud’s To have done with the judgement of God…

For you can tie me up if you wish,
but there is nothing more useless than an organ.

When you will have made him a body without organs,
then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions
and restored him to his true freedom.

Then you will teach him again to dance wrong side out
as in the frenzy of dance halls
and this wrong side out will be his real place.

My personal interpretation of the concept of Artaud’s “body without organs” started with an AI transfusion of images from an all day workshop with real people, which combined multiple natural bodies with ones which had painted skin. The imagery emerging suggested organs without the body, floating in a visceral plasma-like substance.

Plasma is the part of our blood that carries platelets, red blood cells and white blood cells around the body and makes up approximately 55% of blood.

Plasma, a partially ionised gas, is also one of the 4 fundamental states of matter, in addition to solid, liquid and gas. 

Additionally the word plasm can mean a mould or matrix used to cast or form – in this case into the humanesque.

This humanesque plasmic form is emanating, supported and fuelled by the mycelium complex formulated around the footings of these totem poles constructed from exquisite corpses. It is a symbiotic relationship.

Perhaps the end result is a body wrong side out, a body within organs?