FACTUM


  
(MYOPIA)2 
   
	

	
	
 




	  
              

                
(MYOPIA)2 A nearly-blind schoolgirl, bespectacled. Dreaming through a haze of myopia, she runs into herself, her skin seeing more than her eyes. She is most certainly teetering on the awkward verge of puberty... when everything is lost: split in two. There is no teacher, no correction. Only the immediate reflections of primitive ghosts and autonomic machines seeking the (dis)equilibrium of an unseeable future. (MYOPIA)2 Addresses the notion of seeing and being seen. Who is the viewer and who is being viewed? In a nearly blind world, all sounds enter the sphere of perception, stirrings of actors and audience alike. (MYOPIA)2 Unable to focus on the  lesson at hand, a turbulent body undergoing metamorphosis scrawls quivering lines of Quatsch across the chalkboards, traversing the dangerous territory between madness and pure creativity, stigma and individuality. (MYOPIA)2 Her body refuses to conform, its burgeoning sexuality, awkward and feverish, has more in common with the mating practices of insects. At the schizophrenic onset of puberty, the myopic girl is replicated in an endlessly expanded moment; She bends too far and her double appears.
                
Performed 2005-2006 in Berlin at KuLe ArtHouse, Hau 3, and GAYA-Karmanoia Theater; in Amsterdam at Overtoom 301; in Potsdam @ UNIDRAM 13. Festival fuer junges Theater in Europa; and in Holstebro, Denmark @ ODIN Teatret.
                
unsound body and voice: 

                  ephia and ana karen suarez

                  auditory hallucinations: 

				  jeff  gburek  (lap-top/prepared 
guitar)
for more photos of (MYOPIA)2 by Marc Tiedemann.

       
              
 
	
	
	

	
Ci-Gît: six pregnancies for Antonin Artaud 
	
	

  

    
 
    
"Ci-Gît" is based in part on the banned 1948 radio-broadcast of Antonin Artaud’s "To Have Done With The Judgement Of God." Artaud's original recording has been digitally stretched, spliced and manipulated by Jeff Gburek. The new treatment of the text, supplemented by prepared guitar and diverse organic & electronic sources, renders a sonological universe from Artaud's vocables, a womb from which the unsound body will be forced to slither.
  
 Dancer Ephia explores the feminine elements of Artaud’s personality which emanated during his electro-shock therapy and came to be called "the unborn daughters of my heart". These semi-fictional daughter/lover/warrior/liberator-s, these innocent and filthy girls endure great hardships in their attempts to liberate their lover/father. Neneka is the youngest daughter, and simultaneously the oldest, as this was also the name of Artaud's Turkish grandmother. Neneka is a fetal kitten slipped from the womb too soon, a formless body and dripping caul, a smudge. She is discovered in "the puddle state of electro-shock," a terrifying place of trembling void.
  
 "...the whole lie of this inward electric body which for a certain number of centuries has been the burden of every human being, turned inside out, became like an immense turning outward in flames, monads of nothingness bristling to the limits of an existence held prisoner in my lead body, which could neither get out of its lead coating nor stand up like a lead soldier."
  

    
 
  


  

    
 
    

    
The extensive  research for "Ci-Gît" took Djalma to Mexico’s Sierra Tarahumara in  October 2003. Artaud visited the Tarahumara Indians in the 1930’s seeking to  learn about the visionary experiences of those who "eat right out of the  earth the delirium that gave birth to them" and whose vigorously physical  spirituality Artaud thought offered a remedy to Western technological  decadence. The first version of the work, entitled "wife,  life, tripe, damnit and THAT," premiered April 2004 in Austin, TX at a welder's studio; next in  Birmingham, AL at the site of an old slaughter house; in New Orleans, LA at the  site of a former brothel; in Phoenix, AZ at Teatro Caliente Festival. In the  year 2005 this work was performed in Europe under the title:  "Ci-Gît: six  pregnancies for Antonin Artaud" at ODIN Teatret; Les Explorateurs Associés Festival; Les Voutes,  Paris; Espace Antonin Artaud--Rodez, in the asylum chapel where Artaud attended  mass; further presentations in Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, New York City,  and San Fransisco. 

      

    Visit Lucid Zoom to read a review (german  only).
    
 
  


	



	
	
	
	
     dying breath:    explorations at the threshold 
	 

       

         
 
         
 
         

         
 
         
 
       
       

         
 
         
 
         

           
death and the waiting room/  moments of departure (spark) memories of synaptic decay/ the (subtraction) of a  limb, the irreversible sound of wooden ornaments, tightening at the knot/ as  you watch the wood bend until there are knees/ as the image fills the sticky  likelihood of the frame (mouthing)/  the meeting of surfaces (of metal to metal, of sound to eardrum,  sound/light to skin, skin/light to eye, eye to inner eye of brain, perception  to memory) is primarily erotic and death/   this is also birth/  resist it, if  you can…  you are on your own/you  are on repeat.
             

A Djalma Primordial Science performance artifact,  decomposed by en.ve.lope. A study of minutia, patience and  transformation:  slowly evolving  performance footage collaged with digital imagery and text.  28 min DVD completed 2/2/05. To purchase this  DVD contact djalmaprisci@hotmail.com.  Visit  www.envelopeproject.com to see  VIDEO 
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 MURMUR 
	              
    

    
OPHELIA: "Do you want to eat my heart, Hamlet?" Laughs.---Heiner Müller, Hamlet-machine.

      

      NOUN: murmur Pronunciation: 'm&r-m&r 

      1 a : a low indistinct but often continuous sound (as of voices) b : a soft or gentle utterance

      2 : an atypical sound of the heart indicating a functional or structural abnormality.

      “One could hear the murmur of the audience throughout the entire performance.”
    
MURMUR is a performance for body, sound, light and video which adopts the Ophelic condition as a departure for its journey down-stream. The dancer’s body becomes a watery mirror for the desires of the audience. The space of the performance overflows, flooding the secure position of the viewer. Submersion:  Ephia; Live Sound:  Jeff Gburek; Video:  Ben Walsh. Premiered at Les Explorateurs Associés Festival, Lorgues, France 2005
    
 
	
        
ASYLUM: a study of place and ghost. 
    

      

        
A trans-media installation reflecting on the poetics of abandonment.  Dancer Ephia, experimental musician Jeff Gburek, video               artist Ben Walsh, and photographer Yekaterina Yushmanova have been conducting physical research in New Mexico's abandoned institutions               for over a year. Entering into the dilapidated architectures of               old mental institutions, facilities for the developmentally disabled, homes for the elderly, correctional               institutions, they ask how does a place enter into the body? Although               defunct, these places are far from empty. Taking on the roles of               archeologists and accidental trespassers, they encounter decomposing               wheelchairs, overflowing file cabinets, singed drawings, a storehouse of surgical gloves, mimeograph schedules, and defaced murals, wandering themselves as ghosts, seeking to understand the experience of those who had been shoved to the far periphery of their society's vision.
Tracing the evolution of architectural interiorities as mirror of social relations; annotations on the isolation of atypical people & the creation of ghost-spaces echoing on the margins of history...
        
 
        
 
      
      
Djalma Primordial Science focuses on three specific sites: Los Lunas, a defunct institution for those with mental and developmental disabilities which awaits its next incarnation; Fort Stanton, which has evolved from military outpost to a tuberculosis clinic to WWII internment camp to a home for the developmentally disabled to a women's penitentiary, now used as a rehab center; and Sandia Ranch, a privately run sanitorium turned home for the elderly turned illicit drug-drop & hideout for criminals, which is soon to be demolished. They seek to bring the immediate potency of the asylum sites to the viewer-- a potency that is clearly physical. They also examine the hallucinogenic atmospheres evoked within these sites: the dreaming body absorbed into a landscape beyond the institutional walls. The fully manifested project consists of a photo exhibit and video installation plus an hour-long performance for body, sound, and video. Realized in Albuquerque, NM at SOL ARTS, AUGUST 27, 28, 29, 2004.
    


   
    
JELLYFISH GUILLOTINE: 

      operations on the nerve play of life or the boneless escapades of harry houdini.
    
   
    

      

        


        
American gypsy, Harry Houdini, a character seemingly eyelevel with the truth, debunker of the theosophist mediums, an experimentalist with the existential limitations of the imprisoned body and all that suggests. He was the perfect slippery jellyfish.  
        
 
      
      

        


            The jellyfish is 98% water, boneless & brainless, a prehistoric creature living in our own times. Despite diaphanous flimsyness, it can insert venomous barbs into the flesh. The guillotine, by contrast a more recent invention...and well... you know all about the guillotine. Jellyfish and guillotine? One lives on plankton and the other lives on...
          
(Mari Akita joined Djalma  Primordial Science for this performance with sound/sculpture installation in Albuquerque, NM and Austin, TX during the summer of 2003.)
'JellyFish Guillotine' was dead on. Amazingly intense. I could not look away for a second!--Richard Sorgee, Austin TX
        

            
 
          
        
 
      
      

        
 
            
          
        
 
      
    
    
THE HUMAN WASTE PROJECT 
    
A no-action performance presented on UNM campus, Albuquerque, NM, Holocaust Rememberance Day 2003. For ten hours five bodies immobilized beneath the brutal sun: ductaped to folding chairs, 	   heads covered in brown paper and ductaped closed. As the US invaded Iraq, we silently posed the 	   question: What is your life(style) worth? 

      

          
    
 
    
Null Achtzehn, the one whose name was stolen and forgotten
    
 A memorial for the nameless victims of the WWII holocaust which meditates on the experience of Hope during prolonged physical and psychic torment. The work of art here takes the work of labor as its meditation: the forced labor in the lager that was objectively useless and intended 	only to cause fatal exhaustion in the prisoner, work that is never finished with the making of a corpse, reducing the corpse to ash and producing its own disposal but one which must continue to work on as a ghost for generations to come. Based on the memoirs of Italian prisoner Primo Levi, Polish prisoner Tadeusz Borowski, various other accounts and visits to the death-camps. Performed numerously in Germany, Poland and Italy (2000-2001).
    
He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero Eighteen, the last three digits of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that Null Achtzehn is no longer a man. I think that even he has forgotten his name, certainly he acts as if this was so. When he speaks, when he looks around, he gives the impression of being empty inside, nothing more than an involucre, like the slough of certain insects which one finds on the banks of swamps, held by a thread to the stones and shaken by the wind. --Primo Levi.
    
 
    
Tears of the Ditchdigger
    

    
The dry-mouthed Ditchdigger labors beneath a perpetual rain of tears: 365 clear plastic water-filled bags hung above the audience and stage area, dripping into rusty old cans and washbasins, forming the first layer of the auditory hallucination. Two Sirens float in and out of the shadows, shrouded by sky-blue burqas (the dress used to transform the Afghan women into silent mountain landscapes), their footsteps never trip the threshold of sound. Their voices drift through a microtonal haze, punctuated by clattery machinery and short-wave transmissions. And the Ditchdigger-- alien, woman, insect, machine, with the lingering sensation of amputated hope, labors, seeking the identity of a long-forgotten self.
    
Tears of the Ditchdigger was first performed at Tricklock Co’s Revolutions 2002 International Theater Festival, Albuquerque, NM. Probing into the concurrent situation in Afghanistan, the performance's imagery and emotions were evoked by  women crushed between the interests of superpowers and reactionaries, fundamentalists and mercenaries, children whose only certainty is fear, and the war machine killing endlessly, randomly, the sky and earth rebelling.  Performed with vocalists Christina Carter and Heather Murray (Scorces).
    

Fascinating sense of instrumentation and undissectable movement: hypnotic and dreamlike until a pitch of physical and sonic intensity forces you to look around the audience to see who is going to crack...a captivating work which really
 challenges the boundaries of the observer’s consciousness.
 Prof. Eugene Douglas, Dept. Theater/Dance, University of New Mexico. 

    
    
I was so moved when I saw ‘Tears of the Ditchdigger.’ It was the first time I had ever seen expressed the kinds of ideas I have in my heart, in a form that was expansive enough to do them justice. Your work has transformed the way I think about theater…now I realize that it is possible to express huge ideas in a way so subtle as to be almost imperceptible. Benjamin Walsh, filmmaker, Albuquerque, NM.
    
Tears of the Ditchdigger photos by Drew Alexander
    
 
    
 
    


      

        
Naufragio Ballante (The Dancing Shipwreck) 
          
A 12 hour site-specific performance at 

            THE LAND/ an art site, Inc.  October 6th and 13th, 2002. 

            Dawn until darkness without interruption. 
          
We have been living inside our works rather than exposing them. This is why we are inside and skirted around a ditch that is rather an impression given by the earth of a watery vehicular energy. Shored up against it the wall of displaced earth that human and machinic hands layed there. A shipwreck doesn’t dance literally, moved however by the undercurrents swaying its bulk and skeletal appendages. The dance is in the moment it was frozen like a fossil in the mind at the peak of its violent death. If the body were made into the mind of the land perhaps a history of the earth might be told in a mystical fusion. What if this place were only accessible to the dead? The only ones who would experience it would be those whose relation to life itself had passed beyond all expectations. Is the greatest power of the human being perhaps ultimately this ability to imagine a universe that does not contain her?
          


          


            The sound for this performance could stem from a bio-environmental feedback loop, a kind of puppet tied to the aeolian gravity of a rusty mobile, a puppet already alive, one that turns to face the puppet master, but also one that does not challenge, one that accepts the judgement of winds and thinks of itself as more of a dissenting wind in a supreme court of winds, a crumbling down of the puppet body into the earth transmitting dissolving sparks. 
          
naufragio ballante photos by Melissa D'Agostino
      
    
	  


        

            
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