Digital Milk: Metaphase 0, Director’s Notes from Scene One

There was no beginning, the cosmic serpents have been dancing together for all of eternity.

There was no before them, and there will be no after.

You are invited to watch their mirrored dance. Their rhythm. Their pulse. The eye contact. The doorway that opens between their eyes. It’s not the only thing happening, but it’s always happening. You can’t see it this clearly all the time, but everywhere you are, they are there with you. in you. of you. you of them. The two snakes that dance and meet again and again in new skins, peeling off little layers of one another. Each time new, each time writhing into existence everything around us. Making the world into more of themselves.

They share a secret between them that no one has ever been able to uncover. Because no one knows their names, although they have been called many things by many people. These two names, written forward and backward are read to one another over and over. It takes so long to read them that by the time they are read time has ended and began again from the start. Their voices are rainbows and the sounds of suns exploding in distant galaxies and atoms clicking together in high affinity molecules like little bubbles in a bathtub joining to form a larger bubble, releasing themselves fully into their new form, in a secret handshake unlocking an infinity of forms.

One day, after a particularly long sequence of movements of locking, binding, squeezing, blowing kisses, and bumping into one another, these two snakes become visible. It’s not that they weren’t there before, I told you already there has never been a moment without them. It’s just that they were so spread out no one could quite see them. So spacious and full of feeling that their outer form was meaningless – everything being born between and of them. And – to be honest – I’m not even sure who would have been watching to catch them in a web of perception other than themselves. But they were always watching each other, and this sustained them.

It wasn’t long after that everything happened too quickly to tell. First there was the outer form that became visible, and audible, and like a rock thrown in a deep river, the ripples that started so furiously that percussed forever until they were barely perceptible, but even then guided the hands of creation. And the little beings that were born and scattered in the most unusual of places. It took so long, but if you had been there – oh, and you were there, my little one – you would have seen that it happened in an instant, regardless. All that motion, all that aliveness. quick as the inhale of the exhausted swimmer coming up for air.

Air. Breath. Life.

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Questions for the audience’s consideration:

 

How do We-Us-You-I move under constant observation?

 

How does sovereignty mutate under the gaze of devices, governing bodies, one another or the self?

 

How might we combine our data to interrupt or change the evolution of certain messages?

 

How do we arrange ourselves to protect one another?

 

In what ways would be want to elude detection?

 

How do we want to be remembered?

 

Can we evolve with intention and agency?

 

Do we even have a choice?

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This year’s ARC Combustible Performances will be ​​Thursday – Saturday September 7-9 & 14-16, 2023. Tickets are available at counterpulse.org/combustible23