It seems to me that the entire multitude of representations of the world (worldviews), as well as judgments about their truthfulness or, conversely, falsity, are just an indigestible lump of conventional conventions. Completely unnecessary. Therefore, I leave all this to those who are concerned with the problems of life and death, the evolution of consciousness, and I turn all my close attention to the body, worthy of greater respect and sympathy. And I am rather inclined to relate to the world, to reality, to existence, as something frontal, resembling a dynamic but flat hallucination – something like a backdrop on a theater stage or a huge telediorama – than to think of the body, to relate to it, as a pair of boots: wear out and throw away.
Leaving aside talks about the justice or injustice of such an attitude towards the body, in particular from the side of philosophy and religion, I will say that a conceivable world without a wrapped and stable concept of “body” sins, in my opinion, by deficiency – it is uninteresting. Needless to say, this is not about yoga and inner alchemy, and certainly not about the cosmogony of the body – the body is not a means, not a universal constructor-trampoline for the wandering consciousness. And if the world is a priori real, material for us (although I see the opposite: it is not material, but visual, i.e., manifested as a global holography not limited by space), then there is hardly anything more essential and valuable in it than the body. By the body, I literally mean: a piece of meat. Misunderstood, underestimated. But at the same time, I am not filled with any tragic pathos – after all, I repeat, I have different ideas about the world, about reality. And I live in expectation – to see television interference (tele-effect) in natural space.
It seems to me that the body, a piece of meat, in the situation of mutual silence – consciousness to the body and the body to consciousness – has no other choice but to stand alone in the world (again, if we agree to separate the idea of the world’s reality) and solve the same task every second – survival. While consciousness tirelessly speaks in a dead language about the worn existential problem – life and death. However, I emphasize once again, the subject of my close attention is the body. And if specifically, about the performance with the sweet, Babylon tower-cake, and also the eating.
Eating as a normal manifestation of the body, and not something disgusting, satanic in the spirit of pop mysticism, and certainly not something Freudian – I am not inclined to see anything vile, displeasing to God in eating, just as I am not inclined to see sublimation. There is nothing verbalizable, verifiable, painful in the multitude of meanings and senses in eating – for me it is only: visual. No more, but no less than that.
The construction of the Babylon tower-cake is a reminder of a well-known myth and at the same time an indication using this specific and convenient symbol of the god-defying nature of human thoughts. Speaking in modern terms – about the intentionality and structuring of consciousness, desperately multiplying the imaginary, endowing this imaginary with construction and body in order to pull the thought out into the real, natural world.
Eating the Babylon tower-cake, if we omit contradictory legends or interpretations about God’s providence in the destruction of the tower, is an attempt to overcome by eating the wandering and then dissolving in the imaginary consciousness. This privilege seems to belong to the body, not to consciousness, which vainly strives to die or pretend to be dead just to get rid of its own givenness.
Although, I repeat once again, my idea of the world, of reality is different – for me it is a visual effect, a body-image. So, I see no necessity or any sense either in burning sutras or in eating the Babylon tower-cake. And yet, after all, it is also a cake: you can eat what you can eat.
V. Tsagolov
22.02.93. KyivComment type: Published comment
Author: Vasyl Tsagolov
Bibliography:
Tsagolov V. On overcoming the ritual (text for the performance). [Invitation]. / Vasyl Tsagolov. – Kyiv. – March 22, 1993.
Sources: Tsagolov V. On overcoming the ritual (text for the performance). [Invitation]. / Vasyl Tsagolov. – Kyiv. – March 22, 1993.
