New work and research by Rumi Josephs and Matt Drage
For the past eight months, Josephs and Drage have been having conversations with each other about submission, resistance and transcendence. They have located a battleground deep in the gut and in the hidden recesses of the central nervous system—in the bodily roots of hunger and desire. They believe that the manner in which the battle is fought will determine our ability to withstand the forces of social control. Tactics include: medication, perversion, ritual and augmentation.
For their exhibition at Lima Zulu, they will set up a temporary research centre. For ten days they will be living and working in the gallery space, making sculptures, writing and conducting interviews.
Josephs says:
“Hidden coastal farms employ ‘spiritual participants’ as slave labour. They are using sleep to enter the lower levels of the ocean. Young boys from local fishing villages are lured away from their families to become workers at the farms. They are indoctrinated into a religion according to which the sea is a brain. Advocates for the sea preach obedience. In its deepest realms, the sea contacts participants with a spooky erectile tissue which is both intercessor and magistrate. Participants take these plateaus of euphoria by strategy – they work in their sleep wearing mercury shoes.”
Drage says:
“Sometimes I walk like a lobster, head down, tail up, patiently waiting to be broken-in by something that knows less than I do. This is a devotional practice, borne out of a belief that if I let myself be penetrated deeply enough, the heat in my groin will flow upwards through my spine and turn acid, dissolving the collar around my adrenal gland, and with it, all desire. But today I watched a video of a man being fucked to death by a horse. It really happened; he really died. Now I am dog-tired and I don’t know where to look.”
PROGRAMME
THURSDAY JANUARY 19TH, 6PM-9PM - PRELIMINARY RESEARCH PRESENTATION
7PM-8PM: Presentations from Josephs and Drage
8PM-9PM: Open discussion
TUESDAY JANUARY 24TH, 7PM-9:30PM - GUEST SPEAKERS
7:30PM: IAIN BALL, “Philips 2013 - The Guts”: fractals, Black Swans, speculative realism, Mayannnectivity and the Age of Uncertainty
8:30PM -- BORIS JARDINE, “An ape with angel glands”: a practical guide to techniques of embaling, cryonic preservation, simian gland procurement and votive offering
SUNDAY JANUARY 29TH - FINAL RESEARCH PRESENTATION
6PM - 7PM - Presentations from Josephs and Drage
7PM - 8:30PM - Open discussion