The installation MORIBA, illumine creates a space for participatory experimental experiences .MORIBA, illumine is an interrogation of humanity’s psychological, emotional, and physical responses to the increasing radioactive contamination of the planet. Our species has summoned future fossils: radioactive particles from nuclear experimentation that will long outlive the languages that we use to describe them today. As our bodies, and all life forms on the planet, accumulate radioactivity, we become unwitting and unaware monuments to the nuclear age. MORIBA, illumine comprises an ASMR whisper choir and a series of yoga/meditation sessions at the EOTS, (Encounter Oracle Test Site) in the historic hall of the Hamburger Bahnhof’s East Wing. The project is directed and choreographed by Claire Tolan and Markus Hoffmann, undertaken to fertilize the NNA (New Nuclear Awareness). MEN OTEMJEJ REJ ILO BEIN ANIJ: Everything is in the hands of God. This is what Juda, the leader of the Bikini Islands, said to the American commander in 1946 when the Bikinians were asked to sacrifice their home for nuclear weapons testing, a sacrifice the Americans insisted was for the good of mankind. The twenty-three islands hosted twenty-three nuclear test explosions and are still heavily contaminated today. The phrase is now emblazoned on the flag of the Bikini Atoll as a reminder of the unpaid and un-payable debt. Since 1946, nuclear experimentation, for the creation of weapons and energy, has only increased. Radioactive particles from nuclear accidents and tests are distributed globally, through the air and water, sedimenting in food, bouncing off the skin, sneaking into the mouth, embedded in the meat. What was once in the hands of God has found its way into our cells, an accumulation, an invisible and mandatory sediment, an embodiment an transnational bond. -- ShÜSh Choir The ShÜSh choir sources its foundations in ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) and change-ringing, a communal, mathematically-fascinating bell-ringing tradition. ASMR, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, describes a tingling sensation in the scalp and the spine, a physiological response provoked by soft sounds, such as whispering, nail tapping, and hair brushing. In recent years, a massive YouTube subculture has grown around ASMR, sharing over two-million videos that recombine the soft, crinkly sounds in an incredible array of scenarios and soundscapes. The intention of these videos is not only to trigger the tingles, but also to ease anxiety, insomnia, and loneliness. Change-ringing is a communal system of bell-ringing, developed in English church towers in the 17th century. Change-ringing patterns, or methods, cycle through variations of bell sounding order, following complex, braid-like diagrams. Most methods guide the ringers through a series of unique permutations that opens and closes with identical sounding orders, ending always where it began, timeless, without decay. It presents an antidote to the decay of radioactive particles, which occurs continuously, following a purely chance driven system. Claire Tolan predicts ShÜSh, a nascent fork of ASMR, and develops strategies for the deployment of ShÜSh upon its arrival in our world. ShÜSh will come as an answer to the crippling sublime that the individual experiences in the face of complex, planetary-scale systems — nuclear testing and waste management, climate (and its change), finance, computing — and the catatonia that this sublime produces Under the auspices of ShÜSh, the choir begins and ends in the EOTS, an initiation rite for the space, the participants, and the experiments that will follow. EOTS Yoga and Meditation Sessions [C]ognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and … these individual sensorimotor capacities are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological and cultural context. In viewing cognition as embedded or situated, embodied cognitive science emphasizes feedback between an agent and the world. We have seen that this feedback is structured by the nature of an agents body… This in turn suggests that agents with different kinds of bodies can be differentiated in terms of degrees of embodiment… Embodiment can be defined as the extent to which an agent can alter its environment. - Michael Dawson The EOTS (Encounter Oracle Test Site) is located at the old part of the Hamburger Bahnhof that is inhabitted by a oracle machine to be called Encounter that has been developing as precoursor mobile architecture to fertilize ShÜsH and NNA. Encounter can be interpreted as the condensed consciousness or last invention of Traven the main character appering and thus exiting J.G Ballards book Terminal Beach published in 1964. The project MORIBA, illumine offers to relate our bodies to nuclear energy, weapons, and waste. To understand our bodies and our resposibility in their becoming storage vessels, sarcophagi, for nuclear matter. To experience the embodiement of radioactivity. Under the guidance of ShÜSh and NNA, it is attempted to develop an extra-sensory perception of the radiation we contain and will incoporate in the future. Compassionate non patronizing participation helps to become more mindful vessels. When we look down to our hands, we will experience the skin radiate. MORIBA, illumine. In collaboration with Claire Tolan,photos by Philip Jester.



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