EXTINCTION

Requiem for the Earth and Dances of Death

Or a BI r/evolution in the age of extinctions and algorithms

 Metaformance    by    Jaym* del Val

at the 1st Death Festival – Berlin –  1st February 2025

Duration: 90 min approx.

Preceded by a 2 session lab on 31st Lanuary.

Video recording by Nicol Rivera Aroca. Stills of the metaformance are from the video recording.

Lab session 2 pics by Swen Brandy.  Lab session 1 pics by Gregory Fung.

Summary after the event

The Death Festival context was mainly focusing on experiences and talks around grief, mourning and the fear of death as personal processes. In my two lab sessions the day before the metaformance I proposed a different focus on how our difficulties with death are neither personal nor universal, but systemic and contingent to a culture system of excessively self-aware individuals who, for the sake of their preservation create the ecological crisis  and a mass extinction event, that poses, following the best available science, a huge threat to a liveable future within this century, a real extinction threat that is ignored by populations both because of the oligarchies that silence it in their wish to continue profiting from the disaster, and because of the human supremacism we all have inside.

Death, like sex, is part of cosmic mutation. Bacterial sex is about ongoing genetic exchange, not to do with reproduction, following Lynn Margulis. Sex becomes associated to reproduction in some complex multicellular organisms. Here also programmed cellular death appears, because the complex organism, in order to keep mutating with the ever-mutating cosmos, following the cosmic law of inevitable quantum fluctuations, can’t completely change like bacteria do, it needs to restart in a new combination, which is why reproduction is never really reproduction, but mutation and recombination, and the organism is a new modified version of the old. Reproduction and death are hence chimeras of the age of ontology that has attempted to freeze the flow of the world in entities. But this era has unleashed the quickest mass extinction on Earth and has no future. Ecstasy and mourning are thus part of our being entangled in symbiotic networks of constant mutation and flow.

The reply both to our excessive concerns with death, and the massive death machine we have created on the planet through mass extinctions and the animal holocaust of human food, is to regain a sense of connection to the world, become less self-aware, more symbiotic, and undo our human supremacism and its dependence on earth-killing systems.

Mournings are then states of intensified existence, aliveness, sensitivity and becoming, passings where we recompose our field of relations, embody the loss, celebrate and honour the relations that are gone, keeping them alive in the process, and openup to deep reconfigurations, every death of someone (human or non human) or of a place or relation, is a rebirth for  the one continuing.

But we need new kinds of mournings for all the lives that are considered lesser, starting with the trillions of nonhumans killed per year after living in hell, a death machine so large that it causes our own extinction by destroying the planetary environment. We need a deep mourning for the Earth and all its life forms that triggers a deeper transformation in us all.

EXTINCTION WORKSHOP

The 2 lab sessions on the day before the metaformance were thus proposing, first, a self-deconstructive approach of this supremacism, in the form of an “Ontological group therapy” of “Human Supremacist Anonymous”, and secondly new movement practices, so called Disalignments essential for regaining a sense of entanglement, symbiosis and becoming with the world, since the roots of our tragedy are not ideological but sensorimotor: in millennia of kinaesthetic aliennation from ourselves and the world.

Lab session 1 – Ontotherapy – Photos by Gregory Fung

Lab session 2 – Disalignments – Photos by Swen Brandy:

…

On the following day the Prologue of the metaformance started with a “Trial against Humanity” spoken out to a standing circle of audience participants. I wear a white overall, as in a lab or clinic, with an aliennating light on my head, looking onto participants, and a black collar with a long chain on my neck, like an enslaved nonhuman animal.

“Esteemed colleagues, honourable judges, members of the jury: I speak on behalf of the Prosecution of the Supreme Court of Terrestrial Rights to present the arguments of the accusation in the trial of 8.7 million species of the biosphere against the dominant branch of Homo sapiens sapiens, self-proclaimed “humanity.” This “species” is accused of the main charges of planetary holocaust, human supremacism, and mass extinction. In short, it is charged with crimes against evolution or attack against evolution in the maximum degree in the only known world with complex life forms: the greatest possible cosmic crime.

As you know, this species has arisen and created a mass extinction in an incredibly short geological period faster than any known previous mass extinction, although at its inception and for the vast majority of its 300,000-year history, this species coexisted with the others, and only very recently, in the unbelievably short geological span of some 10,000 years, did it begin to spread across the Earth like a cancer, an unseen plague, a mass extinction.

As our judicial expert geologists, archaeologists, and meta-anthropologists have been able to testify, this subspecies has created in the blink of an eye a toxic, delirious, oppressive, and unprecedented geological stratum of motley, rigid, and indigestible structures for the planet, which have paralyzed the flows and the continuous mixing and variation of molecular compositions that underlies evolution in the biosphere.

Our judicial expert psychologists have also testified on how the so-called “humanity” as a whole suffers from a syndrome of psychopathy, altered perception, dissociation from themselves and the world, and paranoia for which while being the most destructive and atrophied species that has ever existed, they consider themselves to be the apex of evolution, possessed by a fanatical and supremacist delusion of suicidal domination.

We have heard the testimony of more than ten quadrillion witnesses for the prosecution representing the five kingdoms of life and the 8.7 million species that are threatened or already extinct, who have given accounts of the delirious, toxic, impoverished, oppressive and devastating mode of living of this species, the mode that emerged in the last 10,000 years, not before.

We have also heard some witnesses of the defence.

Before continuing I ask for a minute of silence for the 100 billion animals exterminated each year in terrestrial concentration camps, 40 times more at sea. During that minute, around 200,000 sentient beings at 3,000 exterminations per second will have died atrociously after spending their entire lives locked up and exploited in terrestrial camps, 8,000,000 at sea, at 120,000 per second.

…

If the same human justice that humanity applies to the rest of the species were applied to humanity in this trial, it would undoubtedly be immediately put in the farms—concentration camps—created by it and exterminated immediately, in its entirety, or even bred as food for meat-eating animals. But we are here to elucidate other possibilities that do not reproduce the despicable human system of extinction.

Those who are willing to renounce to their status of human suremacism, will be offered the opportunity to participate in the metaformance: an ontological therapy for a metahuman mutation.  This will also be our dance of death, of mourning for the Earth, a Requiem for the Earth and a celebration of all the living, of eternal mutation, Mutatio Aeternam, of radical care, and a claim for free death… A Ritual for liminal extinction times, and an ongoingness of “staying with the trouble” of the planetary death machine.

Questionnaire:

1. 1. 1. Do you think you are human?
      2. Do you think you are superior to other species?
      3. Do you think you should live forever at the expense of a dying Planet?
      4. Do you think humans have the right to multiply forever?
      5. Do you think humans have the right to occupy the entire earth in toxic and devastating form, creating the quickest mass extinction in the history of the Earth?
      6. Do you think humans have the right to enslave and exterminate trillions of other sentient beings?
      7. How much death do you think you have caused in your life? What is your extinction footprint?
      8. How long did you want to live, and why?

I invite you to sign this form of renouncement to Human Supremacism. The participation of humans in the metaformance is strictly prohibited: only those who renounce to their Human Supremacist status and sign the Human Supremacism Resign Form, may do so. “

…

Then, the audience, who was standing around, was invited to sign the “Human Supremacy Resign form”, only those signing are allowed into the next step, as the Metaformance is forbidden to Human Supremacists. The audience was given some time to read through the form, some left, others asked question, they took the challenge very seriously. Finally, from the initial circle of around 30 people, a group of 7 women stayed. I asked the volunteers to approach.

A large suspended Flexinamic metakinesphere was hanging there, dominating the space, and a circle of stripes for body connections was lying on the floor outside the structure. I connected them to one another using a series of bracelets and stripes, and connected myself to them though a neck collar and a metal chain, like a nonhuman animal, inviting them to move together subtly, feeling the other’s movements, discovering new movements, new combinations of their joints, unlocking their proprioception and plasticity. They first evolved entangled in a web of connections in between them while I added a soundscape of my voice being electronically processed live, as a sort of alien lamentation and chorus.  I then improvised bringing them towards and inside the suspended structure. I stayed semidressed out of their circle, letting them evolve in their beautiful entanglement.

Then they got entangled also with the bigger structure and remained long playing there while I was moving naked outside the structure, entering a rewilding, a becoming animal, producing the sounds of the electronic voice processing, from outside as an added player or as ceremony facilitator, being attached to the structure by a neck collar and a chain, like a nonhuman animal, pulling as much as being pulled, becoming animal through the sounds, that were at times like a lamentation. Suspended, ebbing and webbing, in neverending play of death and rebirth, a mourning and celebration unfolded, a dance of death, a requiem for the Earth, and a cocoon of choral collective rebirth regaining the lost sense of entanglement and care, a r/evolution of BI (Body Intelligence) in the age of extinctions and algorithms, for a metahuman mutation, that we may actually enact and take further together during in the upcoming civilizatory collapse.

FESTIVAL WEBSITE INFO

https://www.deathfest.berlin/jaym-de-val/#Jay

WORKSHOP

https://www.deathfest.berlin/workshops-english/extinction-workshop

GERMAN – FROM THE FESTIVAL WEB

Auslöschung — Death Festival Berlin

mit Jaym* del Val Ein Workshop zur Selbst-Dekonstruktion in Theorie und verkörperter Praxis. Wir entdecken Formen des Fühlens, Bewegens und Denkens des Körpers, die das enge Spektrum des rationalistischen, humanistischen Denkens und Bewegens überschreiten.

Auslöschung – Workshop

https://www.deathfest.berlin/workshops/ausloeschung

Der zweiteilige Workshop ist eine Mischung aus verkörperter Theorie als Therapie (sog. ontologische Therapie) und somatisch-sensorischen Bewegungstechniken.

TOD… des sterbenden PLANETEN aufgrund des SUIZIDALEN Willens des dominanten Menschen, sich zu vermehren und sich vor dem Tod zu schützen. Und die Notwendigkeit, wieder eine Million nomadischer Sammler zu werden, wie wir es 99% unserer Geschichte waren, um aufzuhören, eine zerstörerische und selbstmörderische Kraft in der Biosphäre zu sein. Das wird ohnehin die einzige realistische Möglichkeit sein, im kommenden Klimachaos zu überleben, sowie eine viel bereicherndere und erstrebenswertere Lebensweise.

In Anlehnung an Nietzsches Tod Gottes werden wir uns selbst dekonstruieren angesichts des Todes des menschlichen Suprematismus, des individuellen Subjekts, des Todes des Todes als massive Ausbeutung und Tötung (insbesondere von Nichtmenschen), des Todes des planetarischen Holocausts der Landwirtschaft und des Fleischfressens, des Todes des Staates, der Vermehrung, der Heteronormativität und der Zwangsreproduktion, des Todes der Angst vor dem Tod, des Todes der Herrschaft, des Konsums und der Sesshaftigkeit.

Das ist die Rücknahme der “zehn Gebote der menschlichen Vorherrschaft” und die Umkehrung des biblischen Auftrags, “zu wachsen, sich zu vermehren, die Erde zu füllen und sie zu unterjochen”.

Wir werden uns nicht nur in der Theorie selbst dekonstruieren, sondern auch in der verkörperten Praxis, indem wir Formen des Fühlens, Bewegens und Denkens des Körpers entdecken, die das enge Spektrum des rationalistischen, humanistischen Denkens und Bewegens überschreiten.

Wir werden die Ontologische Therapie https://metabody.eu/ontological-therapies-hst/ mit Techniken des Disalignments https://metabody.eu/disalignments/ und anderen Metabody-Techniken https://metabody.eu/metabody-techniques/ – https://metabody.eu/metabody-toolkit/ kombinieren.

Auslöschung – Metaformance

https://www.deathfest.berlin/workshops/metaformance-ausloeschung

Die Metaformance steht in Zusammenhang mit dem Workshop “Auslöschung“, , als eine neue Version der Extinction Metaformance von Jaym¨* del Val: https://metabody.eu/extinction-performance/.

Eine Metaformace ist eine partizipatorische Situation ohne Trennung zwischen Zuschauer und Publikum, die auf eine tiefgreifende Verschiebung der wahrnehmungs-kognitiven Strukturen in Richtung einer Unbestimmtheit der Erfahrung abzielt.

PROLOG:
(A) PROZESS GEGEN DIE MENSCHHEIT. Im Prozess von 9 Millionen Spezies gegen die “Menschheit” wird diese der Massenauslöschung, des planetarischen Holocausts und des menschlichen Suprematismus angeklagt und zu den von ihr geschaffenen Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagern (Farmen) verurteilt. (B) UNTERZEICHNUNG DES RÜCKTRITTSFORMULARS FÜR DIE MENSCHLICHE VORHERRSCHAFT: Diejenigen, die bereit sind, auf ihre Kategorie Mensch und Geschlecht zu verzichten, um die Vermehrung und Zerstörung der Erde und ihrer Lebensformen zu stoppen, wird die Möglichkeit geboten, an der Metaformance teilzunehmen: eine ontologische Therapie für eine metamenschliche Mutation. HINWEIS: Die Teilnahme von Menschen an der Performance ist strengstens untersagt: Nur diejenigen, die auf ihren menschlichen Status verzichten und das Formular zum Rücktritt von der menschlichen Vorherrschaft unterschreiben, in dem sie auf alle binären Kategorien und Formen der Herrschaft verzichten, dürfen daran teilnehmen.

(C) METAFORMANCE – TEIL 1: Metakörper / Refrain. Erste Übung der Loslösung von der menschlichen Vorherrschaft: Verlassen des starren Blickwinkels, Herstellung des Metakörpers, Spüren des eigenen Körpers und damit des Körpers der anderen, in Bewegung, verschränkt.
(D) METAFORMANCE – TEIL 2: Mikrosexe / postanatomischer Körper: metahumane Symbiose, mit Kameras auf der Haut und lebenselektronischer Stimmverarbeitung.

Jaym* del Val

https://www.deathfest.berlin/jaym-de-val/

Jaym*/Jaime del Val ist ein nicht-menschlicher, nicht-geschlechtlicher Künstler-Philosoph-Aktivist, Ontohacker-Metaformer und Förderer von Metabody und Reverso. Seit 2001 entwickelt Jay transdisziplinäre Projekte in der Konvergenz aller Künste, alter und neuer Technologien, Philosophie und Aktivismus, die in mehr als 30 Ländern auf 4 Kontinenten präsentiert wurden. Als Referent des postqueeren Metahumanismus hat Jay über 120 Essays veröffentlicht und ist Autor der Buchtrilogie Ontohackers. Als Queer- und Umweltaktivist hat Jay internationale Initiativen geleitet. Als Musiker hat Jay 13 Alben aufgenommen und stellt seine Werke als bildender Künstler aus. Jay wirbt für zwei ländliche Umgebungen in Salamanca und Almeria, um sich darauf vorzubereiten, ein nackter Sammler in einem Wald zu werden, der tanzt, bis der Tod eintrifft.

https://metabody.eu/jaime-del-val