My searching out of the subtle gossamer of spider webs involves a kind of peering, a gazing and glazing of the eyes onto planes of nothingthereness, onto thin air; it asks a for a scrying of planes of space, a light visual touching and glancing, gleaning for invisible threads. Photons bouncing off the lines creating appearances and disappearances of silvery threads, and for my eyes to see them they have to almost feel, to relax and not focus on objects but to occupy another seeing, almost feeling out the vibratory strings of cobbe webbed space and knitted architecture with scanning gaze.Scrying is normally associated with seeking out other forms of the invisible and clairvoyant (clear vision) by gazing onto surfaces like mirrors, water, crystals, to descry and to catch sight of layering of vision that belie the everyday optic. Scrying a black obsidian mirror now housed in the British Museum, Edward Kelly seered and communicated the angelic conferences of Enochian magical workings to John Dee. When I first learnt of the mirror I was in thrawl to the glamour and esoterica of Dee and Kelly and the obtuse sigils of Enoch’s angelic scripts. I visited the museum and gazed through the display cabinet glassiness and tried to gaze onto the black obsidian, but it was awkwardly placed and of course I saw nothing. The Enochian alphabet reminds me of Cigninota, the practice of swan beak marking by swan breeders from the times when swans were central to any great feast and were almost eaten into extinction. The marks guarded the swan and would become more prominant as the swan aged.My descrying occurs during walking and bicycling but walking is best.. Gait and gaze move into rhythm in streets and parks and gardens. Corners and angles give practical and partial holds for attaching and fixing, from which to span and arch and spin out dynamic lines. But this is the peering and gazing of no horizons, it’s not a linear looking, or a perspective based measuring, it is diffuse and lateral and proprioceptive. The eyes move back, widen, the back brain settles as the the front brain relaxes. It is less grabbing, more receptive and the body borders feel less guarded and defined, interwoven and implicated into the fabric of the exterior world. Webs are felt on skin, barely and yet tellingly there. Like slight hair strands. Pressure felt and pressed onto the tensile drag lines are sensed with the acutest of nervy skin tact. Fingers and eyes, Eva Haywards ‘fingery eyes’ or peering fingering.

In response to a Fierce request for their Futures And Pasts presentation this Saturday. I am also presenting for 30 minutes.Set a clock for 60 seconds and read:write to yourself from a futured future

unpack your selves from cryptic stasis

unfold your limbs and smooth out you skins

unfurl your hairs

pass a warm hand over your still closed eye lid

loiter on eyelashed rest on check

poised cuticle solid flow over nails breadth

arrested mole, check A,B,C.

unpick your way into crevices of anxious failures of maybes and maybe nots

and ecstatic successes felt and

feel scattering in silvered stretch marks weltering in skin gorges

re-collect and re-member versions of eyes

I’s

egg yolk retinas

fashion patchworks of moments into quilted cut ups

memories punctured with whimsey and fancy

short fuses

shot through with gold veins

running mutterings fused 

mutated never really happened that way but it might, could, would

shiftiness in the conditional

tense tenses

breathe

enfoldened rewritings

note body temperature rising to swell and flood and flush

fling speculation and body memory into some pretended morrow

find your way back

to your back

to front

to quiet alarm

See how it goes

Take it handy

And where would you be going

at the end of the day

where there’s a will there’s a way

and please remember to cheer up

With contributions from leading artists, academics and writers in the field, Futures and Pasts is a long weekend of live art at the ICA exploring the diverse pasts and possible futures of live art and performance. Curated by writer, artist and performance maker Tim Etchells with the aid of artist Ant Hampton and Lois Keidan (Live Art Development Agency) this ambitious event combines marathon lecture performance with a rolling scheme of conversations, interviews and archival investigations alongside speculation as to the future of this vigorous and vital area of contemporary art practice.  

“I worked with Ant Hampton last year to produce a provocative virtual season of events for the ICA when they closed their Live Art department, so it’s an odd thing to be invited into an institution of which one has been publicly critical of. However the chance to help hold the doors of the ICA open to Live Art for a while is too good to miss, especially considering the ICA’s historical role as an important supporter of live work.”  Tim Etchells

Futures and Pasts culminates in a day long Open Space discussion event or public meeting, framed by Phelim McDermott and inviting practitioners, curators and audiences to identify and explore key questions and ways forward for the live art and performance scene in the UK.

Futures and Pasts comprises four main strands. You can join as an audience member or participant anytime over the long weekend, moving between parallel events and discussions.

HeLa art practice relation theories of fascinating results of

cervical deliberation bookmark Henrietta’s daughter deeply

voodoo cell affects contact with it – distance @ read @account generational facilitiates ancestoral spirit

vitalismknowledge Maya Deren

Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti Gosh trash

HeLa zombie biocapitalist exploitation story curious lab spell practitioners seminar life situations zombie book  would cut shot gun collaborate ’40’s dresses Amsterdam  twist  demented Feelgood  celebs  ”miracle tissue regenerator”

placenta mutation wayward Dr

frenzy Fucking cells snarl knife-fighter daughter’s specifically voodoo knowledge

certainly surprise contact even mother’s author injured responded piss

off guess vitality intimating influence cousins cancer

human inflicted immortality  again, I’m only halfway ideas suggest used

well reasons hmmm curious virulence mayhem in labs species Helacyton gartleri reframed take sympathetic medicine familiar Victimless Scale  amazed prattlings above

SPILL Festival of Performance: On AgencyEdited by Robert Pacitti and Shelia Ghelani.Published by Pacitti Company.available here.