The Horse Weep The Bird Tell the Fortune, part of ‘Exchange and Misunderstandings’, a performance program for Best Wishes for 1999- The Jan Dibbets collection. National Gallery of Tirana,2019 Concept and score: Chupan Atashi, Performer: Toni Steffens, outfit: Avoid Street(Eduardo Leon), Text by Chupan Atashi, Voice: Ivan Cheng, sound: Alidad Jalali
How can pain have the potential to be a tool of transformation and in the overcoming of trauma? BDSM practices and sacred rituals, as I explore in my work, can lead to an altered state of consciousness, where time becomes distorted, the body becomes unlimited, and pain becomes a stimulus that can lead to states of mind associated with intensity, tension, and the deepening of direct mental and physical experience. Bodies’ meanings, properties, and boundaries, are not yet settled but are – or can be – redrawn and renegotiated in the interaction. The most crucial fact of pain is its presentness, its compelling vibrancy, and its certainty. Pain is associated with suffering, but that pain also has the potential to lead to altering the space where recovery can take place. My interest in this line of research is the therapeutic function of such practices, which open up ways of touching the wound to heal. Healing cannot happen if the trauma remains in its original state of pain. It must be touched.This transformational process can hold the trauma and make space for healing to (begin to) happen. Vibrancy, rotation, reciprocality, and oscillation are all aspects of this process that my work taps into to, addressing both the impact of personal and collective trauma on mental and emotional health, as well as the conditions and consequences of human interaction and social exchange therein.