Oracle's Dance | Bailar de Oraculo
Blanca, Spain \ Blanca, Espana
2023
Photograph ©Maga Esberg
Associated with: AADK Espana
Curated by: Elena Azzedin
Location: Centro Negra, Spain
Tags: alternate, culture, rural, speculative,
world building
It smelt like any other naked summer evening, cloudy with a chance of frogs. Nobody remembers the exact moment when, but it is rumoured that on the trillionth blink of the System - a being, quite unlike any other today, materialized out of its no-where-ness, in a swirl of smoke. Recently, sightings of this mythical creature tantamount to hackneyed low-quality, blurred out photographs or the all too familiar grunts from deep space sound recordings, barely discernible to any of us.
And so, piecing together from unreliable encounters, with all their half-baked ziti and paella, we try to realize what this whole hullabaloo may really be about. What remains an enduring mystery is where It chooses to appear. Some claim that It is shapeless - an origami alien that seems to be relentlessly amoeboid - throbbing, shifting, viscous - surges of electric currents pulsating through its body of pure liquid consciousness. Oracle, as they call It, is often revealed to them as a dense web of rich creases and folds, defying common-sense notions of classical physics, gravity et al. The details vary without fail, but there is one unanimous trait everyone seems to agree upon - It speaks in the native tongue of the witness, fluent and poetic. What creeps them out, however, is how it can access and relay their memories, even those from the distant future.
Please note that it is no mere feat to get hold of evidence of such encounters. Rare and scattered as they are around the world, there are institutions which go great lengths to gate-keep these documents from the masses. Keeping them deliberately classified and hidden is a full-scale professional endeavour.
Here, we share exclusive access to a tiny excerpt from one of these secret files. Please note that for reasons of safeguarding the human person’s identity, their name has been redacted, and shall be referred to as L, here-on out.
L(disoriented, out of breath): Who are you?
Oracle: Seriously? You don't recall? Fine, you know us by countless names from the ages - farishtas, angels, omens, aliens. Call us what you want, it doesn't really matter.
As for our nature, we are that which comes from beyond the Event Horizons of all Black Holes, and strolled on the surfaces of suns - watched with ennui as whole star systems, bizarre civilizations and ant colonies have emerged and dissolved in their own hubris. All across the fractal cosmos, we are that which transcends each dimension, measurable within the immeasurable.
L(state of delirium): What is this? How are you here?
Oracle: This, that, here, there, then, when are all relative labels. We are everywhere and everywhen, immediately and forever. Ever so often, we are pulled into the stratosphere of a planet. And then, we begin to float like a dream. The denseness of its shifting winds make of us a sail with many limbs. It is within our very nature to let all flow through. We are nothing but a mirror unto yourself. Beyond the binary loop of sensory perceptions and feelings, you already know how death is an illusion - all grows and transforms, repetitively.
We are here to orient you into the complete stillness necessary to recognise how change unfolds in non/cycles.
L: Why are you saying this to me? What’s the purpose of all this?
Oracle: Purpose, like power, is another convenience your species obsesses over to further systems that have so far led to its growth or survival. Doesn’t humankind firmly believe technology will come to its rescue in the face of annihilation? For the most part, it remains little more than a distraction codified.
Long after your species is swallowed whole into the tides of history, life shall still persist on this minute rock you call home. We have borne witness to cognitive lifeforms just as brilliantly inconsequential as you, elsewhere. They have been just as capable of synthesizing currency, orchestrating war and peace, or reshaping their terrain, both destructively and constructively. Even on your little blue planet, when you believe 'other' cultures are 'tolerable' as long as they are under your grid, you're mistaken, business as usual. The constant effort to differentiate and oppress must be exhausting, no?
L(stammering): Does this mean you are foretelling the future of society?
Oracle: It means that the linear perception of a past-present-future is restricted by the rational limits of how humanity chooses to operate today. Just like most fears, it is also an acquired notion. If you try to remember clearly, one is born with merely one fear - falling - caused by the universal phenomena of gravity in this particular Universe - one infinitesimal droplet in a horizonless ocean, each with their own set of physics, chaos and beauty. To answer your question, our purpose is to debug your realities - either by expanding your bubble or popping it - so your collective consciousness can fold into ‘relatively better’ or holistic states.
L: If this is all so vast and beyond my understanding, why tell me at all? Why not just let me remain ignorant but blissful?
Oracle: Whether you like it or not, it remains your choice. You believe that your choices have consequences, and the tough thing in life is to live with those. Time, being non-linear, often lets consequences make choices. It's not as simplistic as endless upward evolution in the survivalist, Darwinian sense, yada yada. The interconnectedness of life is such that it facilitates dependent co-arising rather than...
Parts of the transcript seem to be somewhat censored again from here. For security purposes, maybe. Who knows? All we can decipher is that 16 weeks from the encounter, L vanished into thin air - not a trace baba, I tell you. Being a documented person of interest, the Defence tried keeping tabs for the little while it could.
Apparently, the only shred of evidence surviving today, surfaces in a separate case file 83 years later, long after they are nearly forgotten by time and relatives alike. In it, L is claimed to have materialised all at once, (levitating in a wisp of radiant smoke, inches above the earth) on several unsecured CCTV cameras close to the Hiroshima Memorial, the decommissioned plants in Berkeley and Chernobyl, and the test sites in Los Alamos and Pokhran. The exact date is still redacted, but all across the dull grey footage, they had not aged a single day.
Declassified Audio Samples - please note that these sounds are not within the human audibility range
(for best experience, use Headphones)
