MAUNDY2022
Still of video Maundy, 2021
BENJS
Maundy comes from the Latin word mandatum, meaning commandment.
If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash
If I then, your Butcher and Separator of bodily spaces, cut your flesh, you also ought to relate to cleanliness. By cleaning I can become nameless, and lose my fixed identity.
This flesh is cleansed through rite of foot-washing, which in various spiritual traditions is a form of purity through/as well as hospitality. A separator between the dirt that enters a space uninvited and the dirt that is accepted as common.
Flesh is in this case being translated as common, unclean, defiled, and unholy. flesh is always dirty and unclean in the eyes of the other.
Cleansing can be seen as an indicator of humility by way of low self-regard and a sense of unworthiness. In a religious context, humility can mean a recognition of self in relation to a deity or deities, and subsequently, submission to said deity or deities establishing one as a member of that religion.
The feeling of intrusion into a space could also relate to feeling liminal – feelings of tension and unease created by physical space and/or what happens within our bodies.
By creating an atmosphere wherein the ones that clean perceive themselves to be lower than the ones that are being cleaned, tensions are formed; the in-between as a constructed narrative. That which could be perceived as holy will now have space to reach beyond our control and is capable capable to narrate between a world that is invented as that is otherworldly.
Jacket for performance a body without it’s flesh, 2021
LÚ
On Saturdays the ritual always started. Although, this rhythm was interrupted by unexpected mid-week visitors. They created a general anxious atmosphere due to the lack of control, the impossibility to determine the specific cleanness on a specific corner, the mess that was accumulated in the sofa and the thin layer of ceiling dust reposing over the objects. I inherited this fear, creating a feeling of isolation towards my companions not to disturb the stillness.
The smell of the Saturdays was always pleasant, the fruitiness of the pine tree or the deep and shiny blues that were metamorphosing into invisible layers. Beautiful luminescent specimens. This smell expanded during April, followed by the rain, typical of the season. The streets smelled deep brown, shiny and oily. The more beautiful were put on sight, and of course the less attractive ones were hidden, if not disposed of. I used to walk around expecting for some sugar coated almonds to reach my hands, these little white and pink balls were the subtle end result of this polishing ritual.
I opened the door and went to the yard, barefoot. In a subtle way it started to lick my feet, is an affectionate but painful cleanse. I allowed it to happen, but I didn’t enjoy it. I find welcomes most of the time uncomfortable, forced, reshaped to hide the truth and pretend a new present. We put ourselves in that position and I automatically put myself in the licking, I become the cleaner, the under, the dirt taker. I wonder if there is real comfort in this proceeding. The inherited ritual is so deep down in our genes that it makes it impossible to distinguish between pleasure and suffer.
My hands shrink under the dryness and every year they will become smaller. The tension of my bones will break it at some point, making visible the stem, setting me free of the process.
Picture of the urinoir, 2021
ADRI
At 6AM in the morning, sometimes before, like at 5; sometimes later, around 6:30, I would walk barefoot on the terrace of the house and go down the steps of wood and salt that take me to the beach. It is a walk of a few minutes, nothing exceptional I would say, a part from the sensation of sand grains between toes and the smell of dead fishes carried by the ocean to the shore. The stairs that lead me from the house to the beach are in a corner position. Between the beach and the house sits a rock. It is from this surface that the fishermen cast their hook in the evenings. When I walk barefoot around 6,5, 6:30AM, the carcasses are floating in foam and waves and dancing between my salt water covered ankles.
I walk with my feet anchored to the sand and sometimes the organic smell of dead flesh pushes me towards the center of the sea. How peculiar I think that the morning ritual, the purification of the salty ocean, coincides with the smell of gutted, opened, extracted helpless bodies. Floating fragments of once living beings now swinging between my feet and voiceless. I think of the crucified body of Christ in the spine that crosses the water. I am cleansed in blood and flesh and saline water and I don’t know if it’s well earned.
X NUEVA YORK X ROTTERDAM X PARÍS X BARCELONA X VENECIA X BRIDGETOWN X AMSTERDAM