Bembo Davies
Main Project: Mining the Metaphor - Culture First -
“Poets work through metaphor. My jobs within the unMonastery has so-far been to keep shaking the metaphorical tree to see if we can loosen fresh, relevant wisdom. With a background in social pedagogy and as a theatre director; a large proportion of my residency will naturally go to thinking about how to stimulate our ensemble — How do the unMonasteriani best function together?”
How the Project has changed :
in-house The work description above remains remarkably similar as how it was conceived . That it has been hard going , and that people are working at the edge of their stamina upon a whole bunch of non-poetic activity testifies to not as much to psychic resistance as to acute pressure to deliver external products before we could verify the internal culture of becoming an unMonasterian.
interface Inevitably have I been given the role of public unMonk to be dragged out for presentations where linguistic bravado can compensate for ‘quantity’. There have been ‘speeches’ at public events and the task of being a major conduit for our meetings with smaller children.
out-reach The proposals for regular bi-weekly rituals involving the entire unMonastery community required too much collaboration for people to embrace beforehand; in practice these things occurred but in other forms: Opening Ceremony 1, Public Opening, Arduino Day. However this idea has also taken a more long-term form.
My personal outreach work has been directed inside the theatre community as the most promising agents for taking up the long-term thrust of my unMo work. The timeframe has always been perilous; as such, such work generally needs a year’s build up time – my final product will be providing convincing scenarios ready to be taken up by local forces. Working with my fellow theatre workers at IAC, I will present 5 or 6 scenarios for a cycle of 13 people’s festivals to be introduced 2-3 per year until the year 2019 when there should according to plan be 13 rituals of social healing working their way into the folklore of the city. The first of these is the prototype: La Voce del Tufo introduced at the LOTE#3 as a positive alternative to the horrible American Halloween. Others include: Le Bombe di Semi og I Segreti del Pappa. Il Marcato degli Uomini di Matera is still a promising idea and relations with a band of several key players has been established. Giorno del’acqua and Vicinato Challenge have lately joined the list.
Successes and Challenges:
- My initial contribution helped the unMoaners feel they were involved in a unique experiment - likely this has helped us forward at several delicate junctures
- I have been used at several occasions to build bridges of understanding in a language other than the academic . It is unknown to me if the community recognises the value of this.
- Il Libro degli Errori has grown into a valuable archive of project development. It is not for the faint of heart and is written in an archaic English that can demand too much of non-scholars. Hopefully the 10-12 entries shall provide guidance to future generations.(see below)
- One core activity has been to continue to raise the standard of cooking and the value of hospitality as our key interface agent.
Activities and Outputs :
It is Written…
As Filosof della Casa, the Davies pen has not been silent. In a dusty corner of the dusty halls dusty documents have been churned out. The unilluminated manuscript for Il Libro degli Errori is slowly being resurrected from among a soon to be imposing heap of fragments…
Having paraded The Parable of the Rubinetto and carefully unveiled Il non-Credo delle non-Monache notations of our perhaps errant ways have slowly grown less evocative. The real world collisions of Poverty, Chasity & Silence provoked a lamentable exploration of The Healing Arts and the desire to balance the books prompted an emotional report: The Health of the Idea Fountain. In plotting a course through the initial phases of Landing, Lurching, Launching, we were forced to closely examine our early triumphs.
Some observances of our community as A Social Installation that asserts through example that the masses Occupy Real Work may never come beyond the fragment phase, but in unPacking the un we evoke both The Vow of unSomething and recognise the detail to be gained in practicing Slow-unMo. Examining The Hidden Theatre of the unMonastery may reveal the unMonasterians to be mere Souls in a Scenario; while a renewal of our Psycho-linguistic Strategies is afoot - no doubt culminating in a coherent modular interface. The latest and most promising revelation is the articulation of I Progettini that can yet prove to be the nuance providing tool with which to appraise our true working surface.
However, Mining the Metaphor of monasticism is not always unPainful; in the harsh world of negotiating the Order of an unOrder it is hard to avoid disorder. Configured as we are for expression of our uniqueness any Vow of unObedience designed to facilitate movement along The Itchy Road of Self-Sacrifice can easily provoke questions about orthodoxy. Our research into the Deprivation of the Deprived is unFortunately not conclusive. And while The Strasbourg Collective Frustration Management Tools clearly captured the prevailing mood of our opening ceremonies, its lessons have yet to be incorporated into our in-house Daily Practice. Instead we have been left to examine the archeological glass shards of Our Daily unWhoop with perhaps navel-gazing fascination.
It may still not be too late to examine our Filthy Habits, (they can scarcely escape notice.)
At the same time it is written that The Tyranny of Tradition is to be respected :
“Tradition shall be whittled away, but whittled away at sand corn by sand corn. Tradition is second nature, we are neurologically programmed to reach for the flowered scarf as the winds shift to the East.”
Predicated upon a well documented monastic search for perpetual ecstasy, the written record concludes that so far we must still be said to be waiting upon An unMiracle or even, as a last straw - a Prosaic Miracle?
Relationships: http://www.immateriallabour.com/unmon/report/bembo