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dehiscence [di-hiss-əns] (n.) 1. (botany) the natural bursting open of flower buds, fruits, anthers, etc., for the discharge of their contents, coinciding with maturity and usually happening along a built-in line of weakness; 2. (medicine) a previously closed wound reopening, often with a flow of serous fluid; 2.1 (surgery) the bursting open of a surgically closed wound; 3. (superior canal d.) in which a new window opens up in the labyrinth of the inner ear, resulting in a form of vertigo.; 4. (of insects, also called authothysis) a usually fatal, voluntary internal rupturing or explosion of an organ used as a form of defense by ants, termites and other animals. From Modern Latin dehiscentia, from dehiscentem (nominative dehiscens), present participle of dehiscere "to gape, open, split down" (of the earth, etc.), from de- + hiscere, inchoative of hiare "to yawn".
Ref. 1: from A Manual of Botany, Plate XXIX, Morphology of Dehiscent Fruits, Engraving by J.H. Rüdel, 1856, from Flora Mediterranea, Vol. II, edited by Dr. Charles Auguste Bertram.
Dehiscence is a body of work including drawing, writing, archival and found material, sound and conceptual work, centering on the theme of dehiscent rupture: a moment of spontaneous breakage and opening that releases inner contents—whether in thought, psych-organic bodies, or societal structures.
Developing as the narrative of four lovers interacting in a post-rational, apocalyptic setting, the project primarily aims at the composition of a script and the respective film work.
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Abstract
We are in the wake of an apocalyptic occurrence referred to as The Offing. An inexplicable event of unknown cause, The Offing has erased humanity's capacity to conceive and apply units of measure, making it impossible to form time and space coordinates beyond an immediate scale. Everything suddenly reveals a specificity making it incomparable, and incommensurable. Having lost all transparency, the world has fallen into a beautiful, silent anarchy.
Stripped of the capacity to distinguish North from South or past from future, four young lovers seek refuge in what used to be a famous museum, a large, now abandoned cluster of buildings sitting in a wide open field. In their isolation, talking of desire and aging they impulsively consume a poison they know to be fatal, though they are unaware of how long it will take to work. They fall asleep.
Waking up alive the next day, and the day after that, their dailiness begins to settle into a peculiar routine: sleeping, waking up, waiting for the poison to take effect, feeding each other when hunger strikes, digging through the cement floor in search of soil, where they can grow plants and small water cultures to sustain themselves in the immediacy of surroundings they can predict. Occasionally, they kill time watching The News, the sole form of media left in the post-Offing world: a hypnotic, addictive blend of archival and news footage set to a live modular soundscape, supposedly curated by a mysterious figure known as D.O.G.
With dawn and sunset, the lovers sing to each other; in the mornings they read to each other from a small but carefully selected library they discovered in one of the buildings; sometimes after lunch, they obsessively clean strange artifacts placed on pedestals. They often listen to music salvaged from a collection of vinyl records, improvising dance steps that inevitably transform into complex sexual scores, pushing and pulling the lines between sensation, death and pleasure. Still alive, day after day, they begin to forget about the poison entirely. Portraying their existence across the four seasons of a year, Dehiscence is the story of how, in accepting death, they discover life.
Why this project? Why now?
Dehiscence was born from an interest in working along the blurred limit distinguishing utopia and dystopia, to enable us to talk to—and from—the pervasive sense of disorientation and impending doom that defines the present. As the social and ethical fabric of the West continues to unravel, our aim is to let go of discursive tropes and take a risk: centering on intimacy, in all its rawness. We want to plunge head-first into the core module of life, within a setting that might initially strike as absurd and surreal, in order to reflect on a relational re-wire at root level.
The project first began to take shape while reading J.E. Munoz's Cruising Utopia and encountering his concept of 'futurity'. How is futurity different from the future? Futurity is subtler, counterintuitive: it is the precedence of the future with respect to the present. Futurity is a quality a certain time possesses: one of yielding and giving way to a present that can already be the future, as opposed to one of planning and deducting it. I began asking myself, could I depict a time with this quality? Could it be modeled, could I model it?
The lovers' activities—dancing, having sex, singing, reading, obsessively cleaning artifacts, etc.—may represent a search for meaning and connection amidst the chaos, just as much as a schizophrenic cycle of exhaustion. Regardless of the preferred interpretation, what emerges is a core need: for relation, for practice, for ground and anchors in times of critical uncertainty, like those we are living in today. It is by listening attentively and giving in to this need that our present can acquire futurity. What I am seeking is to sustain a moment of responsibilization. I would like viewers to come to feel and value this through the work, and reflect on the ways we may not only seek but construe solace—just as much as independence—out of meaning in a world saturated with disinformation and fear.
Funding
Dehiscence has an interest in directing artistic experience away from spectatorship and ownership, and toward contribution. Visitors to the project are invited to participate to its funding by becoming part holders of the legal entity financing production, Dehiscence Ltd., as well as contributing materially to the project.
✶ Funders buy shares of "Dehiscence Ltd", a company established appositely to fund and produce the films.
✶ Shares cap at 3500 — 500 are shared between the project's executives (director, screenwriter, fundraiser, etc.) and 3000 shares are released to funders.
✶ Minimum entry is 500€/share. Shares could be bundled to offset notary fees, or "Dehiscence Ltd" could absorb the notary fees by hiring a notary/including one in the team, or blockchain technology could be also be adopted to make the shares purchases more accessible.
✶ Once ready, the film work is released on a proprietary website behind a paywall. Multiple pricing and release options available (e.g. 30 mins each week/month, monthly/subscription of 3-4€/pw). Goal is to get each viewer to pay ~20€ to watch each feature film. Viewers goal for each film: 500k
✶ After its online release, the film can be screened in select arthouse cinemas and alternative venues. By this stage, ideally, a distribution agreement is in place to manage cinema sales.
✶ All earnings are distributed as dividends among the shareholders of "Dehiscence Ltd".
Influences & References
✶ Film & Video:
Paul McCarthy — White Snow ; A&E
Arthur Jafa — Love is the Message, the Message is Death
Christian Marclay — 48 War Movies
Fox Maxy — Maat Means Land
Carmelo Bene — Nostra Signora dei Turchi
Bertrand Mandico — The Wild Boys
Andy Warhol — Couch ; Sleep ; Empire
LTV(Late Time Video) Porn
Luchino Visconti — Conversation Piece
Edward Owens — Tomorrow’s Promise
Ingmar Bergman — Persona
✶ Literature:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez — One Hundred Years of Solitude (Chapter 20)
Sarah Kane — Phaedra's Love
Thomas Moore — Utopia
J. E. Muñoz's — Cruising Utopia
Ovid — Metamorphoses
✶ Music:
J.S. Bach — Matthäus-Passion
✶ Interdisciplinary Projects:
Matthew Barney — The Cremaster Cycle
Pierre Huyghe — After Alife Ahead ; Untilled
Current Goals
✶ kickstart fundraising
✶ team scouting:
1) screenwriter
2) co-director
3) marketing lead