HEALING A SUICIDAL SOCIETY - at NYC Anarchist art festival together with 18th NYC Anarchist Book fair 2024 at La Plaza Community Garden NYC east village
Healing a suicidal society by ANARKOARTLAB / Guerrilla theater / Artemis Beasts and Friends
Healing a Suicidal Society is a performance that embodies the disintegration of social constructs through dynamic Social Sculpture, blurring the boundaries between artist and participant. Rooted in the poetic structure of the poems “Collapse” by Adrians Black and “Inside the Box,” by Ayakamay the performance is a living, breathing organism—fluid, nonlinear, and constantly dissolving.
The performance begins with a process of collective creation, where the audience is invited to contribute physically and conceptually, with a primal scream, eroding the distinction between artist and spectator. Fragments of the poem are spoken, whispered, and shouted in overlapping waves, creating a cacophony of voices that reflect the entropic unraveling of meaning. Language itself becomes unstable—words disintegrate into sound, sentences stretch and compress, collapsing into incoherence.
The space is transformed into a shifting landscape. Physical structures—paper walls, symbolic barriers with structures of authority and power—are slowly torn down, crumpled, and reshaped by the collective, symbolizing the collapse of social norms: property, gender, authority, and control. Participants’ movements become increasingly chaotic, blurring the boundaries between individual and collective bodies.
Visual and auditory elements heighten the disorientation. Elements simulate the collapse of physical systems, while dissonant soundscapes of industrial noise, distorted voices, and fragmented transmissions evoke a reality in free fall.
Throughout the performance, the principles of quantum uncertainty from being inside the box that can be either alive or dead [wave-particle duality] serve as metaphors for social instability. Equations, mathematical symbols, and abstract formulas are repeatedly drawn and erased, symbolizing the constant collapse of fixed knowledge and meaning.
The climax is a moment of collective entropy—performers and participants enact a ritual of dissolution, destroying symbolic structures, discarding identities, and collapsing into a raw, formless collective presence. The performance ends in a state of suspended ambiguity—disintegrating, denormalizing, and unrecognizable—leaving the audience with a sense of having experienced the collapse of self and society, only to be reconstituted through shared vulnerability and collective creation.
LOS T BONES - 2024
Ritual - healing bones from underground Washington Square Park and all victims of wars / NYC - 2024
with ANARKOARTLAB + ARTEMIS BEASTS + GUERRILLA THEATER
sounds BODYMECHANICNYC + JACOB COHEN
Special guest CARME
poem
collapses
non linear terms
waves
macroscopic systems
collapses all measurement
time
equations, spaces
collapses empires
central problems
collapse success
history, magnates, bureaucrats
collapses all models
collapses normality
the infinite dimensional
collapses all vectors
the principles, all evolution
and arbitrariness
collapses knowledge
the representation
collapses all physical systems, all information
the self
and all names
collapses all possibilities
collapses private propriety
and the nuclear family
collapses men women she he and all pronouns
collapses all configurations
all positions
and variables
collapses
all discussions and meanings
the unacceptable and ambiguity
collapses all consciousness
mistakes, destructions
collapses the obedience and linear law
collapses nature and all differences
[initial state]: [a/bk> + b/bj>|AO>
[final state]: (A|bk >|ak>+b|bj|aj>
collapses the order
and the chaos
collapses the collapses
collapses all control / power
collapses ego
collapses modulus, density
conditions
collapses
the existence
collapses the universe and all apparatus
collapses reality and all hypothesis
collapses all governments, police and military
collapses anticipation
and expressions
collapses we all
collapses all theories
process
dynamics
collapses your choices
quasi-collapses for end
collapses the random
collapses
now
instantly
unnormalized
disintegrating
disappearing
LOS T BONES is a ritual-performance that resurrects the forgotten bones of victims buried beneath Washington Square Park—a site laden with unmarked graves of enslaved people, marginalized individuals, and victims of violence and oppression. The performance channels their voices and memories, transforming the park into a liminal space where the past and present converge.
The bones, symbolic of erased histories and silenced suffering, come alive through movement, sound, and collective action. The piece acts as both a mourning and a rebellion—lamenting the weight of historical violence while invoking a radical call for transformation in the face of contemporary wars, climate catastrophe, and rising fascism.
The ritual begins evoking spirits rising from the soil. They carry objects (bones, stones, and artifacts) symbolizing the remnants of the forgotten dead. The performers trace a spiral into the center of the park, creating a temporary sacred space—a symbolic excavation of buried truths. The performers enter a state of trance-like movement, their bodies embodying the fragmented memories of the dead. Physical gestures mimic cracking, breaking, and reassembling—symbolizing both collapse and resurrection.
Layers of spoken word—poetry and fragmented phrases—are interwoven, spoken in multiple languages, representing the diversity of the lost souls. The performance intensifies with erratic, chaotic movements, symbolizing the collapse of oppressive structures. The performers engage in violent, gestures—falling, writhing, and disassembling human chains—emulating the crumbling of regimes, ideologies, and illusions of power. a participatory gesture symbolizing collective responsibility for confronting the violence of the present.
Performers use sound instruments to healing the space invisible and visible whispered names, and fragmented chants, creating a haunting auditory texture, deep percussive beats could represent the heartbeat of the bones awakening deeply . Snippets of original text of the poem Collapse in various languages, symbolizing the global nature of oppression and resilience.
The Bones as Seeds of Rebirth, In the final act, the performers slow down, planting them into the earth as if sowing seeds. The ritual closes with a communal gesture, where performers and audience members place their hands on the top of each other, symbolizing a vow to remember and resist
LOS T BONES is not just a performance but a transformative experience—immersing the audience in a ritual of remembrance, grief, and hope. It serves as a poetic confrontation of historical while envisioning new possibilities of collective healing and resistance.