james st findlay

The Alpine Sisters Of Fury And Hate: II

Perfomance at Embassy Gallery, March 2016

The couple are eager to conceive but are finding it difficult. The reasons for this are undisclosed (although the potential infertility of either party is the mutual concern). They meet on a fertility nexus, that being a rift in the earth through which a warm energy is released. An energy that radiates from within, permeating the flesh of those who yearn to be parents and planting in them a divine seed. They host a birthday party for a deity named “Tasofah” (he manifests himself as a floating face) who is celebrating his first millennium on earth. They have assembled a vast array of guests, some of whom they know and some of whom they have never met. Peppered throughout the crowd are former lovers, mutual friends, anonymous faces soon to be forgotten and a single baby, too young to fully understand it’s role in “The Process” . A length of material is hung behind them, held by two guests whilst another is urged to document “The Process” with a camera handed to them by the couple. Dutifully, the guests perform their assigned tasks to their best ability. The couple urge the guests to close their eyes and sit down and to the backdrop of a seemingly infinite loop of swirling noise, they deliver messages of goodwill (and at times bad-will) to the crowd with the hope of impregnating everyone in the room (be that with a literal baby or simply with a new found feeling of hope). The messages of bad-will are delivered intermittently as a means of separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. As the mantras are read, the baby cries out in joy! as if to say “I can feel the energy! I can feel it penetrating my body!”. After “The Process” the crowd are invited to kiss Tasofah. Only one guest does so, and it is a kiss as tender and pure as the petals of the peony that forms the eventual backdrop to the whole evening.