I was recently invited to inaugurate “Ask a Practitioner”online event series hosted by the Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices (R.E.N.S.E.P.) where I will talk about the more esoteric aspects of my work and artistic practice.
This event is titled “Breaking Skin: Unifying Ancestral Wisdom with the Ephemeral Now.”
WHEN: March 30, 2024
TIME: 5:00 pm GMT 6:00 pm CET
WHERE: Online https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87695387783...
From the space in my chest being pulled by the hooks, I felt a great weight made painful by the knot in my throat. As I moved to settle into the burning of the hooks I noticed the birds and the insects around me getting loud, their choir intensifying with my movements, their silence palpable when I became still.
This is how the mundane reveals its divinity to me…
Read MoreYesterday would have been Sarah’s 13th birthday. I’ve spent the weeks mourning her rapid decline. In the past days I have been mourning the decision to let her go. It will be some time before I get used to her absence. Maybe I never will but that’s not the way I want to remember her. I want to remember her wild and determined to live how she deemed life should be lived.
I have never met a more social cat. She forced me to have many more relationships with my local community than I felt comfortable with. To my neighbors I am generally known as Sarah’s Mom or Sarah’s Human before I am known as Luna. She was so vocal it almost seemed like she thought she was using words to speak to people, I could understand her for the most part and I am sure that many others could too. She could say my name in people speak although it sounded more like “oona”, and she could also say “no”. I was so proud of her for figuring that out so well. “No” was not something I taught her, that was something she taught me.
I knew within the first months of knowing her that she belonged to herself and that I was in the service of her freedom as much as I was able. We made few compromises. She had to wear a collar, she had to have ID chips implanted, she had to wear a loud bell to warn small animals of her presence, she had to be sterile, and she was only allowed to be outside when I was home and it wasn’t too dark outside. It was only the last compromise that we struggled with, the two of us. We spent her first years walking together; she on a leash and I talking to her about dogs and cars. She learned how to cross the street with me. She learned how to walk in the bushes and not run from dogs. She learned how to climb trees. What I did not teach her was how to flirt with men, she learned that all by herself. In her last years she developed really intimate relationships with other men in my apartment complex, spending time with them in their apartments and napping while I was doing whatever I was doing. She even left them presents at their door.
Although at first there were complaints about the cat going in and out of the apartment complex over the years people began to appreciate her company and how the mice problems of years past had disappeared. She forced me to defend my decision to let her outside more often than I cared for but the truth is that it wasn’t my decision at all. Sarah just would not have it any other way. I knew that her happiness depended a lot on her autonomy. That was her reason to live and I admired the life in her.
I don’t really believe in having pets. I think that it’s lamentable to think that animals exist in the world for us to have something from which we can extract emotional support. It’s not that I don’t believe in the bond that exists between us and them but it’s often a forced relationship which places a hierarchical value on human lives over those of other animals. That feels so unnatural to me and it has caused an unnatural over population of certain animals which suffer from this industry of forced companionship. It places many animals in precarious situations where many suffer unspeakable lives. I have thought this way for several years. Mostly because I grew up an only child who had more animal companions than humans and I don’t feel like it has ever been a fair exchange no matter how good I become at caring for other species.
I didn’t want Sarah. A friend had taken in a stray cat who turned out to be pregnant and I had just returned from volunteering at an animal refuge where I took care of an Ocelot who had been separated from her Mother due to poaching in the jungle. The idea that people are responsible for the lives of these animals placed in impossible situations was fresh in my mind. I told my friend Leyla to give me the cat that nobody else wanted. I ended up with the the little one who didn’t give a shit about the people around her, choosing instead to climb over everything with her insatiable curiosity. She was the tiniest little leopard with tiger stripes and an M on her forehead which recalled Milly the Ocelot to me. She was perfect and I promised her that I would give her the best life I could possibly give her.
Sarah would go with me from Virginia to California, my first big move alone running from inevitable heart break. She had seen me in my loneliest depressions when I could barely get up to take care of myself, pawing at my face at exactly 7:00 in the morning forcing me to get up to feed her. I always did even when I didn’t have the energy to feed myself. She also always found a way to get me to go outside with her. Even if it meant that she was going to wait outside for me to go out and find her because she knew I needed to go outside and I was being stupid. When my depressions got particularly bad and I couldn’t get out of bed she chose instead to sleep with flatmates to punish me. She has been my reason to get out of bed more often than anyone will ever know. I haven’t had to use an alarm clock all this time. She set the rhythm in my days. For this I will always be grateful.
She arrived in Berlin before me where she adapted long before I could. I think these last 5 years were some of our best years together. I watched her teach two other cats how to cat and really take ownership of this city block. She introduced me and Pablo to the foxes who live here in her territory. It’s things like this that reminded me of the magic in the every day. She was the greatest source of all of that for me, and I don’t think that I was entitled to it at all. I just really wanted to watch her be the cat she wanted to be and make as much space for her to do that as I was able. She trusted me more than anyone and it has been my greatest privilege to know that she chose to come back to me every day even though so many of her other humans would be happy to have her. I think my left hip will forever remember her. I imagine it will be like her right hip reminded her of that fight she had with a raccoon when she was younger. My hip and knees still reserving the spot between my legs after all of these years for her to curl up in until her last days.
I know that my life will not be the same without her. There’s a painful emptiness in my chest. I can’t sleep through the night and I don’t wake up at the same time anymore. My front door stays closed. I miss her bell coming up the stairs and her yelling my name. I miss the feeling of being claimed by her and her paws pressing against me telling me that she feels safe before falling asleep. She would often appear in my dreams to make fun of my ego trips or to approve of the black jaguar that she told me not to fear. She was the first thing I saw every morning. She was my dawn. She was never afraid to howl.
I have always known that I wanted to be more like Sarah. I hope people don’t confuse our relationship by thinking that she was here on earth to do anything for me or to teach me anything. I was merely blessed to have been able to witness her. What a beautiful being. My partner, my friend. My love. I will always be grateful.
Sarah
Those who do not have a good relationship with their unconscious cannot tolerate a cat. A cat does not relate to the appearance of a person. She sees much more, she sees their insides, she sees them backwards and upside down. A cat can see everything you wish you could hide and everything you wish others could see.
Today marks the 12th year anniversary of the time my heart stopped and I awoke in a flash of lightning, on a stretcher, in a helicopter on my way to spend several weeks in a hospital. One of my ribs broken and puncturing my lung causing it to collapse. My face was ripped open by impact, and my nose was laying in a grotesque position on the left side of my face. This amongst other fractures in my hips, hands, and feet.
I was yelling at everyone around me like a banshee even though blood would fly out of my mouth and drizzle from my ears when I did, and it would cause me to pass out for a bit because I could not breathe. This is how I remember my rebirth. Bloody, broken, and raging. I couldn’t walk for several months. I lost my sense of smell for over a year.
I often feel my body retelling this story, how I was too angry to die. Maybe I did die and everything since then has just been synapses firing during my last breath. A complex fantasy of the life I could have if I was just brave enough to pull through; because, to be honest, this second life I have lived has been many fantasies fulfilled. Many nightmares too but I grew up with night terrors as teachers. I’m still learning. I still hate driving late at night in cars and my stomach knots up at sharp turns. I still feel the impact on my face often in the form of migraines arising from the scar tissue in my brain and during those days I am in another universe where the world is turned upside down.
I have since fallen in love with the cultivation of scar tissue. The gash on my forehead, my lightning bolt, the first significant symbol revealed to me by my path in life, my first treasure. So many more since then.
I still visit this rebirth ritually every year I am able with hook suspension like I did almost exactly a year after my rebirth when I got my sense of smell back as I put my forehead to soil coming down from my first suspension. Maybe I’m a ghost imagining this second life with all of this love, with all of these beautiful people, all these beautiful experiences, with all of this beautiful art. Rage is divine, the way I can feel it; guttural, gurgling, and demanding my time here on Earth. Happy Death and Re-birthday to Me.
To you my Dark Mother, this rebirth, returning my Self back to Myself. To you Mother of All, I re-member Me as an offering.
Luna Duran upcoming dates for 2022, Vienna AU, Helsinki FI, Gdańsk PL, Berlin DE, South America. Hook suspension performance, TANZ, Piercing lectures, Piercing guest spots.
Read MoreEvery 2.867 days. al Ghul striped nearly to her core by a dying star. Eclipsed by a smaller mass
Read MoreAs of today, I’ve been self isolating for 3 weeks and 5 days due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In this time I’ve been checking in with some of my favorite conversationalists just to get people’s thoughts about current events as well as the role of makers and creators in this time of uncertainty. One of these people being Jared Karnes who is a cherished friend and prolific maker. We met while I lived in Richmond Virginia, around the time I became a professional piercer. I recorded the conversation in order to share it with colleagues and friends, with the intention of doing more of these as time and mental health permits.
It was a good learning experience and I can see where I can improve for next time so I’m looking forward to doing this again. In the meantime I’m also looking forward to the feedback and the conversations which could come from this.
You can find more of Jared’s beautiful work at onetribe.net
I am aware that I am having an experience limited by the capacities of limited senses wherein my own being is a present state of ancient actions.
A present state of ancient actions.
A series of discussions hosted by Karada House facilitated by me will be initiated this evening at 7PM CET.
About the event:
From the perspective of devoted body art practitioner, a discussion intended to question current assumptions about the skin boundary. Beginning in the ether of concepts pertaining to what we mean when we talk about individuals, from “pre-modern” cosmologies to modern societies. We will open a discussion about a paradigmatic shift ushered in by current events and offer some practical considerations for how to take care of our communal “selves”.
This is the the first in a series of presentations which are all based on Body Ritual.
In the months following this introductory lecture, workshops will be offered that will delve deeper into the topics in which the community is most interested.
Resurrection Rites - Body Ritual - Luna Duran
I‘ve known, for some time now, that I live my life in inadvertent cycles. An observation which has gifted my nature a somewhat predictable rhythm, a cadence and perceptible atmospheres through the peaks and valleys.
Growing up, I learned to tie these cycles to the phases of the Moon and had a lot of success finding insight in its waxing and waning. So much so that the rhythm of my menses began to express this observation in the regular flow of my blood. I learned to appreciate this connection as an insight into a longstanding conversation between those who menstruate and the Moon. This was, to me, an initiation into a very particular experience of womanhood which I have assumed now for some decades. It taught me to gather strength during the waxing Moon and hold still through its waning. I would find this connection resonating in mythologies and to this day I catch myself looking for the full moon upon seeing first blood. I find it more often than not and in this way I tune into this rhythm. My first insight into my self was Lunar.
Over the years I‘ve noticed a cycle much longer lasting than a Moon cycle. I learned about it first by living in places where the Sun hides for some seasons and feeling the discomfort growing with each passing year. In many ways this particular cycle was impressed into me further by the growing discomfort progressively becoming more severe with each passing. This cycle is much stronger now than any other and it’s marked by the absence of the Sun. The color of my skin changes, the feeling of inhabiting my body changes, the aggression of my internal dialog becomes unbearable to the point that I feel a total absence of the “Me” who can live, appreciate, even thrive here. My understanding of my relationships changes and I’ve learned to isolate myself from everyone as much as I can. I can survive putting one foot in front of the other, I can work, I can act, I can breathe; but none of it is pleasurable. I lose weight and the image I have of myself is an image of dying. I bring this image out in photographs to document my transit through my underworld - the world of my dying self, in attempts to make meaning of this passage. I’ve been blessed by patience and support from loved ones who become collaborators in this documentation, but sometimes I can see in the eyes of my loved ones that they mourn the image of my journey. The one who I am during this time is not capable of nurturing or anything close to the warmth of internal healing and so I have no real warmth to share with others. I find that a lot of my conversations sound like disclaimers, warning those around me of potential damage from getting too close to the storm which has supplanted my self. This insight into myself was Solar.
It’s likely that these cycles are something I will have to travel with for as long as I can live. Moving to Berlin has proven to be very challenging for me during the Winter months due to the continued greyness for half the year; and so this Winter I had planned to travel to South America to see my family in Bolivia and do a lot of traveling by myself from Mexico to Brazil where it’s Summer. The current political situation in Bolivia convinced my Mother to advise against it, advice which was confirmed by the Bolivian embassy.
I have a lot of negative feelings about the Winter holiday season which, coupled with my cycles, makes this particular time especially difficult. I often find myself wishing to be elsewhere and so I give into my reading compulsion. I view this compulsion as a guide which, at best, illuminates new or novel ways, to me, of thinking. At worst, I admit, it’s a form of escapism as I make no effort to curate the things I read. In the depths of my depressions, when sleep isn’t attainable, I just turn on the phone and let it do its thing as I scroll until something catches my eye.
One particular night what caught my eye was an announcement made by a professional piercing studio in Hawai'i looking for a guest piercer to cover for some weeks. This struck me like lightning, a good omen for me, my heart jumped and I stared at the announcement for some time as I listened to its beat. I recognised the beat by the unfolding of its rhythm, this was longing.
In music, Rhythm is defined as “the aspect comprising all the elements that relate to forward movement”. I wrote a note to myself about my heart beat and paid attention to that rhythm as I responded to the call via email. My heart beats were still filling my head when I was done and in my sleeplessness I imagined myself dancing to a drum which carried the same beat. I was at the edge of a volcano and I could feel the flowing of lava behind me. I felt my heart racing and I began to sweat. There, in the middle of the night many thoughts rushed through my head; passages in books I red intersected with parts of past dreams, intersected with past conversations, intersected with memories of creative processes in art, intersected with thoughts about dying… As my walls changed color with the rising of the Sun all of these intersections joined in that moment like vertices meeting at an apex, meeting at one thought… I’ve always wanted to meet Pele. It seemed to me like she was calling me to move… forward.
The next day I got a message from Tony Naggar, Chief of Honolulu Piercing Company, inviting me to be a guest Piercer and we began to make arrangements.
To be continued..
—
Oáhu 2019, Polaroid of Crab City
In Feral Form - The laws of incarnation
Concept & Art Direction by: Luna Duran
Photography by: Gretchen Heinel & Deontá Arnold
Makeup by: Melanie Leandro
Rigging and Rope Art by: Victoria Blue & MacK
Escaping the Berlin Winter in Lunar fashion by going to Hawaii for the first time. I will be doing a guest spot at Honolulu Piercing Company working alongside some people I’ve been meaning to connect with. So, this is how I will say good-bye to this decade, paying my respects to Madame Pelé.
Illustration by Mike Moses
I just received some tragic news from a dear friend about the passing of Therin Brooks so I’ve been reading the messages Therin and I have sent to each other over the years. I am first struck by how many years have passed, and the breadth of this person’s evolution. I’m struck by how inspired I’ve been by Therin’s way in the world. Therin would have been the most intimidating person if they weren’t so approachable and bright. I will miss our art talks, and the breadth of those too.
I was reminded by Victoria Blue about a day the three of us decided to shoot photos out in the woods; during the coldest, wettest, foggiest, most beautiful day in the Bay Area. Posting this video is fulfilling a promise that I lament is now greatly overdue. After watching these videos and looking through the photos I imagine Therin entering their version of heaven which has a beautifully balanced color palette, and that Ferret bouncing around at their feet. I feel like Therin has figured out how to check in with me, even from all the way over wherever they are and I am grateful for this now, much more than I have ever been in the past because I really needed to see this today.
I have a very serious problem with my knees, they say it's pride. I am proud, indeed, to be a woman, and also somehow to have remained silent all this time, because the motherland has given me this accident. Just on the 23rd I fell while planting seeds with my daughter in Cochabamba, and that provided me with the instruction that there was a need for a certain policy of silence.
I have felt excessive discursive saturation. I admire the internet from afar, but I love face-to-face communication, that's why I've preferred to come here and not do it from my seat, because I can see eyes, I can feel vibes, I can even feel anger against me. All this helps me to be myself, to humiliate myself, to be gentle and not arrogant. This juncture has taught us a great lesson against triumphalism.
I don't believe in the two hypotheses which have been handled. The triumphalism that with the fall of Evo we have regained democracy seems to me to be an excess, an analysis that is getting out of focus. There is a long way to go to recover democracy, there is a lack of ant's work, an acknowledgement of how doña Ena Taborga in Rositas, the comrades of Tariquía, the comrades of the TIPNIS (Indigenous Territory and Isiboro-Sécure National Park), doña Marquesa, doña Cecilia, all the fighters, what they are up to. Some of them have even been candidates, but we still need to take charge of those realities in which democracy is still a very distant goal, because they are still managed by unions captured by misogyny, by all kinds of interests that approach with dangerous intentions. There are also people who have put up their bodies, who have fought, and yet when it comes to appearing in public spaces they have been deprived of the word, as has been the case of Tariquía.
That is why I believe that this is a very good, positive forum to begin to discuss what we mean by democracy and by being an Indian or a native. The second mistaken hypothesis, which seems to me to be extremely dangerous, is that of the coup d'état, which simply wants to legitimize, in its entirety, with packaging and everything, wrapped in cellophane, the entire government of Evo Morales in its moments of greatest degradation. All that degradation, legitimizing it with the idea of the coup d'état is criminal, and therefore one must think how this degradation was begun.
When I entered here an hour ago, I gave two people a photocopy of the November 2 newspaper. I want to point out that a guy named Juan Ramón Quintana on November 2 was announcing the Vietnamization of the country, what he has been doing for years, which is indoctrination, which is putting indigenous people into the networks of the military mafias, as has happened with many communities. Hugo Moldiz, who has worked with the so-called Red Ponchos... I knew other Red Ponchos, I knew brothers and sisters who went as a family to the hill to perform a ritual before entering a battle. Those are the Red Ponchos I knew. What Hugo Moldiz did on January 22, 2006 is to bring a uniformed and, absolutely armed, troops.
It makes us believe that we are facing a revolutionary Cuban-style government, but we are fighting for the leftist nostalgia of a group of males that are not only the macho Camachos, but are also the leftist machos, misogynists, who treat us like cannon fodder and hook fodder to create their networks of perversion of the popular sectors.
I remember very well when the military had a great orgy with the COB (Bolivian Workers Center), with women, in order to have influence in their order of destinies. We have not been able to realize that this was systematic, that it has lasted for years. That's why this character and all his network of military men who include the man controlling the cable cars. I am a witness of the political use of the cable cars, of having handed out cards for them to go down and massacre and destroy the pumakataris.
All this is part of a tenebrous network that includes the director of the ANH (National Agency of Hydrocarbons), intimate of Quintana. What is the ANH doing in the fires? Giving away small gas stoves. That shameful thing that is accompanied by a defense of the fires is uniting struggles of women, ecological struggles, of young people, of old women like me who are worried about the future and the water that their granddaughters and their granddaughters' daughters are going to consume.
I am very saddened because Evo has left, but the hope of a pluricultural Bolivia has not left, the hope that the wiphala will represent us in its different variants has not left, the hope of ending racism has not left. We must remain in the anti-racist trench, and we must continue to join forces in order to be able to articulate a feeling of recovering democracy on a day-to-day basis. I am very sorry for what has happened, I have no sense of triumph.
I understand that religion is not only Camacho, it is the anger against the generalized drunkenness that has been the sindicate work of these Quintana and these militaries who go places with cans of alcohol. That's what hurts me, it's the same mechanism that the colonizers used in the 17th century, disarming communities by putting cans of alcohol in them. Also the landowners and businessmen who wanted to get rid of the agrarian reform, like Ponce Sanginés, put a can of alcohol and had a whole hacienda of folkloric Indians to be able to show in museums.
We have to understand why people are reacting in this reactionary way. They are fed up with a kind of misogynistic union policy that treats people like a herd. The women of Totora, who have been the ones who fought for indigenous autonomy, have been defeated by their own husbands and their own people who have set them up in the trap of the referendum.
It is very sad what has happened, comrades, and the triumphalism- that we have recovered democracy from the moment Evo boarded an airplane has seemed to me a banality and an impressive poverty, but the defeatism that here there is a coup d'état and that everything has been lost is false. It is to think that the MAS is the only thing we have as a possibility of the inter-ethnic, of the plural, of the pluricultural. Why is there a gay minister and some ladies who defend him supposedly from lesbianism, are we going to believe that there is an intercultural democracy and amplitude and anti-homophobia? No, those are the symbolic uses.
I am with the wiphala and I know that there are many kinds of wiphala, there is not only one. We know ancient wiphalas, they had other very different colors. That plurality is what we have to recover, sisters, and also the possibility of twinning between women and natives. I have cried to see the mistreatment of women wearing pollera in the name of democracy, I have cried to see very young people mistreated saying that they are Indians. The Indian and the native we have inside hurts us a lot. It depends a lot on us to free her and make her happy, capable of speaking several languages, of having a figure of theoretical thought. That's Indian for me.
I feel half defeated, but also with a lot of hope. We have put a lot of the body through this process and we have been hurt by the degradation at the hands of those militia trained in the School of the Americas. They have a lot to lose, they lost 30 Chinese barges, but they have all the lithium. That's what they want to loot.
Please, let this parliament create a space in which we can articulate a unity against those dark forces that begin with the IIRSA (Initiative for the Integration of South American Regional Infrastructure) and also the Chinese, Russian, Venezuelan capitals and all that mafia that is the main enemy that is still alive and kicking and that is arming people, mentalities. Let's take care of ourselves a lot, but let's also be aware that we can't incur in a joy that the Indian has finally left. That for me is very painful.
Participation of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui in the Parliament of Women in Peace, held in La Paz, Bolivia, on November 12, 2019
English translation from the transcript which originally appears here:
PARLAMENTO DE LAS MUJERES convocado por Mujeres Creando Cine Teatro 6 de Agosto 12 DE NOVIEMBRE DEL 2019 La Paz - Bolivia
