i took the following definition of epithemia from an astrology website by anthony pena. i havn't found much on this word, epithemia but it seems to have different interpretations. i am going with the interpretation that it means an expression of touch or a desire to be touched...like a gut reaction. touch has so many implications and attachments to it because it is so connected to the sensory realm of human flesh and anatomy. what if touch was not such a loaded act? we have these ways of touching each other that are very distant. a handshake for example. or a "peck" on the cheek. and then there are times when the lack of touch is a more intimate act than the touching itself. i keep thinking that touch is the least mediated experience of them all but i am not so sure.

"Epithemia (with affinities to Taurus). To the Greeks, epithemia on an archetypal, impersonal level represented part of what we humans have in common with the other animals. Epithemia was the instinctive urge for touching and caressing. Epithemia is that physical, sensual, sexual urge expressing itself as an inner-tension in the body that needs to be relieved. According to Richard Idemon, it seems that the closest match we've got for epithemia in the English language is probably the word, "horny." It's important to note that for the Greeks there was little, if any, shame attached to these basic needs and instinctual drives of the body. They were not encumbered with 2,000 years of shame and/guilt about physical attraction. The Greeks recognized epithemia as natural needs that the body had.

Epithemia was not

*
romanticized
*
eroticized
*
or moralized."

"epithemia": to touch and be touched

felt dances by mary ann brooks and andrew wass

date: saturday, may 27th
place: 2501 bryant @ 23rd st corner--million fishes
time: 9:00pm

donation: $5-15 (no one turned away for lack of funds)
millionfishes.com

epithemia is an investigation into mediated and
unmediated realms of dance and touch. how is dance as
well as touch experienced through media and
technology? television monitors, video cameras, cell
phones, live feeds, and on line chats versus a
conversation face to face or a hug, for instance. how
much of your life experience is mediated through
technology or not? talk back to me at

"real art is play, & play is one of the most immediate
of all experiences...art will go on, in somewhat the
same sense that breathing, eating, or fucking will go
on." hakim bey


this is a free write:
how do you want to be touched? spiritually, physically, intellectually? do you even care? i am in the middle of an island and i am not sinking because of global warming, i am soaking up the sun...i am giving you a piece of my subconcious mumbo jumbo...cuba. yes it's on my mind. i am from the caribbean...my ancestors were from there and i kept wondering why when i was in tahiti two years ago...i kept wondering why my skin felt at home and why for the first time in my life i felt comfortable in my own skin. i was in the right climate and it was like coming home although i knew that tahiti wasn't the place i was coming home to. it was that other place resting so softly in my cultural memory in my cells in my bones somehow speaking a language my skin could understand. the ancient greek had four words to describe love, epithemia for touch, phillus(sp?) for friend love, agape and eros...i think that was it...so how to love through skin...through touch...through membrane...can cells remember? through the felt place that is unthinking yet utterly sensitive to all of the senses...utterly...i am utterly stopped in my tracks...the word utterly is so complete in the most naked way. this is where i begin. i don't know where to start. i am not a mind. i am not a talking head. i am a body. where is my body write now? i just censored myself. this is the end of this short opening of some sort...

I just received a comment from someone about Russian media artist, Svetlana Boym who writes about art and technology so I decided to post a quote from her...
"To err is human, says a Roman proverb. In the advanced technological lingo the space of humanity itself is relegated to the margin of error. Technology, we are told, is wholly trustworthy, were it not for the human factor. We seem to have gone full circle: to be human means to err. Yet, this margin of error is our margin of freedom. It's a choice beyond the multiple choices programmed for us, an interaction excluded from computerized interactivity. The error is a chance encounter between us and the machines in which we surprise each other. The art of computer erring is neither high tech nor low tech. Rather it’s broken-tech. It cheats both on technological progress and on technological obsolescence. And any amateur artist can afford it. Art's new technology is a broken technology."

Today Andrew showed me the videos he edited of us doing contact improvisation. All of the shots are close up and he split the screen so that there are two separate videos of us dancing in the frame horizontally. For the show, "Epithemia", I plan to project three different perspectives of this video onto 3 different walls in the same room. The movie will be silent but there will be listening stations and people can choose what they want to listen to. Thanks to the person who posted the last comment.

this is going to be a bit of a ramble because it's late and i don't have a lot more time to be awake. so i'm trying to get a conversation going about how technology dictates intimacy or not. there are so many ways to put it, spin it, see it, feel it or just think about it. i'm thinking about ritual. how do i transgress (i like to transgress societal norms through ritual), keep it real, while using video or cell phone camera to document or translate the "live" experience to others? i've always hated cameras in general and i think it's just the part of my soul that keeps resisting the every day toursism implicit in camera use and capitalist culture in general. i would like to find ways to destroy the usefulness of technology while using it, while manipulating it and just mixing it all up. i think technology is an opportunity in one sense yet also an intruder into my "real" life. last month i broke my cell phone and didn't bother to get it fixed for about a week. everyone freaked out including me although i did experience a sense of relief from not having to care about it. cell phones are toxic and demanding and what happens when our technology starts taking over our human ness? and at what point will all of these intervening mechanisms start becoming implanted in us? will we become one with them? i'm ready to break shit. break my cell phone, break my computer, break all the furniture too. anything coming between me and earth, me and real unmediated experience. these technological beings are part attachment, part disease, part extension of me over seas to my friends on other continents, part exciting, part disappointing, part frustrating when things don't work. then the question becomes how close am i to you? and the next question: how close am i to it (the thing that brings me closer to you but the thing that is still in the way...coming between us...i.e. this computer?

"i. all experience is mediated--by the mechanisms of sense perception, mentation, language, etc.--& certainly all art consists of some further mediation of experience. ii. however, mediation takes place by degrees. some experiences (smell, tast, sexual pleasure, etc.) are less mediated than others (reading a book, looking through a telescope, listening to a record). some media, especially 'live' arts such as dance, theater, musical or bardic performance, are less mediated than others such as TV, CDs, Virtual Reality. Even among the media usually called "media," some are more & others are less mediated, according to the intensity of imaginative participation they demand. Print & radio demand more of the imagination, film less, TV even less... iii. for art, the intervention of capital always signals a further degree of mediation. to say that art is commodified is to say that mediation, or standing in between, has occurred, & that this betweeness amounts to a split, & that this split amounts to 'alienation.' improv music played 'live' at the Met, or music played through media (whether PBS or MTV or Walkman [now we can include ipods, computers, podcasts])... iv. the tendency of Hi Tech, & the tendency of Late Capitalism, both impel the arts farther & farther into extreme forms of mediation. Both widen the gulf between the production & consumption of art, with a corresponding increase in "alienation." from Immediatism--Essays by Hakim Bey

i agree with a lot of what bey is saying and "epithemia" is about exploring these themes. my strongest belief is that touch is the least mediated experience of them all because it engages all of the senses and all the systems in the body--skin, skeletal, nervous...which in turn may affect other systems in the body depending on the kind of touch it is. i'm also interested in how people perceive touch and what senses those perceptions can awaken.

"epithemia" is the basic need to touch and be touched according to the ancient greeks. it was an instinctive urge to caress or touch and evidently it was not romanticized, moralized or eroticized. imagine that. at this moment "epithemia" is an online conversation about mediated versus unmediated experiences of touch.

as for me; i am soaking my broken toe in a bucket of epsom salts and cold water. it's been almost two weeks and i'm still waiting for it to heal. it's the fourth toe (the one next to the pinky toe) and my body worker told me to hold my left index finger with my right hand. it's an interesting practice holding my finger. i don't often think to hold my fingers as a healing practice. this holding my finger business is definitely unmediated.

ON SATURDAY, MAY 27TH, EPITHEMIA WILL BECOME A LIVE EVENT. MEET US ON THE CORNER OF 23RD AND BRYANT STREETS IN SAN FRANCISCO IN FRONT OF MILLION FISHES ART COLLECTIVE AT 8PM. SEE FLYER BELOW...

"epithemia": to touch and be touched

felt dances by mary ann brooks and andrew wass

epithemia is an investigation into mediated and unmediated realms of dance and touch. how is dance as well as touch experienced through media and technology? television monitors, video cameras, cell phones, live feeds, and online chats versus a conversation face to face or a hug, for instance. how much of your life experience is mediated through technology or not?

date: saturday, may 27th
place: 2501 bryant @ 23rd street--meet on the corner @ million fishes sf
time: 9:00pm
donation: $5-15 (no one turned away for lack of funds)

millionfishes.com