Tdcmp1484 don´tfeedthehumans

Good night, uhm ... thank you for not leaving…

I haven’t prepared anything uhm ... I mean, since this is a theater… I didn’t really expect to speak in a theater...

I have to thank Manuela for handing over, for lending me this space.

I apologize, but I don’t have anything... "Spectacular" I did put together a PowerPoint though, to make it more entertaining I mean I don’t know if it’ll be more entertaining... anyway plays don’t always have to be ... entertaining either, huh? Manuela?

No, I'm not saying ... your plays aren’t, uhm ... anyway….

I brought a power point ... with some images...

Wow! That’s big, huh? It’s almost like a movie theatre right?

I brought some videos too, but ok, I will not get ahead of myself to keep the mystery, right? I mean its´ not like there is some big mystery here, but perhaps we can achieve a bit of “dramatic tension”… since we are in a theater I mean.

I’m feeling quite some… tension ... right now… hum I don’t know if its dramatic, if we could call it dramatic… Because I think you are supposed to feel it in order for it to be dramatic right? Not me…

No ... yes .... no ..... yes Anyway I would like to thank Manuela for inviting me to feel this dramatic tension in front of you.

Hedda am I going too fast?

No, don’t write this.

Or yes, it's your job, right?

The truth is that it hasn’t been easy to be here tonight. We are still very affected by the trip.

Being here has involved a long preparation and logistics... but above all it involves a significant risk because I don’t know what will happen with me after this ... I don’t know how the government of Chile will react... when I go back to my country ... that is if they let me re-enter the country.

However, I have decided to take this risk because I feel this as a need, a duty.

Tonight I want to share with you something that nobody has ever seen before.

It was not easy to make up my mind on this, because you know, one wonders if things that have never been seen before should remain this way, hidden, because there must be a reason why they have not been seen, right? Not that I believe in the existence of "a reason", like a divine type “reason”, I mean even though I´m in a theatre I´m still a scientist… I know that in the theater one can actually affirm things without showing conclusive evidence for them, right? Completely implausible things like "oh look john, stella is dead!" and no one asks for, lets say, proof…

Tonight I want to prove something impressive -I mean almost as impressive as the fact that a dead person can still breathBut first I'm going to tell you a short story.

One morning ... on my desk I found an envelope.

I mean, books, coffee, keyboard, and on the keyboard an envelope.

My name was written on the envelope, Professor Cristian Carvajal.

Inside the envelope was this letter: "Professor: Please go to the adrress 247 Chiloé street where you will find a package that has come with your name. Urgent. " There was no sender.

I asked my secretary if she had seen the person who had left the envelope.

She said no.

I didn’t find it so strange because I share my office with other colleagues ...

But a package?

The house was at the outskirts of Punta Arenas. It was a normal house.

Typical houses you find in Punta Arenas that are paired hum, I mean, uhm house, wall, house wall, house wall ... I knocked on the door for about 10 minutes, uhm, there was no bell, but nobody answered...

It turned out that the door was open ... I went in ... there was no one ... it seemed that people had lived there but they were gone ... not a single piece of furniture ... the house was empty.

I thought it was a bad joke… and it was on me. I figured I was wasting my time ... Students can take grades too seriously sometimes, and it wouldn’t have been the first time they... anyway, the thing was that there was no package.

I decided to go home, and when I was leaving I heard a noise ... a noise coming from the living room of the house... It was a sound that, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t reproduce now.

The sound was like a clucking. I assumed it came from some kind of animal that had gotten into the house. In southern Chile people usually raise domestic animals like chickens, pigs, sheep ... uhm, domestication is a form of survival, you know?

But I couldn’t see any animal ... I was alone in the living room and this sound. Until suddenly, in the chimney I saw a pair of eyes ... there was a man, a small man, naked and covered in soot...

How was it possible that I hadn’t seen him all this time as I looked for the package? He had been there right in front of me all along?

I asked him what he was doing there, but he couldn’t answer ... the truth is he did not understand what I said and I did not understand what he was talking about.

Was this the package I had to pick up? This was a package? ...

It took me 3 or 4 hours to get him out of the chimney. Its not that he attacked me, but he just wouldn’t move, he was frozen, terrified...

What was this man doing in this situation, alone? Or was he a child? I realized that it was very difficult to identify his age… I found it odd that he hadn’t escaped, the door was open, or hadn’t he realized this?

I decided to put him in my car and take him to the police to report this abuse...

How long had he been there in that empty house? ¿Days, weeks, months, years? ...

Who had left him there? ...

It was very difficult to actually get him in the car ... once inside I gave him my jacket so he could cover up.

This jacket that I have here ... and you know what he did?

He did this In the end of the world, At the southernmost end of America In the tip of the South American mainland, 300km from Punta Arenas (where I live and work) Is the island of Tierra del Fuego.

This southern area is dominated by a relentless sub polar climate Summers last only 21 days per year

And winters extend over 344 days.

During the winter the sunlight does not last more than 3 hours.

The precipitation averages 3000mm of water each year.

And the average temperature hardly surpasses 32 ° F This southern area is hit by storms of winds that exceed a velocity of 200 km / h and can last for weeks.

This wind speed is equivalent to the wind produced by an airplane turbine. We are talking about an exposure to wind equivalent to pointing a hair dryer at an ant for two weeks, or let’s say during its whole life, because ants don’t live longer than two weeks. .... Living here is as inhospitable as trying to live in the Sahara Desert.

Not only is it rough to live here.

Also, to navigate the waters of the Strait of Magellan, known as the most stormy and tempestuous channel in the world, was an adventure feared among sailors of the time.

I mean, given the technological conditions of the vessels in which they traveled, crossing the strait was like trying to stay afloat standing on a button inside a washing machine.

For this reason one of the first sailors who actually touched land at Tierra del Fuego, the English captain Robert Fitz Roy, did not want to travel alone on his ship, the Beagle for he was traumatized by what had happened to the first captain of the Beagle, Mr. Pringle Stokes, who took his life on deck, right off the coast of Tierra del Fuego, because he was unable to withstand the harshness and solitude of this place.

Therefore Fitz Roy invited a great friend, a "Natural Philosopher" who was 22 years of age.

Mr. Charles Darwin.

He invited him along not because of his knowledge (in fact Darwin was an amateur naturalist at the time), but because he knew that Darwin's ambitions would be stronger than the warnings of his friends and family.

Thus began a journey that would go down in history, a journey that would allow Darwin to develop, in this travel log, the reflections that would later become the basis for his fundamental work: "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE" Better known by all of us as: THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION "A single glance at the landscape was sufficient to show me how widely different it was from anything I had ever beheld. The atmosphere in this climate, where gale succeeds gale, with rain, hale, and sleet, seems blacker that anywhere else" Although it seems hard to imagine, there were human beings who inhabited this land for over 7000 years ... humans that were able to adapt to these conditions. But how could they adapt to such adverse conditions? With what weapons did they fight in their struggle for survival?

What all these indigenous peoples had in common is that they were all nomads.

However, there was one group that differed from all the rest: The Yagan.

The particular feature that defined their essence as a tribe was that they were canoeists unlike all the rest who were pedestrians (hunters and gatherers).

The Yagan lived in their canoes, and spent their days traveling through the fjords and channels, eating only what they could collect from the sea: fish, shellfish and seaweed.

Scholars have always established a fundamental distinction between the Yagan and all neighboring groups: If the latter are known as hunters with all the connotations of bravery that may imply: heroism, agility and dexterity.

The Yagan is known as an extractor, a receiver or an acceptor, with all the connotations of weakness that this implies.

The hunter fights against nature to survive, he subjects nature, dominates it.

In the case of Yagan it is quite the opposite: it is nature that determines and dominates them.

2.

“The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Feugians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind—such were our ancestors.

These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint. They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe. These were the most abject and miserable creatures I anywhere beheld.”

In 1829 white men arrived in Tierra del Fuego moved by stockbreeding ambitions.

This introduced diseases such as measles, pneumonia and tuberculosis.

But above all, the whites initiated a bloody persecution and killing of these peoples If in 1829 ... there were 3000 live Yagans In 1850 there were 2900 ...

In 1884 , 949 ...

In 1885 ... 490 In 2000 there were only 2 living Yagans, 2 sisters, Ursula and Cristina Calderon Cristina died that same year.

In 2003, at the age of 79 Ursula died.

With her death a millennial view of the world is buried A language is extinguished.

And when a language dies, a culture is lost forever.

I have a very special guest tonight who has come with me from Chile, and whom I would like you to meet. I do have to ask you not to applaud when he comes in. And please do not make any sudden movements. But above all I need you to remain absolutely quiet, please avoid making any kind of sound.

Tusoyo: kircahue.

Cristian: "kircahue" water. Kircahue in Yagan means, "water".

The person I found in that chimney was Tusoyo, The person who I gave my jacket to in the car that day was Tusoyo.

And on the way to the police miraculously it started raining, and I don’t say miraculously because Punta Arenas lacks rain, quite the opposite actually.... I say miraculously because right that moment Tusoyo put his finger on the windshield, pointed at the rain and said...

It was there that I realized that what I had next to me might be the last living Yagan. Right then I thought...

I realized that right before me was a living human treasure Tusoyo: Water

After some research I came across the fact that it was customary for the Yagan to use the skin of the guanaco with the wool facing the outside, because to them it was more important to imitate correctly the way in which the animal uses its own skin, than the benefit they could obtain of this fur.

Observing, I realized that Tusoyo maintained certain elements of Yagan culture -like this and others that I will show you later- that surprised me very much, because unlike language, (which could have been taught to him orally, just like I have learned some words from him), the habits I found in Tusoyo correspond to practices of everyday life.

Now, supposedly no human being lives according to the original Yagan customs anymore.

How did this culture manage to survive until this day? Do customs reside and hide in our cells?

It is likely -if my interpretation is correct (and I will try to prove this to you this evening)- that before us is the last exponent of the Yagans, the last exemplar of a culture that we thought was extinct, like if we suddenly had found a dinosaur.

History is giving us a second chance and it is vital that we do not repeat the terrible mistake that the government of my country made letting Ursula Calderon die, and with her the language and codes of a basal culture of Chile.

One and a half year ago I found Tusoyo in that house, for a year and a half I've been working with him, and I have built a dictionary with the words I have learned from him.

I have recorded these 15 months completely, each session, each exercise to have evidence.

I'm going to start by showing you some footage from the session in which I found out his name.

This is our workspace, this is where Tusoyo has lived for a year and a half.

It’s all I could manage to get, a wear house next to an armory on the outskirts of Punta Arenas.

It’s not very comfortable, but it’s all I could finance.

I hope you can understand…

I couldn’t run the risk of making public this finding until now, because I would have lost the custody of Tusoyo immediately if I didn’t have sufficient evidence that what I have here is an anthropological museum piece…

I have worked with him clandestinely ... I brought him here secretly.

I know this is nothing like a museum but...

It was vital to the investigation that I avoided any contact with the outside so as to not contaminate him culturally.

I hope you can understand that this is a conservation effort...

As I was saying, this is the session in which I discovered his name.

Itian is me ... Christian.

Stupid.

Obviously he doesn’t understand what he is saying.

At first I thought his name was "Kraseya". Latter I realized that meant idiot.

This is the exact moment he said his name: TUSOYO Another important piece of information was to discover Tusoyo´s intense relationship with fire.

ENEFÍ = FIRE

Fire is something very important to Yagans.

But don’t imagine something spiritual, I am not speaking of worship ...

Yagans have another God, Wataineiwa, God of the Rainbow ... because of course: the rainbow!

Imagine all snow, all white, and the rainbow: colors! ... but, um, I will come back to this later ...

Their relationship with the fire is merely functional.

The Yagans have two, only two, lets say "tools": the use of fire and the use of ropes...

They are experts in knots ... in fact the structural support of their boats was built with knots only...

Tusoyo can tie about 50 different types of knots, that's much more than a sailor can tie... well, here in Germany, a couple of days ago, he discovered elastics...

Anyway, fire ... they are skilled in fire management because they had to have the ability to move the fire within the canoe, and keep it alive, in a weather that is often rain and wind This is a turning point in our relationship.

For the first time there is physical contact.

After this our relationship changed substantially.

This is very curious ... I presented boiled water to him.

Tusoyo only identifies the smoke.

At this time I did not understand, because I didn’t know the word "enefi", but here he confuses steam with smoke.

He cannot associate the water with smoke.

He looks for fire in the water.

He recognizes water as such He wants to make sure that the water is water and… he burns himself.

Tusoyo obviously doesn’t know what boiled water is.

And a culture that does not know boiled water is a culture that eats whatever is collected without any processing, they eat what the sea offers exactly as offered, without changing, improving, conserving, etc. For them, nature is not something to be controlled or manipulated. What you can fish you eat in that moment or you loose. Here there is no development of technique. There is no progress. But how does a culture that does not progress survive, a culture that does not develop, that does not evolve? How is it that this culture arrives here, today, here?

“Their skill in some respects may be compared to the instinct of animals; for it is not improved by experience: the canoe, their most ingenious work, poor as it is, has remained the same, as we know from Drake, for the last 250 years” Life in a canoe produced a particular physical structure in these Indians: While their upper body is strong and clever, their lower body is weak and severely stunted ... like someone who has spent their entire life in a wheelchair.

Here you can see that he can’t move the pedals, even though the bike is at its lowest level of resistance. Even a child could have accomplished this.

Another thing that struck me during my research of his physical features, in some of the first exercises I did with him, was that even though his basic reflexes functioned normally: Blinking, laughing when tickled, closing his hands when he senses the presence of an object in them, Even though these basic reflexes functioned, there was no defense drive in him at all.

He does not defend himself.

In fact, when I provoked him with some "minor attacks", Tusoyo maintained his position of vulnerability.

He doesn’t move! No response!

No defense!

But how does a culture that doesn’t defend itself, that doesn’t attack, survive? How do you survive if you don’t fight, if you don’t struggle?

Given his lack of response to danger and threat, it was impossible for me to establish a code of prohibitions.

Tusoyo didn’t know power or hierarchy as something sustained by violence, and since power or hierarchy are nothing but violence, Tusoyo didn’t understand hierarchy, period.

If it couldn’t be with threats, it had to be with a prize.

Kiffe = FISH Nimai-NIMAYA = half for you and half for me.

He distributes everything between the both of us. Even if I give him a shirt: he cuts it in pieces and shares it.

The unity that we consider intrinsic for an object to maintain its essential being, (of course if its being is defined by how it is useful to us) doesn’t deserve any respect to him when it comes to the both of us having equivalent parts of that object.

Everything is divided in two.

I had to begin to figure out again notions that up to then seemed to be fairly obvious, transparent to me, like gift, exchange and theft.

In fact I still feel a profound confusion as to where the gifts end and the exchange starts.

Slowly I have begun to accept the possibility that one can establish relations without such distinctions.

TCHAPAI = dirt TEO = TAKE IT “At present, even a box given to one is destroyed into pieces and distributed; and no one individual becomes richer than another. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how a chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he might manifest his superiority and increase his power. I believe in this extreme part of South America, man exists in a lower state of improvement than in any other part of the world.”

Kiri: Come.

In the ancient worldviews men considered themselves as surrounded by, and a "part of", the world.

Both individuals and objects were all linked by a seemingly unlimited amount of asociations.

Imagine something like Wikipedia, the network of hyperlinks that forms Wikipedia, imagine the map of Wikipedia seen from the outside, where things are nothing but their relationship with thousands of others things.

To relate to the cosmos is thus to inscribe one’s body in its rhythms, where animals, plants and

objects are "spiritualized" to the point that they actually "talk back" to humans.

All material entity is coupled with a spiritual double, a mimetic double of itself.

Thus, we have a world that talks back, that refuses itself, that is concerned, scared, an animated world that can be encouraged or discouraged.

Since modernity, we began to see ourselves as eccentric to the world, as if we stood outside of it.

Face to face with the world, we consider ourselves to be essentially pure intellect, spirit, while we consider the world to be nothing but a material surface to be interpreted. As such, it deserves little interest, as soon as some kind of sense is extracted from it, it can be thrown in the garbage. Here we are attending the birth of an active production of knowledge regarding the world. This is the birth of the world as a world, out there, other. This is really the death of the world in service of the birth of mankind. The extraction of supposedly inherent meanings and sense from objects in favor of improvement, of the advance of technology, the struggle for survival, growth, development, refinement, innovation, progress, beautification, efficiency, progress, evolution, evolution, the evolution of species.

But why did interpretation, why did the extraction of knowledge, became the central and indisputable way of approaching the world?

When did knowledge become such a valuable and tradable capital?

When did we stop extracting gold and begun extracting sense from the world?

When the gold was finished?

And where is all this knowledge stored?

And how many times can each thing be read?

And do we need all those readings?

What for?

To accumulate them?

Must everything be subject to accumulation?

Who benefits from this mining of knowledge?

And what if the tunnels collapse our mining sites?

And what if we are trapped inside the mountain when the tunnels collapse?

There is a point to which you can empty the mountain by constructing tunnels to extract knowledge But there is a point where the mountain collapses; it is so riddled with holes that it just collapses.

A hollow mountain is no longer a mountain! Do you understand?! Because what is it that defines a mountain as such? Ah? That it is compact! Opaque! A fucking heap of dirt!

A compact and impenetrable pile of land An inexplicable, indefinable, indescribable, impenetrable pile of land. A darkness. Not a web of tunnels pathetically illuminated by gas lamps, not a sum of hollowed out kilometers, not a sum of emptiness! That's not a mountain, that's a shame!

That’s the shell of a mountain, that is scenography!

That's a cast of a mountain, but that is no longer a mountain!

One cannot go for a walk on that mountain, animals cannot graze on that mountain, a sunset can barely be held by that mountain.

We have emptied the mountains and the seas, spaces, minds, food, territories, bodies, Oh how we have emptied bodies, our pains, the planets out there, the past, we've emptied each little thing by knowing it, we have extracted all possible knowledge and now we are before mountains about to collapse, seas about to collapse, bodies about to collapse, we walk with caution because we know that at the first puff the beams will collapse, the walls will give in. We are afraid to step to hard because we know that under our feet are floors under floors, that it is underground parking lots that hold our living rooms and our bathrooms. Â

3.

For Tusoyo the world is not something he understands. Ever.

He is in the world.

Have you ever thought that in nature human languages are the only pretentious sounds, they are the only sounds that intend to give meaning to this world.

They are the only sounds that have the arrogance to try to give back meaning to those who produce them.

For one second try not to understand what I am saying, try to listen to what I am saying. Not understand it, listen to it.

What secret is at stake when one truly listens, that is, when one tries to capture the sonority rather than the message?

What does it mean for a being to be inmersed entirely in listening, to be formed by listening, to listen with all his being?

Where does the frontier between meaning and sound lie?

Right now I could be saying anything, and its not because I am in theater, it’s because what you haven’t noticed is that I’m actually singing. I'm not talking, but singing. And I hope you are not offended when you realize that I am not singing for you either, I am implementing a secure place for Tusoyo.

But in order for you to understand better I want to make a demonstration.

This is something I've done only once before with Tusoyo....

Birds singing.

Thunder. ... And rain.

Obladi Oblada ... The Beatles.

Violin concerto ...?

A ...

TV program ... ...

Strange Laughter.

One small step for man ...

Happy birthday mister president ...

Challenger?

Forrest Gump, 1998?

News broadcasting Contemporary pop music.

I´m sorry ... this is a game ... I had this stupid idea once ... a long time ago ... this is an old experiment ... I would show videos ... excuse me ... this shouldn’t be happening ...

I apologize for this really, I would like to go on, I'll try to continue ...

I´m so sorry. After this interruption, I will try to continue with my presentation, I need you to see this, I want to show you a video, I need you to see…

This is what I was talking about, this is what I want you to see.

I naively bought him color pencils. The pencils, the colors became our primary means of exchange, of dialogue ...

A simple bunch color pencils ended up being almost an obsession.

So much so that one day I found that Tusoyo had ordered the room in a peculiar manner.

When I checked the tape I realized what he had done. Look.

After that, every morning I began to find things like this.

Now you understand why I was obliged to dress him with stripes.

I have with me someone who is constantly disappearing.

Violently and especially since the last days, he disappears. This is his way of surviving! But how am I supposed to conserve something that disappears? This is an effort for conservation, remember?

But, what if the disappearance is the most evolved survival weapon of all?

Because, what if life was not meant to be a struggle? Huh? Why not stop fighting?

Why not stop trying to understand?

Why not stop struggling to understand?

Why not stop trying to understand in order to survive?

Why not stop fighting for survival?

To sur-vive, to live over what?

How about living within rather than over something or everything?

To tryout something new I mean, why not learn to disappear?.

To imitate is to want to touch what is other with our body, not look at it, not understand it, not triumph over it. Simply touch it with the body, to the extent that we embody it.

Mimesis, as the science not of understanding the other, but of being the other. As the science of abandoning oneself in the middle of everything, losing oneself in the environment; sinking into nature, decomposing into the world, imitating as a form of surrender ... mimesis as a form of yielding.

Here is the professor.

And this is me.

Can you see me?

My name is not Tusoyo.

Tusoyo in Spanish means you are me.

An in reverse: I, am, you.

My name is Ariel Hermosilla, I work as a cleaning man in the faculty at the University of Magallanes for the last 10 years.

The professor is a good man, but he is naive, very easy to fool.

The professor is asking me to translate for him: "What is he writing? What is he inventing? Whatever it is, it is a lie ... this is what I was talking about ... how am I supposed to conserve him like this?

This is a conservation effort, remember?

But how can we conserve what disappears? " The Yagans are extinct professor.

I am nothing close to a Yagan.

I am a common man.

Yes, like you.

I am just like you.

And now I'm in Europe. At last.

Who would have figured.

Â