Sudeep Sen Black box: etymology of crisis: before, after & there after for Neelam, Kabir, Angad & Rocky
1. BEFORE: Talk, Trailer, Fore Play “Prisoners of drops of water, we are nothing but perpetual animals.” — ANDRÉ BRETON & PHILIPPE SOUPAULT, The Magnetic Fields A high-voltage swiveling lighthouse beam blinds us in this controlled darkness — Virginia Woolf or Robert Eggers are not present here to write their scripts. Shrill echoey electromagnetic sounds shriek, deafening our wavering eardrums. Behind a lit translucent cloth-screen, a man in a wood-chopping motion wields his axe. His long hair glimmering halo-like — a chiaroscuro. He shines his shoes, breaks bread. He rummages through a box to a find a length of gauze to bandage his eyes, his mouth. His nose, stuck-shut by black tape. On his bare body, he places fresh flowers on his skin, every hair follicle marking its petaline scent on a digital oximeter — measuring his pulse-beat, heart-rate, his blood oxygen levels — every new-fangled indices of health, trendy obsessions of these pandemic times. On an empty chair, sits a bodyless form — legs crossed, no spine, a jacket hung on the chair’s frame, a spotlight glaring on it. This light moves, trailing a pair of footsteps, following electrical wires to a set of old switches blackened since war-torn blackout days.
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