Addiction and nutrition facts!

The question is what happened to a group of people after taking part in Communication Front 01 that took place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, taken in to a consideration that they spent between 3 and 14 days?

One can start by describing the events that took place during that period(see diaries of saso, mails on CF mailing list) and would learn that people drank a lot of coffee(100's of litters), had numerous meals in st.Nikola restaurant(even took some recipe's home). Also they had numerous discussions called round-table-projects(even if the table was square), and attended presentation by their fellow artists(non of which were bulgarian). Further they had drinks and danced late in to the night. All of it conducted and supervised by master theoretical moderator(tottaly disregarding the topic set by their hosts). But that tells nothing about what really happened to them there, the information in the descriptions is of no value.

So one must turn to what is not written in the CF01diaries. What can that be? Lets try personal feelings and emotions that each one of them faced on return to "brutal reality" as one of them described. Now from that one can learn two things.

* Frst that all had problem in "relating to reality" of their homes.

* Second that all felt basic need for impute from the "security" of CF01Plovdiv set.

One can read lines like " i confess that i miss the second hand smoke and great red wine. i am in nicotine withdrawals", or ".....you know what? i don't care about all", or "...i have shaved my head and will b out of work in 2 months i am free!" or "..Could someone give us a "sign of life" of the cable if you have it"??? and "...I am quite tired and I need to recall this pure lab. atmosphere of Cfront Plovdiv. It was extremely safe area of reality" or ".. I tried to reply but my message didn't appear on the list for some strange reason." or " I'm happily/unhappily back in the.....I found in last two days in Plovdiv new sentiment in me. I had strong feeling these last days. I called it "sweet sadness" and "....in my C-front mail folder and I must confess, that you feed me with Love and love again..." or "....o make the workshop last longer and also as i miss the people there, and the working atmosphere, i wanted to react..." or "..Cfront was a piece of music that welcomed, gathered, built, crescendoed, blasted, then broke like a wave and dispersed crashing onto the shore of our homelands..and now there is almost silence.." or "..at saturday [the workshop was over, everybody was gone, i remain at the mexican house .........., i felt, as somebody with no more live relations with the place, a strange-land...." or "..so what i'm hearing RIGHT NOW, is some kristel, aleksander and adnan's voices in the broadcast of pingfm......touch... all that echoes inside now in new combination as never before. and i don't take it for granted." or "...except I can't sleep. I have too much surplus energy." or "..and rupert is shaving his head - is this true - we miss you - ok, ok it`s getting pathetic..." and to end with "..one could not explain the experience to others that were not there either..it was beyond words. Cfront01 was beyond words, digging deep into emotions, friendships, understandings, stories, laughter and connection.". Now these lines tell little more about what happened "out there".

Interesting collection? Yes but one need to go further and see what's behind all that. How it happened? What energy was at work during these days? Basically one can agree that people were emotionally touched and thrown out of their balance. Is it possible that such a hetero-culturall group of people, from different cultural backgrounds, can respond by being so homogenized when together? Can it be true that all felt need to be emotionally "fed"? The answer maybe hiding in feelings they all shared about backgrounds they came from. What's happening individually in different social and cultural backgrounds proved to be crucial trigger for homogenizing the group. That is hunger, basic hunger for pure emotion of love. Now to argue that may seem a bit blunt but that is exactly what happened out there.

Hunger, let's stick there for a moment. It can have many faces and it can be satisfied in numerous ways but it is always associated with lack of "food". In this case of CF01 the food was all too present, at the restaurant where people had wonderful meals, enjoying every bite as the discussion on "cooking" fluently went on accompanied with sips of excellent wine, rakija or beer, at the MHouse where coffee was meeting point, or in the garden where e-BAR-B-Q, pagan ritual of burning meat on the open fire, took place. Even at the round(square)table, as one of them talks about disembodied bodies tones of disembodied food is on display on the very same table! Light is beautiful, almost pathetic, like on the baroque paintings, sun is low, shadows long and the room is quiet except for the voice of presentator, smell of food is filling the nostrils of artists sitting around. People themselves, quiet, pensive, heads down, almost like in the church, listening carefully the text and thinking about the food they're going to "burn" in a moment. Collective trance, rave event, without any physical movement. Inside emotional "techno-party". Presentator is speaking in a low voice, monotone, almost hypnotizing. Text that comes out is reaching deep into each and every attendee. It lasts for more than an hour. That is the crucial point. The turning point. Again two things that are important.

* Frst no one is really hungry food-vise but hunger is "in the air".
* Second all present are disembodied during the presentation.

The initiation can begin. Ritual is commenced by moderator, he lights the fire and food is brought to be "burnt". At this point emotions run high, peak point. The moment people started to consume food the process of sharing started. Sharing what? Not the food or liquids, for they are all disembodied and it all is an illusion of third degree. Sharing "liquid" emotion distilled in CF01 Plovdiv distillery. Something words can't explain but it can be felt, and was felt. So they all got high? Answer is yes once again. Not just that night but every morning at the breakfast at the flat, every noon in the restaurant etc. Moment by moment sucked deeper and deeper in to "sweet sadness" addiction. Let's see some
nutrition facts:
Artists per m2 cca 4, max. value 50
Realty as of space/time continuum ON
Emotions "love" 96%
Emotions "fear" 3%
Sharing ON
Artificial colors NO
Additives NO
Dry matter 1%

So the list above gives information about ingredients. What is the outcome once they're mixed? It is CF01-"liquid emotion" high energy human drug that is capable of keeping a large number of people high for a very long period of time. That strength, intensity and quantity of energy makes the "hangover", "withdrawals" more difficult to bear, more painful, strong. "Hangover" is individual in experience but common in appearance. The sentences from above, by artists being "off" CF01-"liquid emotion" remind on any addiction crisis. Isn't it so? Now let's see some
addiction facts:
art, no more than 12%
west component (WC) cca 13%
east componenet (EC) cca 18%
spiritus 19%
money matter(dry paper+metal)11%
electronic trash / traces matter cca 7%
emotional trash /traces cca 20%

Once the "problem" is established it has to be named. It can be "CF01 Addiction". Than let's see what that addiction is all about. Generally all addictions are qualified ad negative. And they are. Most are associated with "drugs", named heroin. But nicotine is addiction, so is food and so on, list is almost endless. Art can be labeled as addiction too. Addiction always anchors in the weak spot in human psyche and is fed with fear. Common addiction of "western capitalism" is workoholism. Material goods, politics etc. On the other hand there's "eastern" addiction to mystique and spiritual values. The choice of a modern man seems to be between money and spirit addictions, yet the freedom is proclaimed all over the modern world. How can one be free and yet addicted? No way. Can both addiction types be overcome? Yes and it can be done by "walking" the line in-between, being in and yet out of addiction structure. This is crucial for later understanding the "weakness" of individuals present in Plovdiv.

Is "CF01-liquid emotion" any different, and if so than why? Interestingly enough it is different for it "attack" just that line in-between, inhibited, hidden by masks(as someone has said). It, in effect, takes off layer by layer until nothing but "essence" of beauty is left, than it stimulates it and sets it free to be shared. Man that's high. The addiction is non-material, non-spiritual yet it has to be consumed in real time(like meals, one gets hungry and ...). If not it produces withdrawal crisis and it can cause serious damage should the person in crisis is left unattended for more than 1/2 day. In a fact person may "die". On the other hand it can leave person untouched and symptoms just go away in couple of days. Sort of smart addiction? Now how it is consumed? Art, food, tech, touch. None. Simply one has to make all that go away, like in meditation state of mind, to be opened for CF01-"liquid emotion".

Living in a different realities, as every person present at CF01 in Plovdiv, created variety of attitudes but also it generated some common factors within each person that enabled CF01-"liquid emotion" to find fertile ground. Yes that factor is love. Most of all, as yet again can be seen from words describing reentering the "homeland reality" not feeling safe and being confused faced with everyday life and "problems that were left at home", love seems to be the "weapon" all people present in Plovdiv use to "ground" themselves and connect to eachother, prolonging the CF01-"liquid emotion" effect .

The problem is that real time feeding is taken away so symptoms of CF01-"liquid emotion" withdrawal can be observed. Food is needed and must be supplied, fear is growing. But real time in the state of mind under CF01-"liquid emotion" is ever present and it overpasses all boundaries, geographical or other. The awareness and clearness that it produces enables CF01-"liquid emotion" to be fed even if the bodies are dislocated, and before it was determined that the bodies were disembodied before CF01-"liquid emotion" started to cause an effect. So it can be consumed at any time and place, it is accessible, affordable and easy to find.

To conclude discourse about CF01-"liquid emotion" lets say it is a positive addiction and that's the most important difference regarding various addictions. Why? Simply because it is addiction that helps cure all other addictions that man faces in everyday life. It is a cure, yet an addiction so it must be a contradiction. Great contradiction but also very true and real stuff. A way out that enables one to stay in, grounded, connected, efficient, spiritual yet elevated, disconnected, disembodied, and definitively a better person.

That happened to a group of people after taking part in Communication Front 01 that took place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, taken in to a consideration that they spent between 3 and 14 days.

B.F.

PS. Don't think it'll work on just any group. The blend of varieties, so carefully selected by organizers has everything to do with the result. Don't try doing it alone and keep out of reach of children.





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{\title Short stay - long emotion }
{\author Bojana Kunst}
{\operator Bojana Kunst}


Kraft-Ebing, Freud collegue in Wienna, said that hunger and love govern all world affairs. But both doctors, as Theodore Zeldin in his “ Intimate History of Humanity” told us, forgot about hunger and concentrated only on the torments of love. If there were the proffesors of happiness who studied the passion for pleasure as a whole, a different outlook may have emerged.

This different outlook is presented by Zeldin in his description of three ways of eating and three coresponding ways od searching for happiness. "To eat one is full up is the first and traditional way, putting faith in the good recepies and old methods. The aim is to become contented, to be comforted, to feel cosy, to purr. This is the cautious approach to pleasure,
with the motto "protect yourself from foreign bodies” ." Foreign bodies are not only a fly in the soup, a snail in the salat, but everything that is unusal, forbbiden, threatening, dangerous. It was therefore in the proces of learning to eat that humans made their fear of foreign bodies a virtue and call it a taste. Not just the organs such as tongue and nose, but eyes too became the organs of the taste; the taste became the prime modern sense of defining aesthetic rules, boundaries and relationship to the authonomy of the self and the representation of the other. But as usually happened in the domestic field there were always people (nervous, unlocalized, liquid, dispersed, non-identical, disembodied, embodied, non-autonomous) who regarding themselves as foreign bodies too, strangers to their own house, people, location, sourroundings. Always hungry, never satiated.

So, said Zeldin, second way of eating was invented, treating food " as an amusement, a form of permissiveness, a cares of the senses. The purpose was to seduce and be seduced”. In such circumstances, one's attitude to the world at large is only temporarily modified: one flirts with foreign bodies during the meal, but they do not affect how one behaves in the office." We could describe this kind of eating as the 'postmodern' collage, these are the meals simultaneously served on the tables of the palimsest and multilayer cousine: one flirts with foreign bodies in the matrix, but they do not affect really how one lives with the other in the contemporary complex reality. Distractions and surprises, dislocatednes, being jokey, cynical, ironical, timeless and spaceless; these are the main tastes provoked by such way of eating. We are all like jazz musicians obsessed with infinite jam session, improvising playfull sourroundings, flourishes, networks, never reaching conclusions. Contradictions, conflicts, disproportional bodies, discrepant identites are being put every day on our cosy table, but still secretly ruled by the sovereign Taste: no danger but endless play, spicy but not too much, oposition but no position.

The search for a third kind of happiness Zeldin described as a " way of eating which corresponded. All invention and progress come from finding a link between two ideas that have never met, bringin foreign bodies together. Creative cooks found qualities in food that nobody suspected were there, uniting ingredients that never used to mix. Creative diners are constantly engaged in losing their fear of strange foods, and of foreign bodies." Creative cooking and eating is producing and reproducing, locating and dislocating, it is the constant being at risk when the recipe is not strictely followed: "oposition robbed of all its innocence" (D. Haraway). There is a freedom and there is a danger in this kind of creativity and we should always be aware of both sides of it. The food (meal) is the product of a fundamentally disunified series of systems, a series of dysparate flows, events, entities, energies, liquid emotions. This is not the event of a cosy correctness, but the intermingling of the different, where the entities are always understood as the corelation and assemblage of parts, always entites but with the need to communicate, touch, feel, be different, speak, quarel, making arguments, be repetitive. This is the creativity. To spicy. To liquid. Painfull sometimes. Disproportional. Not really a happy family. Not a cosy dinner of artists which produced communicative events because they have the freedom to move and imagination to perceive. But a caring one. For arguments, differences and perspectives. And for the junk finally. The same way as this community cleaned the junk after the barbecue, it is still cleaning and thinking about its own remains. Producing electronic trash / traces. Emotional trash /traces. Thinking about different positions / opositions. What is worthed is to be aware how to step out of the safe kitchen sourrounding of Mexican house and reach the effect - so that you let the other to have effect on you. Short stay - long emotion.
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