Visual
Skin and stories will be two of the creative tools used to surprising effect when “An Exquisite Corpse on a Living Body” brings images, poetry and music to the forefront Feb. 18 at Honey Moon. Organizer and performer Scot Casey notes the “multimedia usufruct”—which will feature words by Charles “Bonesy” Jones, images of words on flesh by Django Boren, Ashley Berger, and Sean Dowd, poetry by Robert Lashley, and improvisational music by Jess Manley—will also utilize the skin of a model for further artistic exploration.
Cascadia Weekly: It’s not often the word “usufruct” is found in a press release. How does the word—which pertains to legal rights to property—correlate to the one-night show?
Scot Casey: After [mentor] Charles “Bonesy” Jones died, I was named the custodian of his digital works. There has been some legal contention with regard to my rights—especially where any profit from the works may be gained by me. However, I may present the digital work in any manner that I see fit.
CW: And how will you do that at the Honey Moon performance?
SC: I “borrowed” one of Jones’ most important stories, The Old Bone Dance, and wrote it on a model’s skin. The Old Bone Dance is an allegorical story about taking the skin off of the English language to get down to the bones, the skeleton of deeper meaning, that informs and animates the body of the language.
CW: For those who aren’t aware of what Jones meant to your life, can you offer up a short primer?
SC: Charles “Bonesy” Jones was born in Little Hope, Texas in 1945 and died in the Chama River Valley in New Mexico in 2005. I knew him for more than 20 years and was with him when he died. No one has had a greater influence upon my life. He was one of those people that lived a life of quiet intensity. In another age, he would have been a philosopher monk. I haven’t met many people that I would consider “holy,” but Jones had that quality about him in spades.
CW: Why did you commit his words to skin? Why not paint on a canvas?
SC: To have a corpus of words decorating, adorning, a living human being just seemed a beautiful thing to do
CW: Approximately how many words can fit on a human body?
SC: I guess it depends on how small you can write. The Old Bone Dance is almost 3,000 words. There was plenty of room. I think with some effort I could put around 5,000 words on an average-sized body.
CW: What are the challenges of writing on skin?
SC: There are the obvious ones, pores and ridges and such. But what is most interesting about writing on skin, as opposed to paper, is that it keeps reminding you that it is alive. It is breathing and twitching and just sort of pulsing there under your pen. At times, it is like writing on water. The other challenge is working out where the text will go.
CW: What do you hope people come away with after viewing the multimedia extravaganza?
SC: I want people to sense that they have experienced something challenging and different and, at the same time, entertaining, engaging.
Hand-printed copies of The Old Bone Dance will be given away for free to all who attend. I also want the audience to be able to understand the process of writing on skin, to get just a small sense of what that is like. The original model will be present to allow audience member to write a few words on her skin.
CW: What do you enjoy about doing collaborations like these?
SC: It is about community. And I mean this not in any running for office chamber of commerce kind of way, but the acts of ritual performance that bring like minded individuals out of their dark solitude and into the light.
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