Alex Franz Zehetbauer – wet dreaming at 52Hz
Eszti Zala
Dear Alex,
Yesterday night I have dreamt that you were a whale, a very lonely one in fact, and I was there, watching you…
Well, now that I come to think about it, there were a bunch of others with me too – strangers, people or maybe some other creatures, maybe also whales?
Perhaps I wasn’t human either, I can’t really remember…
I know you would laugh at this point, reading this, me sounding disturbingly esoteric, but you know how it is in dreams: everything shifts and transforms so quickly and irrationally, one can never grasp or be fully sure of anything.
All I can remember is that you and we – me and the others - were somehow separated. We were observing you from the outside; floating and drifting, tossing your body and gliding in the luminescent water, diving and coming up for air over and over again. Your skin was shining, and your moves have mesmerized me; dragging me with every twist and swirl of your body further and further in the deep, where, in the darkness, the waves are soft and quiet.[1]
We didn’t dare to move or make any sound so you might have not even seen or heard us, but you surely have felt our presence in another way.
You were also talking to us in a language, we failed to understand, until I learned to listen more closely, and figured out that you weren’t talking at all - you were actually singing.
What I had first thought to be inarticulate, meaningless words, were in fact sounds of a harmony, travelling from many miles away but still echoing loud and very clear.
I think you were waiting for someone to answer your calls but I couldn’t respond for some reason.
Instead, I was listening and watching very carefully the way you – as a hybrid of a whale and an artist – just kept singing like a whole choir in this strange, deserted underwater church of yours. We have been fascinated and we have felt connected to you, and I think you were aware of it, without even having to look at us or hear us speak.
I was also thinking: “He might be experiencing loneliness, but he is so good at entertaining himself”[2] , and this thought seemed immensely comforting to me. This enchanting, passionate, emotional hymn of yours had gotten under my skin.
So thank you for letting me walk out of this dream with a hint of melancholy, but also with peace, and above all, with a better understanding of the whales’ unique language which us humans under any other circumstances would not have been able to understand.
All the best,
Eszti
[1] Alex Franz Zehetbauer, wet dreaming at 52Hz
[2] Alex Franz Zehetbauer, wet dreaming at 52Hz
Eszti Zala is a student at the theatre, film and media studies department of the University of Vienna. Besides experimental theatre forms, performance, and film my main interest lies in writing; I publish poems (mostly in Hungarian journals) on a regular basis.
Alex Bailey
Dear Spirit Animal
For thousands of years Anthropomorphism gave birth to countless fictional landscapes where humans of all ages could cherish animals as the main protagonists. Scientists however, often lament this type of approach when studying animals preferring to set aside attempts to understand underlying emotions by overlooking mindedness, selfhood and the individuality of non-human animals. To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo.
Thankfully, in more recent times we’ve come to accept this lack of comprehension and acknowledge that empathy has an important role to play not just in the study of animals but in the representation of a world that we share with them.
Anthropomorphising can function as a strategy to cope with loneliness when other human connections are not available. Solitude has always been a profound issue for philosophers and spiritual seekers. One of the loftyist quests a person can achieve on a spiritual path is a full understanding that a human being is ultimately alone, and consequently, to develop the ability to face this loneliness without despair.
Spiritually evolved animals are those who are happy with or without others: they are more or less at ease in every situation, and they accept their solitude while still being able to be social as well. The unknown Whale within wet dreaming at 52Hz is that spiritual animal. It exists outside of interactions from it’s own species but lives through seas where life from other types of fish surround it.
The spirit animal that wet dreaming at 52Hz introduces us to has neither the need to escape nor to have company. It is satisfied and facing loneliness with contentment.
I don’t remember when the idea of Loneliness entered into my life, but I do remember moments of intense loneliness. The first was when I was 19. I remember standing in a field practicing a mantra that I would repeat in my head and as I would say the words I would open my arms and fill my chest full of bold air, trying to breathe in emotion. I felt Loneliness when I was 19 but the process of accumulating it must have started earlier. Something occurs between the act of being a child and becoming an adult which opens the door to isolation. I later have come to acknowledge this as a symptom of a patriarchal masculine society, which readily teaches separation and a general deadening of emotions. These negative emotional mechanisms, once embedded into our thinking are very difficult to remove. They can only be complemented besides positive emotional mechanisms. Actively creating positive emotional states is an authoring of fiction. Fictions like the one that Alex Franz Zehetbauer shares give us an example of contented loneliness.
Alex
Alex Bailey, UK living in Vienna, Austria. Together with artist Krõõt Juurak they conceived the project Performances for Pets in 2014, which they have performed for over 200 pets in cities and homes across europe in both visual art & dance festivals. He is the author of the practice Humourology, a study into humour related cosmic to comic communications. Both performances for Pets and Humourology are represented by Galerie International, an immaterial gallery dealing exclusively with immaterial artworks run by Adriano Wilfert Jensen and Simon Asencio
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A Spell Action for Self Love, Body and Community Empowerment
Alex Franz Zehetbauer
wet dreaming at 52Hz
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