

2015 © Karoline Feyertag
Performance by Charlotte Hug at Navigating in the Unknown, Monday 11 May, 2015.
Wherever indeterminacy (apeiras) reigns, wherever there are no limits and no directions, whenever we are trapped, encircled or caught in inextricable bonds, it is, according to Detienne and Vernant, Metis who intervenes, who discovers stratagems, expedients, tricks, ruses, machinations, mechane and techne which allow us to move from the absence of limits to determinacy, from darkness to light. The kinship between Poros and Metis provides an indissoluble link between journey, transition, crossing, resourcefulness, expediency, techne, light and limits (peiras).
We use the term coalescence to describe a moment where a multitude of actors come together, act together, and merge into a collective movement, body, or unit. The resulting situation is a shared but divergent somatic, spatial and cognitive experience of togetherness that is experienced as fertile and generative by all or most of the collective.
The typically Western notion of “we’re taking drugs” just reflects the delusions of power with which we approach fellow beings that are superior to us. I don’t take drugs, the drugs take me with them. And it’s not my decision whether I am swept along by it or not, but I can decide what level of humility I display toward it.
The senses work together in multifaceted and even dissonant ways. However, recognition of this multiplicity has been stymied by the emphasis on the “pre-reflective unity” of the senses within the phenomenology of perception and the focus on harmonious integration within cognitive neuroscience.