Star Magnolia

«star magnolia» the visual album

track 01: change

the text is from octavia e. butler’s «earthseed: the books of the living», a belief system which she develops in the two novels «the parable of the sower» (1993) and «the parable of the trickster» (1998). the most prevailing idea of «earthseed» is to embrace the idea of change equaling what religions named god. the ability to adapt to the everchanging of everything, which one shapes and changes constantly, to transform and be transformed, and allow differing perspectives is key to be-in-the-world, to become-with, to exist-further, proteus-like, so we can grow.  

«all that you touch, you change. all that you change, changes you.»

video*: juan ferrari 
voice-over: brandy butler
music: camila ferrari
dramaturgy: hayat erdoğan 

*the video was filmed in a performative encounter between juan ferrari, cleophée moser and camila ferrari

«star magnolia» the visual album

track 02: time

the text was developed and written by edwin ramirez during the rehearsal process of the theater production «star magnolia». in this text, edwin thinks about time and space, tries to find an approach to the differing scientific ideas and theories about time and space and confronts and questions them from a personal point of view. what if thinking about space and time, thinking about sci-fi-futures would include diverse bodies? what if there was no retro-topic nostalgia based on normative anthropocentric worldviews? edwin proposes to try to overcome the normative anthropo-centered ideas of time and dive into non-linearity, which breaks with notions of past, present and future and which follows the «earthseed»-idea of diversity: «embrace diversity, or be destroyed.» 

video: juan ferrari
performer: edwin ramirez
sound: tomas segura
dramaturgy: hayat erdoğan

«star magnolia» the visual album

track 03: baumfreund

the text is based on the thoughts of emanuele coccia, philosopher and botanist, which he develops further in the text «quercus». he considers humans from the point of view of trees, questioning our sense of dominance and how much we as humans are interdependent from and with trees. the text proposes an important shift in perspective to find new ways of living together and protecting our ecosystems that we are destroying. the idea of entanglement, the connectedness of everything can be linked to thoughts found in octavia e. butler’s «earthseed». the question of humans being earth-seed that still need to grow so they can take root amongst the starts, i.e. transform, adapt and bring the project humanity to the level of adulthood, are shining through these thoughts. the notion of overcoming terra-centrism to save terra is the key thought

video: juan ferrari
voice-over: legion seven
sound: legion seven
dramaturgy: hayat erdoğan

«star magnolia» the visual album

track 04: power struggles

the text is from octavia e. butler’s «earthseed: the books of the living». in these verses about ignorance and power struggles, the political notion of the book’s truisms come as warnings. while in the two novels of butler, in which she also describes the rise of a corrupt, oppressive, dogmatic political worldview that subjugates everything to its exploitative ideology and divides humanity into those who dominate and those who must be persecuted and/or oppressed, these verses are also meant to raise awareness for the power of ignorance, which can be understood in terms of postcolonial thinker gayatri spivak’s «sanctioned ignorance». these verses also demask the idea of competition and colonial/capitalist idea of growth and proposes rather to collaborate, to learn, to think.

video: juan ferrari
voice-over: brandy butler
sound: legion seven
dramaturgy: hayat erdoğan

«star magnolia» the visual album

track 05: normalcy

the text was developed and written by the performer kihako narisawa during the rehearsal process of the theater production «star magnolia». it was developed as a ship log, a video-message sent to a very close person that might still be somewhere on earth.

kihako describes how the notions of a distinct worldview in binaries, like e.g. normal-special have been mixed and don’t make any sense anymore and how the things that were regarded as being normal have become so rare that they can be considered special, extraordinary from her now. normal things like being human, empathetic, the feeling of being together in something.

so here, again, the prevailing ideas of octavia e. butler’s «earthseed», i.e. how we as humanity can work on being human and humans, on real connectivity and response-ability with earth and humanity become only visible when you leave the terra-centrist worldview and project it into a future. we have never had reached normalcy.

text by kihako narisawa
video: juan ferrari and jeremy nedd
performer: kihako narisawa 
dramaturgy: hayat erdoğan