RADIO HEALER
Animal Mother Moves the Four Winds of Rush Hour — 2016-2017
Mixed Media: Live Performance of Moving Image, Dance, and Sound,
Live Electro-acoustic Experimental Music, Single Channel Video Installation,
Indigenous Hacked and Handmade Acoustic and Electronic Instruments, Regalia, and Masks
Pulling from the power of punk, industrial, goth, metal, and indigenous knowledge systems, Radio Healer's death ceremony is charged with both market-driving and market-driven metaphors of sex, speed, violence, discipline, exploitation, pyromania, and transformation. In "Animal Mother," these metaphors originate from cityscape semiotic systems that engage the movement of rush hour. When traffic speeds increase, the street becomes noisy and blurry — frenetic markets, high-speed Internet, fast-car crashes, and VR porno. As traffic slows down, signs on the street become legible and, like denial of service, fast is not possible - lowriders viable, and street culture visible. In this system of rush hour, in which there is no OFF, we are weaponized, surveilled, and market valorized. Today, in the desert city, rush hour is infinitely dominant — remaining irreverent to the sovereignty of context, history, myth, and time. Rush hour is a scorching hot slow-and-fast moving parking lot of battery acid and burning gasoline after a hell of a long day at work. Rush hour, born of Animal Mother, remains emergent.
Project Description:
Radio Healer's Animal Mother is an indigenous death ceremony comprised of the live performance of 8 songs (War Song, Harvest Song, Weaving Song, Trading Song, and Water Songs) that are set to moving images. Working within the realm of metaphor, the collective uses its handmade indigenous tools and regalia to produce an immersive environment evoking the primitive power of market systems that, in Animal Mother, are defined as a physical, psychological, spiritual, and political power combination mediating labor, sex, land, warfare, surveillance, transportation, and communication.
• Labor: the market valorization of the production of ideas, goods, and services via the disciplining of human bodies (and vice versa).
• Sexual Subordination: the market valorization of consumer behaviors via the disciplining of human sexuality (and vice versa).
• Land: the market valorization of natural resources via the disciplining of geographies (and vice versa).
• Warfare and Surveillance: the market valorization of inequitable trade via the disciplining of physical borders (and vice versa).
• Transportation and Communication: the market valorization of traffic via the disciplining of time-space (and vice versa).
• Semiotic Systems: the disciplining of aspirations, desires, and aesthetics via the market valorization of signifiers/media (and vice versa).