OSwoods English

ORACLE and SACRIFICE in the woods

an audio-performative search for traces

through a forest landscape

by Claudia Bosse

English version

This app is the first part of the theater performance ORACLE and SACRIFICE in the woods, performed in May 2022 in the Prater-Auen in Vienna and produced by theatercombinat.

ORACLE and SACRIFICE in the woods transposes organs, bodies, viscera, movements into the woods of Vienna and establishes theater as landscape. a space whose boundaries are the earth and the root soil, or the sky above the treetops. ... airy and at the same time impenetrable, sprawling landscapes below and above the earth. Artemis, goddess of the forest, animals, children and women - fertility rituals were dedicated to her - meets the composting of matter and bodies, metabolic processes of the forest, robotics between Artificial Intelligence and organic material.

ORACLE and SACRIFICE in the woods exposes us to the forest and provokes a confrontation with the non-human in us and around us // Timothy Morton: there is no such "thing" as the environment, since being involved in it already, we are not separate from it. //

Whether the trees will have revolted? The prophecy hangs in the air and the question to the slaughtered, sacrificed sheep is in the bones: how long can Gaia carry us? One thing is certain: the organs will not have left us. Or will they?

.... in search of other ecologies and poetics, also in art ....

The work is part of the series ORACLE and SACRIFICE, which deals with the meaning of sacrifices and the practice of oracle from antiquity to the present day: Rituals, Predictions, and Forms of Community/s. Oracles, the future techniques, of the Etruscans, inferred coming in the course of lightning, in organs and in the flight of birds. In the liver of sacrificed animals the desire of the gods was read and gave answer with questions of possible wars or political alliances.

For more information, visit https://www.theatercombinat.com

Text / Speaker: Claudia Bosse

Sound: Auern