Author: Maria Byck
As a part of the Thessaloniki Queer Arts Festival we presented this one-day workshop and exploration of love and intentionality. We introduced collaborative tools to cruise Thessaloniki. Using our bodies and imaginations, we found ways to queer the erotic potentials and reclaim desires within the urban landscape to produce transformative mappings of lust. Leaving behind traces for others to discover, we revealed Eros, as an all-consuming force in the intermingling stories and lives of the city. Reading, walking, passing through, biographing objects, all embodied in our utopic interventions. The coming together of people unknown, intrigued by the sensuality of place, stimulated spontaneous, uncharted erotic encounters within the city. The methodology of cruising intends to become an instigator for continuity of our love and all its dynamic powers.
Wholy Pigeon UnLmtd
“spirituality is human’s top quest in the times of loss”
the perfect market opportunity
Wholy Pigeon UnLmtd startup is reordering the economic and transcendental energy flows of Tinos, Greece. Our goal is to destabilize and decentralize the entrenched powers that shape how visitors interact with the island. Tinos has a strong brand identity as a place of pilgrimage, inspired by the reputedly miraculous icon of the Panagia Evangelistria. Recent marketing campaigns appeal to the more earthly desires, promising a destination with inspiring art, epicurean delights, and pristine beaches. Tourist and pilgrims perform many of the same rituals, their journeys consist of a series of performances where movements intertwine with prescriptions within embodied spaces of production and consumption. Both seek transformative experiences and material encounters, hoping for an epiphany [miracle or no miracle], desiring a sense of connection along the way, performing a pre-memory, redeeming a suffering; both take selfies and pick up memorabilia from Tinos to transport and extend the value of their journey.
In spaces that bring tourists [religious or not] closer to salvation (a means of escape), the body {of both the pilgrim and tourist} is considered a medium which can expand knowledge of the world and experience states of becoming, through doing.
The suffering of the body, in capitalism and religion, is an intensified experience that manifests in communal rites, an anteroom to return renewed (reborn, rejuvenated, resurrected) back home.
Through our research we identified that both the church and leisure holiday businesses had enclosed and capitalized on promises of redemption and healing. Dovetailing with these spiritual trends, the Wholy Pigeon UnLmtd. (WPU) embarked upon a strategy to reverse the extracting quality of tourism and pilgrimages and corner the market share of miracles that Tinos has to offer.
STONE READING STAND
To profit from pilgrims, heavy symbolism and selfies, we offer clients a new and improved ritual to access Tinosian powers of intentionality and a chance to be reborn as spiritual anarchist. Beginning with a guided visioning each individual infuses the stones with the coincidence of their encounter with WPU in Tinos, of all places in the universe. Reclaiming the commons of transcendental powers we provide guidance, inspiration, and meaning by reading stones gathered from the upper, lower, inner and outer parts of Tinos. These stones foretell each clients relation to their unique path as it intermingles with flows on the island:
Inner– DESIRES that are the foundation of each individual quest
Upper– BARRIERS blocking the true path
Lower– SUPPORT system enabling the emergence of desires and intentions
Outer– POSSIBILITY and meaning of the coincidences to take away
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