This is a recently completed collaboration with Peter Wullen and Céline Lory. The french texts where provide by Peter (these based on texts by Cioran & Badiou), the reading produced by Celine, the construction of the audio by the GoB.

The content references self immolation, exfoliation, murder & culture and race.

Le Bain De Feu

Brûlé au dernier degré par ses propres flammes, privé de toute existence individuelle, transformé en un tas de cendre, comment éprouverait-on encore la sensation de vivre? Une folle volupté d’une ironie infinie s’empare de moi lorsque j’imagine mes cendres éparpillées aux quatre coins de la terre, frénétiquement soufflées par le vent, me disséminant dans l’espace comme une éternelle remontrance a l’adresse de ce monde.

The Bath of Fire

There are so many ways to achieve the sensation of immateriality that it would be difficult, if not futile, to make a classification. Nevertheless, I think that the bath of fire is one of the best. The bath of fire: your being ablaze, all flashes and sparks, consumed by flames as in Hell. The bath of fire purifies so radically that it does away with existence. Its heat waves and scorching flames burn the kernel of life, smothering its vital elan, turning its aggressiveness into aspiration. To live in a bath of fire, transfigured by its rich glow – such is the state of immaterial purity where one is nothing but a dancing flame. Freed from the laws of gravity, life becomes illusion or dream. But this is not all: at the end, a most curious and paradoxical sensation occurs, the feeling of dreamy unreality gives way to the sensation of becoming ash. The bath of fire invariable ends thus: when the inner conflagration has scorched the ground of your being, when all is ashes, what else is there left to experience? There is both mad delight and infinite irony in the thought of my ashes scattered to the four winds, sown frenetically in space, an eternal reproach to the world.

(Cioran, Le Bain De Feu, Sur Les Cîmes Du Désespoir)

Music & sounds: Glove of Bones
Voice: Céline Lory
Text assemblage & concept: Peter Wullen

Additional thanks to Céline for the source image used in the above pictures.

Additional thanks to Raffaella Pezzella for including this on the Recognition Test #72 playlist on 25th of June. Stream the full program below.