HOSPITAL OF THE UNIVERSE
HOSPITAL OF THE UNIVERSE was directed by Blue Pieta and made in collaboration with poet Bhanu Kapil. It premiered at Fitz Patrick Hall Cambridge in March 2022.
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This 30-minute dance-theatre work explores a family scene modelled off Bhanu Kapil’s book Schizophrene and its Butcher Scene, intersected with questions from The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers. It combines flamenco guitar, dance and opera.
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Bhanu Kapil and Blue Pieta fragments of a conversation on Sacrifice: written by Blue Pieta
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Stay close to the vision.
My mother is a mystical painter, I have a dream and it is in her painting.
Who is this work for?
Stars are from earth, asphalt, star and flower, carapace, flower, tea as libation fluid
2010 Bhanu longed for a conversation on sacrifice, 2010 I was 10 years old.
An Icelandic pen-pal accomplice.
‘auto-sacrifice’ begins with an installation of Hermann Nitsch. Blood painting.
Sacrifice: circle around the person who is most lit from the inside, a body of emanation. There are witnesses – who will receive the light?
Dismemberment: a private sacrifice, no witness.
That night I lay in bed and I offered my body to Dionysus, I was playing with cutting my limbs, each choreography has an organ of emphasis, the organ which I put on the sacrificial altar, my bed at night.
Performance as Incarnation.
Displacement and Simulation: meat to flamenco, meat to dance.
Saturday between 2-5pm: Wedding Night.
My cardinal ancestor, the mantilla, sits and watches me convert sacrifice into a position in the water, shedding skin. You came towards me, cut veal and said sacrifice is mitosis. I lay in bed and dreamt that night sacrifice means the inverse of what it is, it is love.
No matter how much they slaughter us, they cannot destroy life this is the meaning of the ritual – rebirth. The curation of the animal.
Detritus body, the ash binds on a molecular level to compose your corporeality or monstrosity, the moment it binds you become the One, light body, sacrificial body. Simultaneously I am crucified and giving birth to a lamb which my father nurses in an operating theatre. I will become a mercantile banker to pay for his remedial therapy.
How do I receive love?
Close the door and smile.
Images by Alex PC Credits: Direction/Writer: Blue Pieta Choreography: Blue Pieta, Charis Taplin Singers: Elinor Arden, Jessica-Raja Brown Muscian: Ynes Barnard Masterson Poetry reading: Bhanu Kapil