PROJECT STATEMENT

PHYSIS is the designation of the upbuilding project of The Unstitute which examines human nature from a nonmoral perspective. If ‘Hydra’ from the ‘Radical Insecurity’ room stood for the body politic, then ‘The Flies’ of the eponymous-titled room swarm across it; out of this deterritorialisation of the body comes a new Physis.

When the Logos (Word) – that which governs everything, the universal principle of Reason - is erased from the universe, literal Kaos (Chaos) ensues in which each present moment comes from the nothing of the future and is swallowed up by the nothing of the past. This chaos is such that Heraclitus said of it: "Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream". PHYSIS explores the apprehension of such an earthquake.

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VIDEO STATEMENTS

Fragments 1-9 "de Oratore"

Video "de Oratore" introduces CADE, (an experimental topographer who happens to be dumb,) who constructs video interpretations of a series of obscene letters that were sent to The Unstitute by recorded mail. Abusing the ‘speaking well’ of classical rhetoric and of Seneca, “de Oratore” bestializes the tongue and consequently, the Logos.

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Appendix (a) “Territories”

CADE spends almost all of his time studying the effect of decay on the streets of the Borough of Southwark; some say he is a topologist, but I fancy him for a cartographer of sorts. His study is not limited to the streets themselves however, for he also studies the decay of the people who walk on them. No one knows the exact purpose of his work though, because he is a catatonic and cannot share his thoughts. He can always be found in Cafe Reality on the Old Kent Road, where he collates his research.

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