WHAT IF WE BECAME RADICALLY HELL-BOUND?

𝒲𝐻𝒜𝒯 𝐼𝐹 𝒲𝐸 𝐵𝐸𝒞𝒜𝑀𝐸 𝑅𝒜𝒟𝐼𝒞𝒜𝐿𝐿𝒴 𝐻𝐸𝐿𝐿-𝐵𝒪𝒰𝒩𝒟?

This is a dangerous audio journey devised for somatic undergrounding. It is a fast descent into dark, wet soil, a temporal death, and maybe a landing. It is an ear-on-the-ground listening experience that may render skygazing counter-revolutionary. Go on, look up now, you know you want to. What do you see up there? What beliefs bind your being to the above? What promises do you hear when gazing upwards?

We humans have always been looking up, to the heavens, and understood what we found below us as hell. We humans have fantasized, investigated and indoctrinated to uphold beliefs in heavenly sanctuaries. Tell me, do you put your trust in paradisiac afterlife or post-earth colonies? We humans have tested, planned and prayed to escape our planetary personhood and all earthly interdependencies. Why do we prioritize becoming a multiplanet species over preserving Earth as a multispecies planet? I wonder – if we stopped clinging to the (after)life-line that reinforces binary relations like Heaven and Hell, or outer space and Earth, would we stop fleeing our present ground?

Could you quit micro-dosing on the heavens?
Could you quit micro-dosing on the heavens?
Could you quit micro-dosing on the heavens?

Heavenly refuges are for the few and only for the human. Heavenly refuges are gated communities – housing estates with strictly controlled entrances that ensure exclusivity for like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders. But what about the outside itself. Outer space. With its threats of radiation, its extreme temperatures and its oxygenic refusal, the universe beyond earth’s atmosphere is as hostile to outsiders as any walled housing system. Outer space is hazardous and hellish. Outer space is cosmic hell if predicated on earth-abandonment. Does Hell follow the human?

This listening piece is not a critique of the meadows of religion, astronomy or astrology – it is simply an experiment on sinking. On sinking through the heavenly inclined fields of knowledge and into deep earth – into the pit of Hell re-imagined. Here we shall listen to underground communities consisting of millions of species and billions of individual organisms. These communities will support us in seeing Hell as a self-organized underground care facility run by the goddess of the same name; Hel. Hel is the carer of sick women and their allies. Hel is the activist mother of raving, resting and raging. Hell is the hostess of a dark wet world abundant with nourishment.

Here is what I think:
If sky-life is for the few and for the human, Hell is a symbiotic way of living and dying together that considers all living organisms. If the sky is a hostile gated community, then Hell is an unguarded portal into hospitality. If we stopped micro-dosing on the heavens, could we actually heal?

Could you quit micro-dosing on the heavens?
Could you quit micro-dosing on the heavens?
Could you quit micro-dosing on the heavens?
Could you quit micro-dosing on the heavens?
Could you quit micro-dosing on the heavens?

This listening piece is an invitation to gather in Hell and get organized.

Are you willing to become radically hell-bound?

This work is supported by NEUSTART KULTUR #TakeCare/Fonds Darstellende Künste.

The piece was developed as part of the project On Solidarity