Threads of Touch
Hawkes Bay Arts Festival
Oct 10-26, 2020
Detail of 'We', mixed media on recycled STOP signs, 2030 x 1710 mm
Touch, 2019, mixed media on upcycled traffic signs, 1800mmx 1200mm
In Orbit, Detail, mixed media on recycled arrow signs , 2400mm x2400 mm
'Travelling'
Karlo Mila
For 'Threads of Touch' by Delicia,
With reference to Rumi and his poem 'The Wagon'
Here we are,
experiencing connectivity
at the highest speeds.
Isolated in ways
we’ve never been before.
The technology of touch
without touching.
We are still
hard-wired
for connection.
My finger
forever,
on the pulsating.
I see you
through the screen.
I feel it all.
Our thoughts have always travelled
beyond our minds.
Pulsing on face - that slant-eyed cursive script.
Shaped in the language of body – kinetic, energetic.
Carried in the tele-phone of tone -
mouthed, audio, radio, aural.
Transmitted and received.
Our feelings have always travelled across time and space -
landing in the bedrooms of beloveds,
where they wait open-hearted
to receive us.
Electro-magnetic: The murmuring
of mental morse code; the tap-tapping
of heart-beat,
and oh the lag, the latency,
then the throughput!
Broadening bandwidth -
everything we can and can’t know.
We have always travelled through nervous systems
into shared spaces.
Vā – the inter – of everything.
For we are waves of energy, wayfinding,
in the moving ocean of each other.
Currents, emotion, light, frequency,
emitting in every interaction,
charging each other -
even before technology expanded us.
So much we don’t understand:
synchronies of whale and kauri
remembered somewhere
in our underwater bones,
recalling memories of exchanged skin.
The great forgetting.
And yet here we are, accelerating,
even though we don’t know
where we are going.
Somewhere,
in the algorithm of the ancient
let us hope to find that place -
beyond all binaries,
a spatial field,
entirely energetic,
I will meet you there.
Where virtual
merges with reality.
When our souls lie down in that grass,
this oversubscribed dimension
becomes too full
to even type about.
All the language, all the logic,
the predictive text -
even the idea of ‘each other’
becomes obsolete.
Yes, the dancing particles in the air
transmit and receive these secrets.
Don’t go back to sleep.
Awaken to the signalling.
Ask intentionally.
Attune.
For here is where
the worlds touch.
We orbit
ceaselessly around
this unseen altar.
The portal is a circle.
Ever-open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
For it is here,
we touch
and dissolve
beyond separation.
Karlo Mila
For 'Threads of Touch' by Delicia,
With reference to Rumi and his poem 'The Wagon'
Here we are,
experiencing connectivity
at the highest speeds.
Isolated in ways
we’ve never been before.
The technology of touch
without touching.
We are still
hard-wired
for connection.
My finger
forever,
on the pulsating.
I see you
through the screen.
I feel it all.
Our thoughts have always travelled
beyond our minds.
Pulsing on face - that slant-eyed cursive script.
Shaped in the language of body – kinetic, energetic.
Carried in the tele-phone of tone -
mouthed, audio, radio, aural.
Transmitted and received.
Our feelings have always travelled across time and space -
landing in the bedrooms of beloveds,
where they wait open-hearted
to receive us.
Electro-magnetic: The murmuring
of mental morse code; the tap-tapping
of heart-beat,
and oh the lag, the latency,
then the throughput!
Broadening bandwidth -
everything we can and can’t know.
We have always travelled through nervous systems
into shared spaces.
Vā – the inter – of everything.
For we are waves of energy, wayfinding,
in the moving ocean of each other.
Currents, emotion, light, frequency,
emitting in every interaction,
charging each other -
even before technology expanded us.
So much we don’t understand:
synchronies of whale and kauri
remembered somewhere
in our underwater bones,
recalling memories of exchanged skin.
The great forgetting.
And yet here we are, accelerating,
even though we don’t know
where we are going.
Somewhere,
in the algorithm of the ancient
let us hope to find that place -
beyond all binaries,
a spatial field,
entirely energetic,
I will meet you there.
Where virtual
merges with reality.
When our souls lie down in that grass,
this oversubscribed dimension
becomes too full
to even type about.
All the language, all the logic,
the predictive text -
even the idea of ‘each other’
becomes obsolete.
Yes, the dancing particles in the air
transmit and receive these secrets.
Don’t go back to sleep.
Awaken to the signalling.
Ask intentionally.
Attune.
For here is where
the worlds touch.
We orbit
ceaselessly around
this unseen altar.
The portal is a circle.
Ever-open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
For it is here,
we touch
and dissolve
beyond separation.