I had this cabbage in my purse this morning and it went to mass with us. I’m afraid it accidentally got blessed.
What the hell am I supposed to do with it now?
Friday I returned to the Jeu de Paume to spend some time with Natacha Nisic’s video installation Andrea en Conversation. Nisic’s piece, involving 9 HD videos, focuses on Andrea, a Catholic Bavarian woman, who recounts her conversion to Korean Shamanism. Diagnosed with a cancerous uterine tumour, Andrea decides not to undergo the hyster heist the doctors urgently order. She wants to have another child. She knows deep down she must keep intact. She then auspiciously meets Madam Kim, Korea’s most celebrated shaman, and things deep and mysterious begin happening in her. Madam Kim sees Andrea’s inner shaman and explains her health problems will not subside until she listens to The Call. Eventually, despite much doubt, confusion and numerous set-backs, Andrea flies to Korea and undergoes the initiation.
Perhaps it sounds a bit wacky, but Andrea speaks so humbly about what she is going through it is hard not to be moved and embrace her experience with wonder. Though her tumour disappears and she is able to conceive another child – miraculous events, both — these seem like gifts in passing next to the radical transformation through which she embraces the shamanistic arts. As a full-fledged Korean-Bavarian shaman, she says “I see the gods like my guests and I must nourish them…when I give them my time they give me their secrets.”
Perhaps, friends, Andrea is giving me a clue as to my cabbage.
Tonight I am hosting a soirée at Martha’s Place and I wonder: Do I don the de Castelbajac cassock? Is this the time? Is this the place?
I have until five to decide.
PS. Natacha Nisic’s exhibit ECHO will be running through January 26, 2014 at the Jeu de Paume, 1 Place de la Concorde