Witchcraft and Memory exesrcises
Presentation
My name is Gabriel José Zúñiga Ávila, and together with Sara Sanchez Martín, Ioanna Paramanidou, Lucia Gomez Sanchez, Constantijn Maathuis, Louis Manuel Maxime Montes, and Diego Escobar Xavier, I want to speak about the state of perfection of the body and the soul.
I have reached the most perfect form — this is my final form. I will have no more reincarnations, because I have arrived to the state of absolute perfection. I have taken out every curvature, every fold, arrhythmia, and asymmetry. I have rid myself of the unnecessary body, with its fragile and inefficient systems and organs. I have set aside language, because abstraction is not needed in my state of perfection, and because of that I communicate through light and color. I have become completely independent and enjoy total freedom.
I have reached beauty, harmony, unity.
My perfection is based on having lost all memory, all recollection. I have no reference to the places
I’ve been or the voices I’ve heard. Nothing has built me. I have no lineage, I belong to no context, no group, no belief system. I am part of nothing — and so I do not suffer, I do not feel. The body is not needed anymore and identity disappears.
Without identity, beauty and harmony have arrived. Without memory: passions, beliefs, the cosmos, the abyss — all vanish. Even the body disappears. And what builds the body, then, is no longer needed. Everything becomes excessive.
The only thing that sustains my form in this state of perfection is love. Love, witchcraft, and theft — because I have nothing. Nothing belongs to me.
Without memories, without identity, and without a body, I have taken the people I love, enchanted them, and stolen their memories in order to construct the body I do not have.
I gathered them and trapped them to listen to meaningless words. I poisoned them with incoherent ideas, forced them to use machinery to produce, under the spell of love, my future memories. I cast enchantments so they would move their bodies according to my will, destroying their fragile organs
and systems.
When I could hold their memories in my hands, I stole them — I stole the memories of all my beloveds without a trace of guilt. And then, memoryless, I forced them to build my body — the body I do not have due to my perfection, but which I need them to construct because I have compelled them to love me.
Here lies the result of theft, the illegal use of witchcraft, the construction of the body, the need for language, and the promise of perfection and beauty that collapses with the body and with identity.
Final Text
The Robbery.
I’m in Mexico, my way to school spanned 12 kilometers through orchards, fields, and villages.
I remember myself walking.
What’s the walking action? Sharing touch with the floor. Go forward. Return. Acceleration and
slowdown. Kissing the floor with the skin. Escape from a dog and run. The transition to a faster
speed. The transition to the act of running. As any child from my village, I biked to school.
I recall that I was always late. Or rather, I left later than the other children from my village. I never
arrived late.
I enjoyed the feeling of my legs driving forward against the resistance of the road and the wind.
Today, I still bike fast because it feels pointless if I don’t.
I see a yellow staircase, with this white-washed tile. Cold but not harsh. Going to the first floor,
entering the apartment of my nanny and her family. Cecile, a fat, very nice-looking woman who
gave the warmest hugs. The house seemed so big back then, even though it was just a small space
for a family of four plus us children she looked after. The floor was always fresh, not super clean,
and the sole of my feet would turn grey when I went back home.
I remember I liked doing cartwheels, coming home with dirty hands. After school, my grandmother
was always waiting for me, talking with other grandmothers. We hugged and walked. First we
turned right, then straight ahead, then right again for about 10 minutes.
When I finished dance classes in Mexico, I used to walk around 20 minutes to reach the metro
station Taxqueña, end—or beginning, depending on how you see it—of the blue metro line in
Mexico City. While walking, I listened to “El Cairo” by Karol G and songs from “Los Panchos,”
thinking of my grandfather, reconstructing his life through memories. Walking was a way to
recollect memories.
In my mind, I stand on a bed, performing for a big mirror. When it rained, drops would fall onto the
bed and we placed a pan between us to stay dry.
Our parrot, in her small cage, talked to her mirror too, sometimes aggressively, sometimes tenderly.
Mirrors make spaces bigger. They are essential in small homes.
Sometimes, on the emptied road, I would meet a friend who also left late.
We would bike together in silence, her cheeks fiery red from intense pedaling, hating every minute
of it. The smell at Cecile’s house was not great, but it was the smell of life. Furniture packed every
room, yet there was enough space to run around and play catch. I got my addiction to video games
there because we could spend hours playing. Cecile herself was a gamer too, funny enough. I wish I
could find that kind of excitement again—the kind that keeps you awake because you can’t wait for
tomorrow.
I can’t tell exactly how many somersaults I actually did, because I remember through my
grandmother’s words. As she lost her mind, she added more cartwheels with each telling. The more
she forgot, the more I spun in her memory. In the rented apartment next to my best friend’s, I threw
toys onto her balcony, imagining that someday I would find the courage to jump across.
One day, I decided not to attend my morning classes.
Instead, I walked to Coyoacán. It was packed with people: drawing, selling bracelets and necklaces,
sitting in the square. Usually, I went with others, but that day, I chose to go completely alone.
Not because nobody wanted to come, but because my friends were busy chatting about which
teachers they would get next year—and I wouldn’t be there. I sat down and watched everything for
a long time, redefining my idea of loneliness. Being alone allowed me to recognize myself.
It was a privilege, to enjoy my own company and lose myself in my thoughts.
When I arrived at Taxqueña, I always played the same cumbia: “La Cumbia Buena.” Even if the
music stayed the same, everything else changed—graffiti on the walls, smells from the street, the
feeling of the air.One graffiti: “My life doesn’t cost $5.”How much does a life cost? Why are some
lives more expensive than others? How much does mine cost?
See that white boat? Don’t swim beyond the boat.
But I wanted to. And so I did.
Beyond the boat, I swam deeper, farther, fearless.
From the shore, my mother’s figure waved desperately, though her voice didn’t reach me.
After the boat, fear returned and I swam back quickly.
Now, even away from the sea, my body knows where the boat would have been.
Sometimes, I wonder why I delayed myself so often. Why I created conditions where I could be late
but not arrive late. Somehow, I craved the violent resistance that delaying myself created. When I
bike fast today, it’s like making up for the old resentment of being late.
Walking, biking, dreaming: they all become acts of collecting memories, questions, and fears.
Going home is gathering all of it:
• The dizziness of endless cartwheels.
• The sticky floors and the sound of running feet at Cecile’s house.
• The fierce solitude found at Coyoacán.
• The graffiti asking about the price of a life.
• The mirror talks with parrots and reflections.
• The endless bike rides battling invisible winds.
Walking is stealing lives from memory, stitching them into my skin.
Maybe they were always mine.