Old Blue Throat is the performance of a visitation. It is about the ways in which inherited trauma manifests in the unconscious as supernatural entities, specifically demons. In the Dream Realm, my childhood in Suva was the colour Blue. I experienced visitations from demonic entities who brought with them psychedelic flowers and temporary paralysis. The entity is the interrogator of performative life and death; a keeper of violent and shadowy ancestral legacies.

Old Blue Throat is made up of three components -  halāhala, offerings of poison from the Ocean of Milk; a Bed of Demons from Vedic literature and a Bed of Blue After Life Flowers. Following the performance, attendees were invited to enter the Dream Realm and take a Blue Flower home to give to their demon.


Instructions

i. Enter the Dream Realm.

ii. Pick Blue Flower from Bed of Blue After Life Flowers.

iii. Leave Halāhala by the door.

iv. Give Blue Flower to Demon.



Performance Transcript


<sub>blue milk to clean my tongue
blue milk to clean my tongue

a flower is an instrument
a demon is a blue fish

my flower is a lizard
my lizard sleeps in my snake

my flower is a snake
my snake sleeps in my throat

my flower is a milk
my milk sleeps in my demon

my flower is a demon
my demon sleeps in my mouth

my tongue is blue
my tongue is blue

my throat is blue
my throat is blue

i will eat your hair
i will eat your hair

i will eat your tongue
i will eat your tongue

who stitched your dress
who stitched your dress

sometimes my sister
sometimes my daughter

the stitch is loose
the stitch is loose

halāhala
halāhala

blue milk to clean my tongue
blue milk to clean my tongue

halāhala
halāhala</sub>


these flowers were born in a dream. not a true dream. not a dream that should be repeated. you are invited to enter the dream realm. pick a flower from the bed of blue afterlife flowers. take the blue flower home. give the blue flower to your demon.




photographs by Lucie McIntosh and Alice Dickens.