Activities and Text for Shamanic Death of Capitalism - Seven Acts

Introduction – Shamanic Death of Capitalism – A death rite for society to get rid of capitalism so society can transform into a magical healer.

SD: The bat in the medicine cards represents shamanic death. The trial
before a person can become a shaman.  All your emotional psychological
and physical wounds or weaknesses are pressed upon before you sleep in
the grave you dug for yourself for a night. In the morning you become
a shaman.
It occurred to me that capitalism uses people's emotional
psychological and physical wounds in advertising, in order to
manipulate people for a profit.  Instead of pressing upon them,
capitalism manipulates them, so that they don't become conscious in
the audience.  I thought it would be interesting to intensify the
advertising such that instead of an unconscious message that
manipulates, it becomes a conscious message that causes pain yet
brings clarity and freedom. Right before the show we found a dead bat.

Act One – House of the Rising Sun
NM: This song is about saying goodbye to the family, we are getting ready for a spiritual journey. Our mother and father do not matter anymore, the house of the rising sun is between worlds – life and new life – from New Orleans – the death voodoo capital of USA. Then from LA, home for runaways and satellite of capitalism comes Joan Jett Karaoke "I Love Rock & Roll."

Act Two – My Favourite Things
NM: This song we sing a capella. It opens our throat chakra. The song “My Favourite Things” starts .. you are invited To scream about your favourite things. While Nicola and Simbi lead you by screaming desires from primal, (ie. sex) territorial, facist, despotic and capitalist desires (ie. fur coats). Audience will be led to scream out their favourite things.

Act Three – Runway:
SD:When I was trying to raise money to get to Indonesia, I offered to do
several things for donation, including walk on people with high heels
and symbolically destroy capitalism.  That option was surprisingly
popular.  This became the seed of the idea to create a mock fashion
show where we walk on the audience -- and each other -- with
stilettos, reveling in the sadomasochistic underpinnings of fashion
desire.
NM: Fashion has potential for revolution, it creates so many personalities and is weirdly accepting of every genre, but is always Over The Top. It is one of capitalism’s desire industries. But maybe it can evolve away from capitalism. Have you suffered extreme pain for fashion, think about your desires.  Watch Simbi and Nicola walk the runway and each other in their stillettos while the one lying down sings the song. Then you can participate and allow sexy chicksi to walk on you with sexy shoes, while they sing, watch them stumble, feel the pain and know that you are doing it for love for ending capitalism. Capitalism and fashion die for a new fashion. Songs remixed and sung by Nicola and Simbi – “Tainted Love”, “Sweet Dreams.”

Act Four – Branding – Sticky Tape
NM: Our desires are linked to our visual representation. From early times we branded our skin, primal branding tattoos of animals to despotic tattoos, then came the notion of representing yourself in the world as “good” or “bad” but now we are in an era of capitalism branding – a total explosion of many different brands that don’t mean a thing. no longer on skin but in your mind, in the media, representing total artificial – no more good and bad, so again we take it further. We will cover ourselves with transparent sticky tape, coloured sticky tape, take photos of each other, create fake brands on white stickers, rebrand the walls and each other, while Nicola and Simbi re-enact and remix a Sony TV Commercial, by singing Knife “Heartbeats” and throwing multi colored balls in the air. The crowd will make themselves like mummies, so the capitalist media cannot enter our brains, eyes, nose, chakras.

Act Five – Swings
NM: Get ready to fight with your psychic powers. To duel, to fight each other blind. If you want to get on swing, you can put kenong over your head and we give you a stick – then you can stand on the swings we built here, and try to hit other people’s kenong heads with stick to make sound. People standing can use helmet and blindfold and chains, everyone else need to run away. Simbi will play Debussy “Exotiques” and “Canopes” to represent this trance like sound – which originates here in jawa – the gamelan – to give everyone psychic power.

Act Six – Stacks On Slayer
NM: “Stacks On” is an Australian term, it is related to sport and punk music. It is when one person falls on the floor and then everyone jumps on top of them, creating a suffocating rubbish pile. Capitalism creates so much Rubbish. Listen to these two songs, which do you like better? They are songs by Slayer. The first is called Angel of Death, the second one is called Raining Blood. Which do you like better? The audience creates rubbish piles to vote for each song to symbolise the excessive rubbish that captialism creates.

Act Seven – Death Metal Yoga
SD: As to the yoga to death metal, I often thought music used for yoga is
a bit cliche.  Seemed like a lot of times life is more like death
metal than a contemporary remix of Indian chant, I thought its
interesting to explore the feelings associated with noise and metal.
I've often found listening to noise and metal to be a blissful
experience, so why not make yoga more blissful in a new, modern way.
Metal has also symbolized the revolt from tradition and the
exploration of dark emotions and shadow material in a variety of
cultures all over the world. In the yoga community coming to peace
with the shadow and dark emotions is rarely explored,  and I think
that is a significant weakness in the movement.  Traditional
structures are inevitably crumbling and its good to find peace within
their destruction.  I read passages from the Tibetan Book of the Dead
in which prayers are said to guide you safely through the underworld
so that you can be reborn as bodhisattva.  This is to symbolize
guidance through the death of capitalism and of the 4th Sun into the
5th Sun (Mayan) safely and in fact blissfully.


Encore – Nina Simone “I’ve Got Life” – Simbi sing and piano,