unsaying is as unsaying does
Documentation of a live performance by Curt Cloninger reading excerpts from Pseudo-Dionysius' The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology and speaking in tongues. Source text is as follows:
"God is therefore known in all things and as distinct from all things. He is known through knowledge and through unknowing. Of him there is conception, reason, understanding, touch, perception, opinion, imagination, name, and many other things. On the other hand he cannot be understood, words cannot contain him, and no name can lay hold of him. He is not one of the things that are and cannot be known in any of them. He is all things in all things and he is known to no one from anything... The most divine knowledge of God, that which comes through unknowing, is achieved in a union far beyond mind, when mind turns away from all things, even from itself, and when it is made one with the dazzling rays."
"As we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing."
Ukranian Institute of Modern Art
performance (language, light, video animation, software)
Chicago
September 19, 2014
in conjunction with the glitChicago exhibition curated by Paul Hertz