LYSIS
O you of little faith, why did you doubt?
S. Eusèbe de Verceil - April, 2024. The S. Eusebe de Verceil Church turns 100.
Didn’t take long after the fire for plantlife to come in. Spreading out like a pair of arms, mid-yawn. No one had the money to fix it up. Neither the city, nor the congregation. They boarded up the doors, and anything that was open. But it was never that difficult to find a way in.
Pigeons have been nesting in the vaulted ceilings by the hundreds. They call out to their own sound, endless echoes accompanied by rhythmic wings in flight. I swear, the dumb things get stuck inside and forget their way out. A feast for cats.
Pages of prayers and faded text are scattered everywhere. Snow has fallen in and melted several times already. Mold coats whatever it can, making it hard to breathe. Children have broken everything they could get their hands on, the organ, statues, doors, benches, glass. Only the tallest stained glass windows stay untouched, specks of primary colors reflect onto the floor like water.
S Eusèbe stands, regardless of its weakened foundation.
Fly-Agaric
In 1970 the NYT published an article entitled Jesus Christ as a Crimson Spotted Fungus. The short book-review briefly covered the findings of a scientific researcher named Allegro, known at the time for having decoded several biblical scrolls.
Allegro’s creative translations introduced new optics on the foundations of Christianity. Essentially he was convinced that the Christian texts we knew were closer to a metaphor, masking the practices of a semitic cult whose promiscuous rituals included, amongst other things, ingesting consistent doses of Amanita muscaria, or Fly‐Agaric, a powerful hallucinogen shaped like a white spotted red mushroom.
Allegro was further convinced of his theory by a mysterious 12th century fresco in the French chapel of Plaincourault, depicting Adam and Eve around what looks like a quasi-phallic, tall mushroom - crimson and speckled white.
Mildew/Mold
In 2015, an international team of paleontologists discovered a grass spikelet and ergot-like parasitic fungus, a form of slime mold, fossilized in 100 million years old amber from Myanmar.
Contrary to what one might expect, this is not the oldest living organism on record. “Cellulose dating back 253 million years, was found crystallized in salt from an underground nuclear waste dump in southern New Mexico.”
Mold growth continues indefinitely without light. As temperatures change, the spores go dormant. Revived at any moment by oxygen.
Although most people are exposed to mold of all types, of varying intensities,
quotidianly. One in four people have the gene susceptible to mold poisoning.
Severe mold poisoning is known to cause an array of neurological symptoms such as confusion, memory loss, impaired motor skills, depression, bouts of anger, and other behavioral changes.
I heard it said that when contaminated, your only solution is to drive to the desert for a long detox. That the only antidote to mold is bright and dry sunlight. And that once affected, some people can never return to coastal towns. The humidity feeds colonies of spores, hidden everywhere.
Lysis
noun: ly·sis ˈlī-səs, plural: lyses ˈlī-ˌsēz
1. The gradual decline of a disease process (such as fever)
2. A process of disintegration or dissolution (as of cells)
- lysis: noun combining form, plural: -lyses
1.Decomposition
2. Disintegration : breaking down
Lysis (/ˈlaɪsɪs/; Greek: Λύσις, genitive case Λύσιδος, showing the stem Λύσιδ-, from which the infrequent translation Lysides), is a dialogue of Plato which discusses the nature of philia (φιλία).
Doubt
I have been cultivating a mold patch in my kitchen for 3 years now. That’s a lie. I killed the first batch. The new one appeared not long after. I know where it is, but I don't keep tabs on it.
It never occurred to me that I might be growing some form of deity.
I did have an inkling that the spores had the potential to poison me. That if left unattended long enough, they could colonize the walls, the counter space, the floors and eventually my lungs. But that was just a brief suspicion and not an actual belief.
I have wondered if the surfaces that inadvertently touch the mold could allow it to travel faster. If the rim of a glass could introduce the spores into my mouth. But I brushed off that idea, since it seems obvious to me that gin would kill the particles before they had a chance to grow.
Nowadays it is unoriginal to speak of God as a mushroom. People have divined with poisons and hallucinogens for centuries, they have subjected themselves to all kinds
of dissociative experiences, convinced by the intensity of their visions that the spores were further manifestations of the divine.
Personally, I like to think of my small patch of mildew as a creeping manifestation of my doubt. As the embodiment of a breach of faith, not the solidifying proof of my beliefs. Beyond the shadow of doubt hide exponential spores, far from natural light, under my dish rack, near my kitchen sink.
Exhibition Text by Marie Ségolène C Brault
Off-site group show curated by Marie-Ségolène C Brault et David Cyrenne