i walk in beauty

rehearsing a song for the ritual

video by Alex Kamino

dwyc.pan.series1-wellington switch tower.

DoWhatYouCan.

Pass Away Now. Series 1.

-The Wellington Switch Tower, Saturday May 28th, 2011.

This was the first, trial run, of the ‘pass away now’ initiative.

The site.

The Wellington switch tower is a three story high edifice that sits aside the Peel Basin in Montreal. It’s main purpose was to control the signaling of trains and the Wellington train bridge. It has been abandoned for an unknown amount of time and with our last visit it looks as though it will be demolished soon.

The visit.

We arrived and to our surprise the door has been busted open. Inside we found a photographer taking model shots of a sweet looking blonde woman. They agreed to not disturb our ceremony on the top floor after they had a go at the space for headshots. They took a long time.

When they left we started immediately. We pieced together a shrine for the space as we sang a song about beauty. Some people cleaned while others built. White sage was burned. Max began the ceremony by introducing us to the space, he asked for it’s solem passing. We had a moment of silence. Max ranted a speech to honour the space and to help it pass smoothly into the wild. While he did this we all died very slowly. Max came around and anointed our bodies with flours and sugar. We were revieved and stood together around the shrine. We passed a flask of whiskey in silence and lit a fire work to celebrate the passing. We left the shire erect.

dowhatyoucan.

The Proposal for "pass away now"

Do what you can/Pass away now.

Poetic[as] :

This place was left for the good of infrastructure, a crumbling economy or modernity’s heartless push forward. Rust of iron, crumbled paint and !!rotting wood – decaying flesh of a forgotten space once loved, once touched often. !!1!!

How can these spaces pass without rite - Without wake? They were just as alive as we now.

We must lay them to sleep.

They must know their death; they must understand the necessity of their inactivity as fuel for our progression. For change, destructive innovation. !!

Keep still space; pass now knowing you served with great heart those that abided in you.

Your beauty is felt in your decay,!! the glory you once held has not gone, IT will never go, it will always remember the actions and breath that stood in your volume.

Lord bless this space. Let it pass to your merciful hands without fear, without anger. Enrich it’s absence with understanding of it’s worth through emptiness. This inflated stillness that now enwraps our bodies.

Pass now, space. Know your immortality is rich with decay.

Prose[aic] :

These will be funerals for abandoned spaces. These spaces are marks left by modernity, left by progress. Some spaces wait to be reformed; others remain as buffers, safety zones abandoned as to surround chaos with stillness.

We will serve these spaces their rites and wakes. Ritualize their decay with candles, song, speech, gesture and drink. We will attempt a proper funeral for the space that provides with nothing, a necessary nothing, a beautiful nothing.

The plan:

We go to the space. We enter it. We dress it for ritual. We pay our respects; the preacher serves it its rites. We take time to feel the space pass. We drink. We wake the space. We clean. We leave…. One trace.

The list:

One white suit – the preacher. (Hopefully Max Kelly or Nader Hasan… or anyone).

10 black suits – the party. (Anyone interested).

Two bottles of Jameson.

Two cases of beer.

A camera man – the documentarien (Hopefully Alexander Kamino).

Anyone down?