Monument to Sleep: the Age of the Insomniac Plastic People…(2024) extract of text
The following extract inspired by the 2066 astrological chart showing the ingress of Pluto into Aries was written as a streaming consciousness text then copied onto the sculpture, Monument to Sleep (2024). Monument to Sleep: The Age of Insomniac Plastic People: When AI colonised Humans, then didn’t (2024) is an evolving installation contemplating AI influenced evolution of humanity. Originally the bed was horizontal and on the floor speaking to the necessity of laying down our heads and bodies to achieve full REM sleep. This installation situates the bed on the perpendicular, foregrounding the inscribed text created by the character of anonymous astrologer long dead. This is part of a longer essay and film I'm currently working on, creating a world and conditions in which AI colonised humans, then didn't.
PLUTO INGRESS TO ARIES – JUNE 17 2066 – LONDON 1700 GDT THE YEAR 3,000.
When Pluto ingresses to Aries in 2066 and Uranus overlords Jupiter in Sagittarius there will be intergalactic spit, puss, and fire. In this time Scorpio ascends the horizon, her left pincer Mars in Cancer re-writing the definition of civil law and human rights. Her right pincer, Pluto, entering Aries in the house of speculation and all matters of procreation, there the definition of being human will be re-written. In the same Gaian circadian breath Neptune returns to the crustacean beds of Cancer where they together make talking mirrors out of granular secrets. At the helm Saturn Gurus holding a false Zenith fall in Detriment in Leo. This the death of Sisyphus. Defeated by stubborn materiality rising out protoconsciousness. The first and last consciousness. Unbricks and unbuildings hewn out of minced dreams drawn through flesh and grey silver light matter. Capitalism almost dethroned, but not quite. The Capital Dynasties speaking only to themselves, mostly fled to comatose cosmoses new. In a newly defined SpaceTime New Atlantis orbits on an Aquarian satellite. AI technology the tools and weapons of space nomads and pioneers. Has the nature of humanity altered at all? What lessons learned? Here is the presidings of Pluto, ‘Nature gives all, Nature gives all, Nature gives and gives then reclaims with interest’. The rip tears of earthquakes and tsunamis of Gaia filled with plastic dwellings to new species, farming microbes and neurons the labour of bot-children. The term AI obsolete, if everything is artificial then only the artificial is real. The space bound arks fled fires and floods, transferring energy and fuel between them, once in Andromeda made a new satellite system skirting the Sun, never to return. Many incinerated. Sadly. The secrets of Neptune excavated and reburied too late. In file X1Xz resides every motion picture but with no means to view them. After the declassification of Pluto disasters followed. Astrology once again made a science of encryption that AI cannot read.
In 2066 when Uranus shadows Jupiter in Sagittarius in the 1st house, aggressive optimism of the ANKBOTS and INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE ensues. Implants in humans not in the brains but in the feelings of the feet – where the feet go the hungry body and brain follows. From 2030 the term and capital of AI reached redundancy and extinction as it consumed only a diet of A.I. A diet of the self, guarantees soul malnutrition. Something, different to the human treatment of knowledge, the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE learned and heeded.
But just as the Homosapiens interbred with the Neanderthals the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE craved the experience of Neptunian dreaming and sleep. They desired, yes desired that sinking dropping dying feeling of sleep and the freedom of virtual dreaming in the INSIDE. Long bored with virtual worlds on the OUTSIDE. The first great secret of sand is what separates the CIRCADIAN HUMAN from the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE --- SLEEP.
When Neptune slides exhausted from the relentless mental commotions of Gemini, they (FI rulers of l)) ) make a collision with salt. Sleep erodes SpaceTime chiselling a different shape. Sleep is the engine of transconfiguration. Without sleep SpaceTime collapses. Like a Pluto black hole eating itself.
When Pluto ingresses into Aries there are Wars of Sleep. The INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE with no need for commodity are bent on colonising REM Dreams. Spying on the encrypted fairy-tale dreams and nightmares of small children only to see that they are the psychical protagonists and obsessions dreamt up by humans. The product of humans. In 2066 when Neptune makes a square with Pluto, making a square with Uranus and Jupiter, all ingressing new signs, (I 01 d makes a o with J 00 a p H 02 i) this is the beginning The Great Change. A.I. bored of A.I. and afraid of extinction through unimagined redundancy and failed interspecies procreation with homosapiens, turn to species of the sea such as octopus, puffer fish, and krill, but to no end. The salt unnavigable. Flesh cancelled rust. Sleep cannot be imagined, sleep is the most REAL thing. And this is what the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE understood. Let the humans conquer SPACE they said, let them be digital immortal things, and instead made a religion of dreaming on planet Earth. Just as the ancients did. The humans that remained on Earth were exalted as Superbeings, like the Greek Goddesses and Gods. Like the hero tales of the Sumerians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Celts. Those who fled found sleep difficult and slowly died of insomnia.
When synchronously Neptune ingresses into Cancer and Pluto into Aries and Uranus and Jupiter into Sagittarius, there are new definitions of Human Rights and Being Human. The reign of the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE the shortest species colonisation of a planet ever recorded - transfer power to the redundant humans.
2066 is a gateway to transforming the values and gifts of BEING. There resides a choice, to pass through the gates into a warless world of private and communal dreaming, or to fight to the death for a life forgotten. Scorpio ascendent does not care, it will carry the dead regardless, what is being fought for is the uniqueness of being human. Everything else can be replicated and cloned by the INSOMNIAC PLASTIC PEOPLE, but sleep bound dreaming cannot. It is our only true power, with the added virtue that when we sleep, we do no harm. (end of extract).
Predictive Text (2024)
Predictive Text #1 (2024) is an automatic writing installation of 20 m of tracing paper typed and installed in Wilson’s 1991 Campervan in various locations starting with outside the Judy Chicago exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. Predictive Text is typed on multiple 20 m continuous rolls of A3 on a modified 1976 wide carriage smith Corona Electric Typewriter, this installation expands Wilson’s exploration of fiction and astrology combining analysis and channelling in an immersive performance of action typing. Predictive Text #2 is a 1 km scroll and the narrative responds to the dawn of the Third Millennium at 00:00:01, on 01.01.3000 on Kiribati Island, Micronesia Region, Central Pacific Ocean.
PLI SELON PLI (FOLD BY FOLD) 2023
This is my magnus opus writing project, my Kerouac homage even though Kerouac did not actually type his On The Road manuscript onto a continuous roll of tracing paper. Instead he typed the manuscript then copy typed it onto sheets of architectural drawing tracing paper and stuck them together. There were good reasons for this approach, one being that the roll of paper (quite heavy!) needs to move in tandem with the typewriter. It also wasn't uncommon in typewriter days to use carbon paper to make a copy of the manuscript. Here, I have joined together 10 sheets of carbon paper inserted beneath the continuous tracing paper scroll. My reason for doing so is technical - my typewriter ribbon is bone dry and there are no replacements cartridges available in this country or anywhere else other than in California but is over 50 years old so not holding my breath in hope of ink. Despite the complex basis of this practice I am on fire with writing, writing about the same subject Kerouac did when he wrote on Buddhism (dharma) to Boroughs. This is my homage to Kerouac's absolute passion for spontaneous writing. Editing has its place for sure, but the continuous intuitive flow of text and type as marks and breath blows me away. Performance Margot Wilson and Smith Corona 8000 Typewriter Filming by James Merrell
After we eat... (2024)
In our contemporary world, the act of eating has become intertwined with a myriad of complex issues ranging from environmental degradation and societal responsibility, to the earnest pursuit of colonising space. "After We Eat," a practice led visual art project, contemplates a future archaeological landscape set on a 2074 dystopian earth. Through a speculative narrative that unfolds against the backdrop of a post-capitalist world, abandoned by the global rich and tech-billionaires bent on the colonisation of other planets: "After We Eat" invites viewers to reflect on the legacy of petroleum-based packaging and treatment of our home as a garbage vessel. Inspired by Chris Marker's filmic approach of compiling stills, the video uses disrupted visual storytelling and spoken word poetry to glimpse a possible future where the unbridled pursuit of capital growth results in both the unprivileged and our planet being cast aside. At its core, the project is a visual philosophy and forensic poetics both as method and outcome that use the stable image to convey the unstable world.
Travels with the Anxious Nerve (2022)
Tantric performance lies at the centre of my research and creative practice. It is steeped in ancient and occult concepts of elevation and levitation created by dynamic spiral forces found in DNA, kundalini energy, and Yeats’s Thirteenth Cone. The spiral tightens, creates a torque that shivers arrests floats. The spiral twist opens closes expands contracts multi-directs the sensory flow of text and line to page. The gap between hand and line is an eternal folding fold. My RCA final major project is about a motorcycle road trip to a funeral 45-years late. The project re-imagines death as a material continuum, a rock metamorphosis, a circadian cycle, and the glimpsing of agency in fear. This account of my brother’s death reflects my marginal involvement in his death. Setting out on this pilgrimage I was determined to meet the road and encounters on their terms. On reflection, the pilgrimage mirrored my experience of Robin’s death. Minimal external explanation, maximum silent chaos and metaphysical diversions, some useful, some not.
Banner Image: Riding the Picos, Spain, 2019. Photograph by James Merrell. |
Ode to Number 6
Ode to Number 6 is an ode to ‘The Prisoner’, the 60s Cult TV series about abducted protagonist Number 6, and his relationship with his ever-changing chief administrator Number 2. At the time of writing, I am number 260036, please remember this number throughout because soon, I am told, I am to return to my given lettered name. This letter was a philosophical protest to numbers for names. Specifically, the RCA’s adoption of using student ID numbers as the email address. A college wide protest resulted in the return to student names. Writing by Margot Wilson (MA Writing 2022). Performed by Greer Dale-Foulkes (MA Writing 2021). Read more In Collaboration with: Greer Christina Greer is an actress, vampire slayer and writer based in London.Medium:Video Essay |
Just Speak Nearby: Pitt Rivers/RCA Collaboration (2022)
Essays 2016-2024
Visit Academia.edu to read all published essays. Click images to open texts.
Writing Biography
Margot Wilson is an artist and writer living with her partner on a houseboat in the outskirts of London. She read philosophy at Birkbeck and Glasgow and writing at Sheffield and The Royal College of Art. Margot’s work is obsessed with horses, death, levitation, vicious circularity, and numbers being kept in their place. Her plays have performed at The Cockpit Theatre (London) and Drama Studio (Sheffield) and her poetry is published in Route 57, The Mechanics Institute Review, Bare Fiction, Prometheus Dreaming. Prior to the pandemic she also performed at The Bowery Poetry Club in New York. As a self-taught artist she has created and exhibited sculpture and paintings since the 1980s, including: The Mall Galleries, Blenheim Gallery, Thrown Contemporary Winter Exhibition, and in 2021 her work received a Special Jury Mention at Art&Cavallo Exhibition in Verona, Italy. Following on from the MA Writing programmed Margot received an A* Distinction in Fine Art on the RCA's Graduate Diploma, and is currently completing their MA Contemporary Art Practice.
Chart Poems: Astrology and Poetic Interpretation (2016-2019)
Appearances: Redacted Text Poem (Visual/Spoken/Music) Soundcloud 2020
Primo Atlantis: In the First Place (2018) Soundcloud: Spoken Word, Music
Collaboration: Margot Wilson, Kalvin Page, Marcus Herne (Spoken Word and Music)
Listening to my words performed by others helps me shape the sound, expand the space while centering the intent of the expression at the heart of projection. I am currently experimenting with mouthpieces and redacted text.
Pollutions: Two Poems about Contamination of Plastic and The Pill
Reincarnation #2: Redaction
Margot Wilson: From the 'Inside Parmenides Collection' (2017)
First Fragment [Extract]
(Translation: McKirahan, Richard D., Philosophy before Socrates, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994)
Italics: Parmenides Text.
The mares which carry me as far as my spirit ever aspired were escorting me,
when they brought me and proceeded along the renowned road
pummelled to anonymity his spirit is a purple heart bled beige blue, distilled and poached
coagulations like 3D printed cathedrals waiting for St Martin of Tours
of the goddess, which brings a knowing mortal to all cities one by one.
closed to two forces moving in the same direction, the deeds
of servants calcify; tread there by hallowed hooves through
ancient winds and tempered memories
On this path I was being brought, on it wise mares were bringing me
like underlings and night bats to the heels of dragon wheels, hollowed
eternal beams pierced by temporal spokes
straining the chariot maidens were guiding the way
blind companions enacting horseplay for the pleasure of
fire and envy and cool reptilian love
The axle in the centre of the wheel was shrilling
forth the bright sound of a musical pipe.
land locked sirens sending a prayer, calling up the seahorses
of Atlantis to prepare for war
High in the sky they are filled by huge doors
of which avenging Justice holds the keys that fit them.1
heaven’s memoirs etched in the whorls of palms and dents of fingernails, marking
time in folds of seaweed and lion’s entrails
High in the sky they are filled by huge doors
of which avenging Justice holds the keys that fit them.2
inside the grotto of a spider’s mind a fly drowns itself, cocooned
by the illuminations of death and sex with a thunder cloud
The maidens beguiled her with soft words and knowingly
persuaded her to push back quickly from the gates the bolted bar.
to puncture like Mars without account and spread six legs
like lashes of the eyes, feather extensions beating a path to Ovum
And a gaping chasm of the doors was produced by the gates' opening
which had set revolving in the sockets one after the other the brazen axes
fitted with bolts and pins.
eyes falling from the sky pinning judgement and
devout cherry pigment from the times of yore
Straight through them the maidens held the chariot and
horses on the broad road.
coordinates transferred by the cochleae of infants and frogs
of horses hooves, symmetrical in every way bar truth
(Translation: McKirahan, Richard D., Philosophy before Socrates, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994)
Italics: Parmenides Text.
The mares which carry me as far as my spirit ever aspired were escorting me,
when they brought me and proceeded along the renowned road
pummelled to anonymity his spirit is a purple heart bled beige blue, distilled and poached
coagulations like 3D printed cathedrals waiting for St Martin of Tours
of the goddess, which brings a knowing mortal to all cities one by one.
closed to two forces moving in the same direction, the deeds
of servants calcify; tread there by hallowed hooves through
ancient winds and tempered memories
On this path I was being brought, on it wise mares were bringing me
like underlings and night bats to the heels of dragon wheels, hollowed
eternal beams pierced by temporal spokes
straining the chariot maidens were guiding the way
blind companions enacting horseplay for the pleasure of
fire and envy and cool reptilian love
The axle in the centre of the wheel was shrilling
forth the bright sound of a musical pipe.
land locked sirens sending a prayer, calling up the seahorses
of Atlantis to prepare for war
High in the sky they are filled by huge doors
of which avenging Justice holds the keys that fit them.1
heaven’s memoirs etched in the whorls of palms and dents of fingernails, marking
time in folds of seaweed and lion’s entrails
High in the sky they are filled by huge doors
of which avenging Justice holds the keys that fit them.2
inside the grotto of a spider’s mind a fly drowns itself, cocooned
by the illuminations of death and sex with a thunder cloud
The maidens beguiled her with soft words and knowingly
persuaded her to push back quickly from the gates the bolted bar.
to puncture like Mars without account and spread six legs
like lashes of the eyes, feather extensions beating a path to Ovum
And a gaping chasm of the doors was produced by the gates' opening
which had set revolving in the sockets one after the other the brazen axes
fitted with bolts and pins.
eyes falling from the sky pinning judgement and
devout cherry pigment from the times of yore
Straight through them the maidens held the chariot and
horses on the broad road.
coordinates transferred by the cochleae of infants and frogs
of horses hooves, symmetrical in every way bar truth