Octo-Durga is a post big-bang underwater cephalopod dancer from the depths of one of Jupiter’s moon, from Europa’s oceans.
A photo-sonic manifestation of an indigenous ancient-Indian goddess like Maha-Durga—one of the initiators of a primary multiverse—Octo-Durga is devoted to making and undoing the self through poetry, gestures, and sounds. She hears Earth’s moon calling, whistling to her, while she hears many others.
In one of her eternal (yearnings of all voids) and oceanic (prone to all-liquid hosting) meditations (ohm!), Octo-Durga spotted artist Eduardo Navarro on the streets of India (peeping towards the pacifist oceans) and saw the mighty arc he created from Argentina to the Indian coast, and appeared in a second (here stretched into two years) in the dream, which Eduardo then woke up from, and was materialized.
In another dream, a subtle whisper asked Eduardo to take his Indian artist friends BaRiya (Riya Raagini and Pratyush Pushkar) onboard this journey of unearthing multi-dimensional oceanic sensory and para-sensory conversations.
Through BaRiya, Eduardo’s embodiment of Durga comes with her soundscapes and non-local poetics. Among doses of pithy salt for those who choose not to walk out of the oceans, Octo-Durga often sprinkles some in burrows elsewhere, those in which we find our micro-selves dreaming.
As the manifestation began, oceans gasped in anticipation as Eduardo was brought back to the home-beaches of Buenos Aires while monsoons from the Indian Ocean began reaching BaRiya.
They become suckers, naturally fit to be an extension of a radical goddess who brings with her baselines from the fumes of Europa’s ocean, stories from Titan and its percussive creatures, and a sincere attunement with coral reefs. They learn to feel empathy, elasticity, and love, with smell, touch and mindful neurons all at once. She speaks on behalf of the eternal oceanic bridges between worlds, hears, and brings humble almost edible visual-poetic-sonic gifts for her lovers.
The trio learn from a state of being which they address as the deity, and they actively meditate through the communication between oceanic entities.
Riya Raagini and Pratyush Pushkar, “Poems around and agendered Alien Cephalopod deity aka Octo-Durga,” TBA21–Academy and TBA21, 2020. Download HERE
