Flying Cream
Flying_cream.jpg | Credits: aniara rodado
Flying_Cream_intallation.JPG | Credits: Stéphane Degoutin
detalle_instalacion_flying_cream.jpg | Credits: Stéphane Degoutin
Extracteur_d_alcalohides_Ins_FC.jpg
Flying_Cream_inst.jpg | Credits: aniara rodado
againstWitchWashing_cabine.jpg | Credits: Arielle Estrada
FlyinCreamTest_21_21.jpg | Credits: Viviane Ravier
Flying ointement.jpg | Credits: aniara rodado-Camille Olympie
FC_stage_performance.jpg | Credits: Jonathan Dahan
FC_stage_performance_2.jpg | Credits: Jonathan Dahan
FC_stage_performance_3.jpg | Credits: Sig Valax
Vulvas and psychoactive plants are privileged spaces for the manufacture of ignorance.
The starting point was the ancestral knowledge of physiology, botanical, chemical, and ecological implicit in descriptions of the administration method of the Flying Ointment in European witchcraft. For centuries, a veil of censorship has shrouded knowledge about hallucinogenic plants and vulvas, attempting to erase them from kitchens, bedrooms, public squares, and discourse.
The Flying Cream I have developed refers to the ointment attributed to premodern European witches, but it does not seek to reconstruct it. It is about questioning an epistemicide—the process in which dominant groups impose their own epistemological frameworks on marginalized groups—and a spiritual genocide, entering the body, and stimulating memory.
Flying Cream was created during an arts-science residency at Génialis, a company based in Henrichemont. This company develops techniques to create cosmetics and pharmaceutical products through physical processes that are less polluting and energy-intensive, eliminating the need for surfactants and synthetic chemicals. This approach preserves the organoleptic properties of plants while enhancing their bioavailability.
The cream we have formulated addresses vaginal dryness caused by menopause, chemotherapy, certain medications, or testosterone-based hormone treatments. It is also intended for the neo-vaginas of trans women and for anuses longing for caresses—a cream designed to break the silence that pathologizes our pleasure. Life is an exuberant, trans-species entanglement which manifests all types of intelligence. Europe has forgotten its witches’ ointment.
This project includes multiple forms: the Flying Cream installation and Manifesto Against Witch Washing; a collective performance with 21 people over 21 days; the video-choreographic installation Against Witch Washing; a Web visual essay “Flying Ointment: Material Memory of an Epistemicide?” and the interactive stage performance Flying Cream.
Vulvas and psychoactive plants are privileged spaces for the manufacture of ignorance.
The starting point was the ancestral knowledge of physiology, botanical, chemical, and ecological implicit in descriptions of the administration method of the Flying Ointment in European witchcraft. For centuries, a veil of censorship has shrouded knowledge about hallucinogenic plants and vulvas, attempting to erase them from kitchens, bedrooms, public squares, and discourse.
The Flying Cream I have developed refers to the ointment attributed to premodern European witches, but it does not seek to reconstruct it. It is about questioning an epistemicide—the process in which dominant groups impose their own epistemological frameworks on marginalized groups—and a spiritual genocide, entering the body, and stimulating memory.
Flying Cream was created during an arts-science residency at Génialis, a company based in Henrichemont. This company develops techniques to create cosmetics and pharmaceutical products through physical processes that are less polluting and energy-intensive, eliminating the need for surfactants and synthetic chemicals. This approach preserves the organoleptic properties of plants while enhancing their bioavailability.
The cream we have formulated addresses vaginal dryness caused by menopause, chemotherapy, certain medications, or testosterone-based hormone treatments. It is also intended for the neo-vaginas of trans women and for anuses longing for caresses—a cream designed to break the silence that pathologizes our pleasure. Life is an exuberant, trans-species entanglement which manifests all types of intelligence. Europe has forgotten its witches’ ointment.
This project includes multiple forms: the Flying Cream installation and Manifesto Against Witch Washing; a collective performance with 21 people over 21 days; the video-choreographic installation Against Witch Washing; a Web visual essay “Flying Ointment: Material Memory of an Epistemicide?” and the interactive stage performance Flying Cream.
21 people, 21 days (Collective Performance)
Project: aniara rodado
Fanzine created with the journal of A., a trans woman with vaginoplasty
Graphic design: Max Kaballeon
Against Witch Washing (Video-choreographic installation)
Project, video, manifesto and performance: aniara rodado
Programming and musical composition: Marco Antonio Suárez Cifuentes
Lighting: Jean Marc Chomaz
General assistance: Viviane Ravier
Construction: Marcel Taplan
Flying Ointment: Material Memory of an Epistemicide? (Visual essay, Web format)
Author: aniara rodado
Drawing: aniara rodado, Camille Olympie
Media design: Camille Olympie
Flying Cream (Interactive stage performance)
Choreography, texts, scenography & performance: aniara rodado
Music: Sigolène Valax
Live animation: Camille Olympie
Video: aniara rodado, Camille Olympie
Costumes: aniara rodado, Camille Olympie, Joaquim Netto Almeida
Fluid screens: Jean Marc Chomaz, aniara rodado
General assistance: Joaquim Netto Almeida
With support from: Ursulab; Houloucene & Antre-Peaux, Bourges; Ministry of Culture DRAC France: Genialis Biotech; the Arts and Sciences Chair of the École Polytechnique and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs-PSL; The Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation; IDEM collectif & festival Transform, Marseille.
aniara rodado (CO) is a choreographer, artist, and researcher who explores witchcraft and interspecific relations through plants, from a transhackfeminist and counter-colonial lens. She creates performances, installations, texts, drawings, videos, dance pieces, etc. using open-source tools, low-tech and Do-It-With-Others practices (DIWO). Her work questions ecological crisis, techno-scientific fetishism, and hegemonic powers. She holds a PhD from École Polytechnique and teaches at ESAAA—école supérieure d'art annecy alpes.
aniara rodado (CO) is a choreographer, artist, and researcher who explores witchcraft and interspecific relations through plants, from a transhackfeminist and counter-colonial lens. She creates performances, installations, texts, drawings, videos, dance pieces, etc. using open-source tools, low-tech and Do-It-With-Others practices (DIWO). Her work questions ecological crisis, techno-scientific fetishism, and hegemonic powers. She holds a PhD from École Polytechnique and teaches at ESAAA—école supérieure d'art annecy alpes.
Through the project’s research proposition, to remix and therefore reimagine the fabled ointment used by European witches during their gatherings, aniara rodado’s Flying Cream is a rich and nuanced material manifesto against the erasure of knowledge, foregrounding the pleasure of and care for bodies that continue to be made invisible—trans and peri-/postmenopausal women and non-binary people. By applying (herbal) knowledge from marginal epistemes while involving renowned scientific institutions and the commercial cosmetics industry, the cream against vaginal dryness is also a subversive act of epistemic contamination that helps us imagine what contemporary witchcraft might look like within contemporary power relations.
Through the project’s research proposition, to remix and therefore reimagine the fabled ointment used by European witches during their gatherings, aniara rodado’s Flying Cream is a rich and nuanced material manifesto against the erasure of knowledge, foregrounding the pleasure of and care for bodies that continue to be made invisible—trans and peri-/postmenopausal women and non-binary people. By applying (herbal) knowledge from marginal epistemes while involving renowned scientific institutions and the commercial cosmetics industry, the cream against vaginal dryness is also a subversive act of epistemic contamination that helps us imagine what contemporary witchcraft might look like within contemporary power relations.