SCAPEGOAT MASK
I created the Goat Mask for TRAGOS, a film by Antero Alli (2000 - www.verticalpool.com) it was my privilege to participate in. I also created the mask as a community ritual, in collaboration with Melissa Penn, to understand, and exorcise, the demons of scapegoating in all of us.
A chain was made of stories participants gave to us; eventually the chain was burned, and the mask was left in the Sonoran desert wilderness in Southern Arizona.
In Biblical times, the Scapegoat was an important community ritual, whereby a litany of the sins and tribulations of the tribe were recited, and symbolically laden onto the back of a goat. The goat was then released into the desert, to bear their burdens away.
A cleansing had occurred, through the ritual of naming and atonement.
In the modern world we have few such "at-one-ment rites" to make conscious destructive projections, as well as a sacred means to collectively witness our grief. Hence, the scapegoating of each other, of "other", of the weak and disenfranchised - of the Earth - is done without conscious understanding.
"We forge a chain made of fear, fear of the other, fear of being diminished, fear of being magnificent. When we witness the mask of the scapegoat, we witness the links in this ongoing tragedy that chains us to our suffering. The ancient, sacred role of the scapegoat was to take this burden back into the desert. We give it to the beast of the wilderness. Our links are those projections that keep us from compassion, from being in right relationship. Back and forth, goat and goated."
Melissa Penn
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