scanning the folkton drums

"Work' rather than 'labour', our ancestors' archaic occupation, which produced these objects, had concealing them from human eyes as its extravagant goal. The paradox appears to us alone. Turned towards the dead, intended for the dead, these creations were meant to be restored to them: sent back to the invisible, they were in this sense, literally, 'sacrificed'. But, in actualising that sacrifice, they were permeated with the power to which one sacrificed, the power of life and death. And even when it was displayed, the sacred work was not meant to be sampled by the eyes of the living, as is now accepted in our modern museumized culture. When they found their way into the world of the visible, these man-made artefacts continued to intercede with the invisible powers, to transpose their virtues to the living. That was their sacred logic.

Kristeva / The Severed Head/ Capital Visions / pp9-10