Easter Bunnies

I have just received the above images taken by Ramona Ponzini last Saturday night, at the end of Spectra 09, showing what she describes in her accompanying email as ‘Lynchian bunny girls’ gathered together in a courtyard in the old part of Valencia. Ramona and I, together with Maurizio and Roberto Opalio of My Cat Is An Alien, had chanced upon the bunny girls while out taking a stroll with Rosa Arutti at around 2.00 am. The bunnies would select a girl; the chosen one would put on a mantilla and the rest of the group would then form a circle around her and clap and sing. Once they’d finished the song, they’d select another girl to go in the centre and the whole ritual would start over again. What the white rabbit ears had to do with any of this was a complete mystery to us. Even Rosa admitted to being baffled by the whole thing. Ramona took the pictures while I recorded a fragment of the bunny girls’ song on my cell phone just to show that we weren’t seeing things that late at night.

Now that I’m back in London, however, I’m not so sure. Earlier that day Rosa had taken us to a quaint little cafe to sample a local drink she said was made from almonds – you can see Maurizio, Roberto and I in the process of ingesting some of this milky fluid in the third photograph Ramona sent to me. Could it be that Rosa had introduced us unwittingly to the legendary Devil’s Milk Punch concocted by Sir Francis Dashwood of the notorious Hellfire Club and that the singing and clapping ‘Lynchian bunny girls’ were a result of its hallucinogenic properties? It seems highly likely, particularly when you consider that all the people who tried the almond drink that afternoon also saw the bunny girl ritual later that night. The mystery remains. Have a Happy Easter.