In May 2022, the Institute of Contemporary Arts hosts FUTURERITUAL, curated by Joseph Morgan Schofield and featuring Benjamin Sebastian, Charlie Ashwell, Daniella Valz Gen, Es Morgan, Soojin Chang, Rubiane Maia and Teo Ala-Ruona.
This live programme, running between 18 – 29 May includes four performance art works, a workshop exploring queer kinship and collaboration, and is accompanied by Divinatory Strategies, a three-part sonic essay, available on the ICA’s website.
Identifying performance art as a potent contemporary space for ritual, the project represents a plurality of responses to the question: how can the technology of ritual be deployed in the manifestation of alternative futures?
The programme opens with a newly commissioned live installation 3 Reflections² by Benjamin Sebastian unfolding across three hours in the Theatre.
Facilitated by Es Morgan and Joseph Morgan Shofield, Summoning is a free workshop positioning kinship as the means by which their sensate experiences of having trans* bodies are produced. The workshop is open to pairs of artists with a preexisting relationship – be they kin, lovers, or carers; new connections or committed collaborators.
Other highlights of the programme include Soojin Chang’s Heavenly Shower of Bank Notes, Joseph Morgan Schofeld’s with bare feet touching the sky I yearn, and Rubiane Maia’s Every Time I Trace The Horizon, My Hands Catch Fire [BookPerformance, Chapter III].
A three-part sonic essay will exist online as part of FUTURERITUAL. Divinatory Strategies is drawn from a series of free-flowing conversations with the participating artists. Loosely-grouped around experiences of time, intimacy and ecology, the sonic essay speaks to the possibility of a future ritual practice.
FUTURERITUAL investigates memory, sex, time, collaboration, ecology, power, alienation, intimacy and belonging. While identity becomes diffused in each work, the body remains at the heart, immediate and central.
Further information and full listings can be found here
