On Accessing An Inner Experience Through Ritualization, 2017, performance installation, 30’, woodboard, animal skull, brazier, talisman, teapot, antique metal stand, strings, ink, brush, water, dimensions variable | June 2017, Webber Douglas Studio, London


Proposed by Catherine Bell, the term ‘ritualization’ alludes to the practical process of ritual, which entails a matter of ‘nuanced contrast and the evocation of strategic, value-laden distinctions’ (Bell,1992:90). Under this premise, my ritualization stems from a spontaneous, open-ended choreography polished by the mechanism of repetition/ differentiation. It is closer to ‘rites of passing’ rather than Van Gennep’s ‘rites of passage’. A self-transformation with no ultimate telos

The ritual form is recognized in its poverty of expression by adhering to a syntactical structure. A mandala shaped multi-dimensional diagram - to be more precise, concentric circles with inscribed squares - at once physical and psychic, serves as the apparatus of my ritualization practice.

To designate a recursive route of the pilgrim the principle of my ritual syntax is circumambulation of the centre, first clockwise, then anti-clockwise. The centric circle is a sunken pool filled with black liquid, above it is a skull in the confinement of a red circle. It is the sacrifice and the medium in one, speaks to the absence of any deity.

To imagine a form of cartography which marks fluxes and administrations of an inner experience, ranging from the ecstatic to the meditative, I am the ritualizer-experiencer of an auto-communitative practice. The non-participatory presence of an audience, the witness-experiencer, inevitably alters the efficacy of the practice, either rendering it contagious and transmissive or making it infelicitous.









On Accessing An Inner Experience Through Ritualization (documented rehearsals), 2017