emilyn claid, Skinned, 2024. CEREMONY [II], Future Ritual at Venice International Performance Art Week 2024. Photo by Fenia Kotsopoulou.

Future Ritual is excited to announce CEREMONY, a festival of performance art, choreography and ritual action taking place in London this April.

Amidst the fragmentation of contemporary life and the ossifying effects of capitalism in the metropolis, this five-day programme is imagined as an invitation to cross a series of thresholds, to awaken desire, to rekindle enchantment, acknowledging death and chasing life.

The festival will feature new works by Anne Bean, emilyn claid and SERAFINE1369, along with the UK premieres of works by Marilyn Arsem, Gustaf Broms, Liz Rosenfeld and VestAndPage. 

The full lineup will be announced in the Spring. Early Bird tickets for all events are available now.

CEREMONY is the culmiation of a year long programme of activites curated by Future Ritual, exploring art making as a mode of gathering and ritual in this fragmented age.

Contact & Enquiries

Curation & Producing: producing@futureritual.co.uk

Press: abstrakt@abstraktpublicity.co.uk

Venue & Tickets

Copeland Gallery, Unit 9, Copeland Park, 133 Copeland Rd, Peckham, London SE15 3SN

> Early bird tickets available now

Schedule

Weds 23rd April, 7pm ~ emilyn claid & more TBA
Thurs 24th April, 7pm ~ emilyn claid & more TBA
Fri 25th April, 7pm ~ SERAFINE1369 & Anne Bean
Sat 26th April, 11am ~ Symposium
Sat 26th April, 7pm ~ Liz Rosenfeld, Gustaf Broms & more TBA
Sun 27th April, 1pm ~ Marilyn Arsem, VestAndPage & more TBA

Weds 23rd & Thurs 24th April

Performances by emilyn claid, with further works TBA.

“Turn your face towards the tombstone blues of left over time, forever, nowhere, nothing time, the crumbling perpetual of graveyards and ashes. Step lightly into long time, still time. Turn up the music and begin a slow dance. Welcome the pale grey, the shivering grey of a longed-for landscape, cold, silent, beautiful, like snow on hills under a darkening sky. Connect with me here, embrace me there, enmeshed, becoming one, as the underground roots of a trembling forest.”

The Trembling Forest is a live art ballet created by emilyn claid, in collaboration with Martin O’Brien. The work draws on the spontaneous physicality of live art practices together with the scenic, choreographic structures of balletic traditions. Encounters between this company are staged amidst a forest of queer people, each painted with clay, who crack, shiver, tremble and decay. The Trembling Forest evokes a macabre, surreal, grotesque and beautiful world, where life force and death drive intertwine. We’ll meet you beneath the trees.

The Trembling Forest is co- commissioned by Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn, and Future Ritual. The project is supported by Arts Council England and Knotenpunkt with additional support from The Place and the Rose Choreographic School.

19.00 - 22.00 // Tickets: £14/£18/£20

Friday 25th April

An evening of performances including a new group work by SERAFINE1369 and a performance lecture by Anne Bean.

19.00 - 22.00 // Tickets: £14/£18/£20

Saturday 26th April

A free day of conversation, screenings and sharings exploring performance and ritual, collaboration and endurance. Speakers include Anne Bean, emilyn claid and Marilyn Arsem. Full line up to follow.

11.00 - 16.00 // Tickets: free but RSVP

Saturday 26th April

An immersive evening of performance hauntings including works by Liz Rosenfeld (DE) and Gustaf Broms (SE).

Gustaf Broms works in the borderlands between performance, video and installation. He was born in Sweden in 1966, currently lives and works in the Vendel forest. Gustaf’s practice is engaged with the exploration of the nature of consciousness, the dualistic concept of Being NATURE (the biological process of body), and being MIND (as intellect interprets experience). In his practice, he started off working photography and installation, but two work in particular led him to work with the more formless processes of performance.

In 1991, Broms burned all of his work, and in doing so realized that the intensity of the action and the remaining ash far outdid anything he had previously made. In 2005, he completed a series of works entitled “5 Faiths for a Brave New World” in which he worked with objects that were physically too heavy for the body to move. These two experiences created a longing to explore the formless and led up to the project entitled
“A Walking Piece” made with Trish Littler, in which the two artists spent 18 months walking across Eastern Europe. The result is considered a drawing .Currently, Broms’ continues to work with his own body as the tool for examining what this living thing is.

Tremble by Liz Rosenfeld
Flutter. Shutter. Quiver. Throb. Vibrations oscillate between all the holes and all the folds. This is not a memorial to what was once possible, but rather, a proposal to what this space can still become. Always an infinite hole. Always a threshold. The vibrant material of fat and flesh rock in service to ecologies and bodies not yet known.

Liz Rosenfeld is a Berlin based transdisciplinary artist who works with performance, moving images, drawing and experimental writing practices. Liz addresses the sustainability of emotional and political ecologies, cruising methodologies, past and future histories in regard to the ways in which memory is queered. Liz's work deals with flesh as a non-binary collaborative material, specifically focussing on the potentiality of physical abundance and excess, edging questions regarding the responsibility and privilege of taking up space.

19.00 - 22.00 // Tickets: £14/£18/£20

Sunday 27th April

A day of durational performances on memory by artists including Marilyn Arsem (USA).

The festival will close with a final death/rebirth ritual performance to tresspass alienation, presented by VestAndPage (DE/IT).

13.00 - 20.30 // Tickets: £14/£18/£20

Funders and support

Future Ritual: Ceremony is supported with public funds by Arts Council England. Further support towards the programme has been given by Mayor of London.

Credits

Curated and produced by Future Ritual.

Joseph Morgan Schofield, Director
Regina Agard-Brathwaite, Programme Coordinator
Rachel Shipp, Production Manager
Abstrakt Publicity, PR Manager

Future Ritual presents

The performances are offered as part of CEREMONY, a year long programming cycle curated by Future Ritual, exploring how performance and art making can function as modes of gathering, communion and ceremony amidst the fragmentation of contemporary life.

> about Future Ritual: Ceremony