// CEREMONY Festival
CONVERSATIONS + ENCOUNTERS


These events foreground myriad perspectives on performance art. 

Dani d’Emilia’s lifework ABSCISSION offers performance art as a way of sensing, feeling and thinking through endings, identity, intimacy and crisis. 

GRAFTING is a space for those who work in (or want to work in) performance art to share ideas, experiences, wants and needs, fostering new connections.

Pairs of festival artists interview each other in ARTISTS TALKING, a series of intimate exchanges giving insight into the practice of performance art.  
ABSCISSION // Dani d’Emilia


Join us for the launch of ABSCISSION, a book by performance artist, educator and researcher Dani d'Emilia.

The evening will feature a presentation by Dani offering images and insights into the artistic and research process behind the book, followed by a conversation with co-editors Joseph Morgan Schofield and Sam Amsler and an audience Q&A.

>  Artist Bio: Dani d’Emilia

> Workshop: Practices of Ecological Reconfiguration


 KEY INFO
> Friday 20 November 2026
> Doors 6.30pm, ends 9pm
> Live Art Development Agency, E2 6LX
ACCESSIBILITY
> Wheelchair Accessible

TICKETS
> £12 / £8 / £5 / £0
  > Book Tickets





Borrowing its title from the botanical process through which plants shed leaves, fruit or flowers, the book investigates release as an ecological technology of care and relational reconfiguration across different bodies. Dani engages their experiences of hysterectomy and non-binary mastectomy as entry points into wider questions of transformation, queerness and more-than-human kinship, inviting readers to move from overwhelm towards wonder with radical tenderness.

Through performance documentation and visual works spanning seven years, as well as critical and poetic writing, ABSCISSION considers how we might navigate endings, identity, metabolic intimacy and planetary crisis beyond the binaries that shape dominant ways of understanding ourselves and the world. Designed by David Caines, ABSCISSION also includes writing by Vanessa Oliveira Andreotti, Panamby and Joseph Morgan Schofield.

ABSCISSION is published by Musagetes Foundation and is a project resulting from its artist fellowship program. 

CEREMONY is supported with public funds by Arts Council England. 
GRAFTING // new connections

Marilyn Arsem, Resisting, Surviving, 2025. Future Ritual: CEREMONY. 
Photo by Fenia Kotsopoulou.

 GRAFTING is a space for those with a professional interest in performance art to foster connections, exchange ideas, gossip, troubleshoot, ferment and share.

Individual and collective conversations will be grounded in the physical acts of sifting and repairing, drawing inspiration from Marilyn Arsem’s work Resisting, Surviving (CEREMONY 2026).

All those who work, or want to work, in performance art, some or all of the time, are invited to join. This could include artists, technicians, comms specialists, programmers, producers, production managers, documenters, access workers and others! 

This is a new space we are holding in response to suggestions from previous attendees about cultivating more spaces to gather and talk about this practice. 


 KEY INFO
> Friday 27 November 2026
> 11am, ends 13.30pm
> Copeland Gallery, SE15 3SN
ACCESSIBILITY
> Wheelchair Accessible

TICKETS
> free but please RSVP
 > RSVP

CEREMONY is supported with public funds by Arts Council England. 



ARTISTS TALKING

Mal Parry, Every Law a Tattoo, 2026. Image courtesy of the artist.

 ARTISTS TALKING features a series of short conversations between artists and the festival team, reflecting on their work and approach to making performance. 

  • n:u (melissandre varin) & Abhijan X. 
  • Pianka Pärna & Regina Agard-Brathwaite
  • Mal Parry & Joseph Morgan Schofield



 KEY INFO
> Saturday 28 November 2026
> 11am, ends 13.30pm
> Unit 08, SE15 3SN
ACCESSIBILITY
> Wheelchair Accessible

TICKETS
> free but please RSVP
 > RSVP

CEREMONY is supported with public funds by Arts Council England.