Future Ritual is a practice of gathering, curating and organising. We collaborate with artists to create contemporary expressions of ritual, working to support the emergence of new and more attuned cultures. 

We are based in London (UK).

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VestAndPage, MYTHIC TIME, Future Ritual at ]performance s p a c e[, 2021. Photo by zack mennell.
Mythic Time an intensive co-creation led by VestAndPage & Joseph Morgan Schofield
20.09 - 25.09.2021

A residential workshop exploring the (re-)invention of spiritual practices, the sacred, rites and rituals through performance art.

The here-and-now is insufficient. The fog of the capitalist deadland is ossifying. We demand something more. Faced with distance, anxiety and exile, belonging feels mythic. FUTURERITUAL asks: how can the technology of ritual be deployed in the divination, manifestation and sustentation of something else - of alternative [queer] futurities, wherein states of belonging (in difference) are felt deeply and more readily? 

Breaking with the here-and-now necessitates a series of temporal maneuvers. Ritual is an apt symbolic technology for this, for ritual is a way of entering time and rendering it habitable through communion.

Performance art is a potent modality of ritual, for, within performance art, time operates as material. Rites and rituals involve, typically, a series of practices based on images, words, actions, objects, symbols organised in a performative act. They produce resonance and relations. They cultivate the practice of attention. Live Art and performance art practices have been informed on an essential level by ritual practice, and attention to ritual reveals art as a way of holding that which is magic and sacred.

Inside this workshop, we hope to produce a temporary ritual community within which we may explore the (re-)invention of spiritual practices, rites and rituals through performance art.


Artist Index: VestAndPage


This workshop was supported by the Live Art Development Agency and ]performance s p a c e[.







VestAndPage, MYTHIC TIME, Future Ritual at ]performance s p a c e[, 2021. Photos by zack mennell.


What is the place of ritual with contemporary performance culture? What happens when we inhabit liminal spaces and thin places through performance? What possibilities do art and ritual hold for remaking ourselves and our world? 

We will begin by engaging with our own identity, desire, memory, history and artistic urgency and use these in the expansion of our own artistic ritual practices. We are particularly interested in the processual and transformative qualities of ritual performance - how they may destabilise the normative order, and how they may become the source of our creative acts.

We will undertake a variety of exercises, tasks, performance jams and discussions, involving both solo and communal exploration. We will be responsive to the locality of ]performance s p a c e[ and the Kent coast, working indoors and outdoors, and at different times of the day and night. We will work towards the realisation of a public sharing on the final night. After that we will re-unite for discussion to understand what we have performed and the possibilities contained within it.


VestAndPage, MYTHIC TIME, Future Ritual at ]performance s p a c e[, 2021. Photo by zack mennell.

some notes on space
As this is an in-person workshop, the number of participants will be limited, and we will work together to set and maintain clear boundaries in view of the pandemic at the beginning of the workshop.

In co-creating this space, we are committed to the principles of ‘braver space’, where difference is acknowledged, where physical and emotional boundaries are respected, where care and inclusion are centred, and where accountability is practiced. We will discuss this further in advance of, and during, the workshop. 

It is important to note that, all too frequently, colonial processes acts of cultural appropriation and vandalism have been practiced within art making. This has been particularly visible in practices where art meets ritual. It has often seemed easy, convenient or acceptable for white artists to fetishise, romanticise and universalise the specific cultural practices or traditions of indigenous people and people of colour. These processes uphold white supremacy. 

In the curation of other white artists in this workshop space, FUTURERITUAL and VestAndPage seek to amplify the voices of those who engage ethically with these issues, who think critically about their desires and histories, and whose work resists, opposes, or plots an escapes from the capitalist colonial cis-tem.