The Palace of Ritual

About

The Palace of Ritual is a programme of immersive, intimate performances, screenings and discursive workshops that unites the disparate practices of sculpture, I-Ching, architecture, dance, shamanic healing, song, calligraphy, and performance through the lens of ritual. Initiated by Arts Territory, The Palace of Ritual is co-curated by Annie Jael Kwan, Denis Maksimov, Michał Murawski and Kasia Sobucka, and draws togetherthemes of forced migration, climate change, democracy, mythology, rebellion, cosmology, feminism, futurism and the disruption of power hierarchies.

The programme comprises performances, screenings, micro-symposia, and an installation.The curators state that The Palace of Ritual: “invites participants to activate heterodox knowledge systems and practices of healing, sourced from myths, ritual and cosmology so as to awaken from the artificial psychological coma of the accelerating and verticalizing present, through healing rituals of care, levelling, perversion and futuring.

The programme explores the draw of the natural world, rituals and spirituality in the post-contemporary age, 

and examines older, more divisive rituals, investigating what can be learned from their hierarchical but seductive styles, shapes and rhythms. The Palace of Ritual will explore how rituals have been invented, reinvented and adapted today.”

Ritual brings together aesthetic creation and a myth-reinforcing re-enactment of collective histories; it caters to humanity’sprimeval need to belong; it consolidates but also – in liminal moments – perverts established social norms and hierarchies. 

Drawing on the context of Venice, the programme explores the typology of the Palace – whether a Venetian Palazzo, a Qing dynasty summer residence looted by Lord Elgin or a socialist-era “people’s palace” – which provides a grandiose and spectacular backdrop for rituals of every kind. The Palace of Ritual and its interregional, intersectional programme will explore pathways for forging new ritual bodies, ritual aesthetics and ritual politics: perverted, progressive and planetary. 

Lynn Lu’s performance piece ‘The ocean’s refusal to stop kissing the shore’ speaks directly to Venice’s fragile geography amidst the global phenomenon of rising sea levels and referencing the real and mythical vanished lands that have gone before; the work invites participation in the ritual creation of offerings to the sea. 

The micro-symposium ‘Towards a Perverted Palatiality’ featuring Professor Sarah Wilson and other speakers from across disciplines and practices, draws on the uses of ‘palaces’ as patriarchal objects, and the rituals which take place within and around them, asking how we can appropriate, repurpose and pervert palatial forms, rebelling against these hierarchical power structures in pursuit of a more democratic future. 

Issues of discrimination are exposed and challenged throughEnam Gbewonyo’s dance performance ‘Nude Me/ Under the Skin: The Awakening of Black Women’s Visibility one Pantyhose at a time’, in which the traditional Ewe dance, Agbadza, acts as a point of awakening and resistance to the homogenous mould in which Western society attempts to constrict Black women.

Karolina Łebek’s film work ‘Warta’draws on her Lemko heritage to create a meditation on migration, displacement and assimilation. An ethnic minority forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland in the Carpathian Mountains, the Lemko people maintain their shared sense of cultural identity through traditional song; in ‘Warta’ the shared suffering and wounded voices of the past mould into a song which strives for recognition and reparation.

Considering cosmology from the perspective of fire, Nissa Nishikawa’s ‘Relations of Fire’ pays homage to the all-powerful element through a wild, open-air performance. Drawing on the lyricism of fire’s violent activity through dance, sound and installations, Nissa Nishikawas’ work honours the primal source of all forms on earth.  

Amidst the cacophony of calls for urgent action on climate change, Sabina Sallis’ ‘Thought World and the Society of Nature’ screening presents“video-thoughts-collages” that were made during a residency at Labverde in the Amazon Jungle, Brazil. The videos are reflections upon the Amazonian landscape, its thoughts and its ‘living logic’, magnifying how we relate to, and profoundly interact with, complex ecosystems, and how mindful, humane and sustainable politics can grow out from appreciative and sensitive engagement with natureculture.

In‘Slavness’ Zorka Wollny, in collaboration with Małgorzata Mazur, seeks to demarcate the boundaries of women’s freedom.  The title is based on the play of words which translates both as doing something unhurriedly and the situation of subordination, a blurred boundary which feeds into the artist’s concept that “the necessary revolution is not always visible, but it will sprout subcutaneously, underground, under the ice, under the crust of visible surfaces. Doing something slowly, in concentration, is also a matter of daily effort, which enables long-lasting, persistent and joint action.” 

Ancient myths of the classical world play muse to The Avenir Institute’s performance-lectures at The Palace of Ritual. ‘The Pythian Games of Futures’present the results of the investigation of the Delphi archaeological site as the transcultural centre of the rituals of futures-making and foresight methodologies of the ancient world, focussing on the speculative analysis of what is currently called the Temple of Athena Pronaia and the Temple of Apollo, in both the past and their possible futures. Later in the programme The Avenir Institute will present ‘The Penelopiad Project’, in whichJeanne Pansard-Bessonand Denis Maksimovwill read out parts from Homer’s Odysseyand Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, enacting the dialogue of authorship across the millennia of history, as the audience are served figs, watered down wine and honey reflecting the refreshments provided for the suitors for Penelope’s hand in Ithaca. 

The Palace of Ritual is initiated by Arts Territory and it launches its new pathway of nomadic, fluid and open agency: offering new models of arts commissioning and curating, supporting radical artistic experimentation, research and collaboration, alongside testing the new forms of curation. 

The programme is devised by Arts Territory together with: PASAR, Post-Asian School of Alternative Rites,  new practice-based research project curated by Annie Jael Kwan; Perverting the Power Vertical, a research and arts initiative led by Masha Mileeva, Denis Maksimov and Michał Murawsk; the FRINGE Centre at University College London and by Avenir Institute. 

The Palace of Ritual is supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute, The School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, The FRINGE Centre for the Study of Social and Cultural Complexity and Istituto Polacco in Rome. The PASAR: Post-Asian School of Alternative Rites is presented in collaboration with Something Human and Asia-Art-Activism and additionally supported by Arts Council England.

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