CEREMONY: a Festival of Performance

Intergenerational and international, CEREMONY is a heady gathering of artists and ideas. This year’s programme considers the ways queers, migrants and others who inhabit the outsides and undersides have tended to mystery, ritual and connection in the shadow of Empire and industry. What wild energies and enlivening presences may yet be found, growing up through the concrete? The programme features: the world premiere of ASCLEPEION by Ron Athey; new commissions by n:u (melissandre varin), Pianka Pärna and Mal Parry; durational works by Julia Bardsley, Dagmara Bilon, gustaf broms, Rona Lee, Lynn Lu and Katharine Meynell; and performances by Tiziano Cruz, Eoin McCaul, Paul Regan and Lois Weaver. There’s also DISCHARGE, a performance party curated by Martin O’Brien and featuring Shaun Caton, Daniel Oliver + Claudia Palazzo, selina bonelli, Bart Seng Wen Long + Tommy Burke and Ewan Hindes. The festival opens with the launch of Dani d’Emilia’s ABSCISSION, a new book which 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. There are discursive events: GRAFTING, for anyone who is (or wants to be) professionally engaged in performance art, and ARTISTS TALKING, a morning of conversation open to all. And gustaf broms returns to London to offer a 5 day intensive workshop exploring performing with the hidden and feral energies of the city, and Dani d’Emilia explores the practices of ecological reconfiguration through a two day artist lab.