F U T U R E R I T U A L
F U T U R E R I T U A L is a performance and research project considering the place, use and function of ritual within contemporary queer and performance cultures. The project positions ritual as a technology, asking how artists might use ritual technology, and to what ends.
Noting the proximity of ritual within queer and performance histories, F U T U R E R I T U A L is primarily concerned queer futurities and the ways that ritual performance might manifest, gesture towards, or otherwise call forth these alternate states or other ways of being.
The project is a lab for performative research by Joseph Morgan Schofield and other invited artists. Through public performance events, F U T U R E R I T U A L aims to provide an active context for the presentation of performance art in the UK.
S H A R E D A C T I O N
Future research looks towards S H A R E D A C T I O N, a notion that imagines performance rituals as a space through which collaboration, kinship and communion can emerge or be developed.
The first shared action took place at Chisenhale Dance Space (London) in June 2019, featuring Joseph Morgan Schofield and selina bonelli.
R E S E A R C H // R E F L E C T I O N
Critical and artistic reflections on the project by Joseph Morgan Schofield and commissioned writers may be found here, and on event archive pages.
Interview: Alessandra Cianetti and Joseph Morgan Schofield, performingborders, Nov 2019
Response: Sara Sassanelli - Spectral formations + gatherings/convenings, Sept 2019
Response: Bean, Nov 2018
Response: Charlie Ashwell, Oct 2018
Response: Benjamin Sebastian, Oct 2018
Response: Es Morgan, Sept 2018
A R C H I V E
F U T U R E R I T U A L was established in 2017 by Joseph Morgan Schofield and Thomas Yeomans. The initial phase of the project took the form of six itinerant performance events, temporarily inhabiting and activating borrowed spaces, with five or six works taking place at each event. The events held space for artists and audiences interested in queerness, ritual, myth, magick and mysticism to come together, to resist marginalisation, to challenge decency, to protest, to process, to dream us forward.
In September 2019, F U T U R E R I T U A L presented a three day programme at Kunstraum and the Live Art Development Agency. The programme was entirely free to attend and included a screening and discussion event, followed by two performance events.
Documentation of the events, including commissioned responses, can be viewed on the individual event pages:
F U T U R E R I T U A L ARTISTS
Alex Billingham
Alicia Radage
Anni Movsisyan
António Branco + Riccardo T.
Augusto Cascales
Charlie Ashwell
China
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
DAS GLAMOUR
Ellis D
Eunjung Kim
Evie Fehilly
Hellen Burrough
Iris Madariaga
Jon John
Joseph Morgan Schofield
Kelvin Atmadibrata
Kitty Fedorec
Laura Burns
Leman Daricioğlu
Lise Boucon
Lizzie Masterton
Louisa Robbin
Luke Jordan
Martin O'Brien + Sheree Rose
Niko Wearden
Neo Fung
Nene Jayne Camara
Nwando Ebizie
Oberon White
Radage ▽ Hardaker
Ro Hardaker
Sandra Stanionyte
Seán O'Driscoll
Selina Bonelli
Tsinder Ash
If you have any queries about FUTURE RITUAL or would like more information, you can email joseph at
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a queer ritual might be a ritual where rites and traditions are queered, or re-discovered, or enacted by queers for queers. it is likely engaged in the conscious rejection of heterosexual societal norms. they likely resist and critique the politics of assimilation and celebrate, instead, subversion, indecency, aberrance, and difference.
a queer ritual might be a strategy for survival, for effecting social and political change, for taking on the world and for making it through the damn day.
a queer ritual might involve dancing, sigil crafting, dragging up, singing, bleeding, mourning, celebrating, loving, shouting, or something else entirely.