Devotional Choreography

It is late April 2010.

I just noticed I forgot to update this blog and let you know that the exhibition went very well, and on the evening of the private view I had a good turn out, despite an important football game being played.

The exhibition was catalyst for sever further exhibitions which I was included in and some paid for. I never was paid very much and it never covered the cost of producing Devotional Choreopgraphy II, but it was a token towards a future where at least there’s a chance of financial survival.

I often question why it should be so exhausting to be an artist but then it is also so liberating and if I look at all the things I learnt through involvement, social issues, facts, survival skills.. I perhaps did well.

This will be the last post for this blog strand. I declare it closed.

I am immersing myself in a huge workload without any agreed funding. Perhaps it is madness..But the exhibition should open around the 14th of May, in the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool and currently only a sketch of the originally planned project exists.

It is only in the making that it seems to really become clear just how ambitious (and costly) a project is..

But now I am in London waiting for the no.w.here lab to processmy cine film, which I am sure they will do marvelously.Then there are many, many jobs yet to be done before the show can go up; most of all I would like to completely re-film, as the current stock doesn’t make my heart fill with pride, not yet..

Devotional Choreography

With this exhibition I will draw focus on the visual poetry of movement and gesture, which devotees of religion have over centuries developed to honour and express their faith. I am following these movements and rituals, capture some of their choreography on film and build an art project that explores the aesthetics of the endlessly repeated choreography that accompanies devotional practices.

A number of these gestures may appear in similar form in more than one religion, this project will be an opportunity to explore what is shared between faiths, without looking for confrontation and an exploration of common denominators, instead of the much propagated focus on what separates cultures/people..

This filmed collection of movements made during devotional practice gives an opportunity for each faith to be represented by its intrinsic visual poetry.

To begin with I will follow a primarily visual path. My intention with this project is focused on intuitive, innocent perception and study of what can be termed a choreography of religious worship, what is simply humble movements, gaining meaning through their association and application in faith.

There is no desire on my behalf to make a judgmental or confrontational treatment of the different faiths.

There is beauty and value in the age-old repetition of movements, which are expression of religious prayer and form devotional practices, a choreography that accompanies prayer and devotion in faiths around the world, around this city.

Our opportunities to find out about each other’s cultures, communities and (regarding this project specifically) faiths and practices are limited, often this may be simply because we feel shy or concerned to offend, or maybe we take no interest because we don’t even know or understand that there is something worth taking an interest in. This limits us in our knowledge and understanding of each other; we occupy a same street, city and country, but still are foreign to one another. The more we understand about what is foreign to us, the greater possibility we have for a constructive living-together.

I am exploring how a movement rooted in religious practice carries with it a personal as well as universal meaning to followers of any given faith; and consider what a movement contains without the religious framework. I think that it is impossible not to conjure connections to faith when we see hands in prayer, but is this simply related to our up- bringing?