I understand my works as acts of mythopoesis, as process driven embodiments of different ways of being in other possible worlds. I think of ritual & performance as technologies of divination, a way to vision, prophecy or fiction [other] [queer] futurities.
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“My work is formed through live and embodied practices. I organise, facilitate, make performances and films, and write. Underpinning all this work is an understanding of performance as a potent contemporary modality for ritual, by which I mean: it sharpens our attention and asks us to be participant and witness; it facilitates us to inhabit time differently; it is a technology for processing, mourning, desiring and communing.
The work is characterised by a deeply felt sense of yearning, both for that which is lost and that which is yet to arrive. I am often engaged in practices of channeling, duration, and exhaustion and divination. Much of this practice is relational, emerging through encounters between my sweating, wanting, sensate non-binary body and a host of other agents - human and otherwise, including memory, geology, weather and myth. I have worked with and across the South Pennine Moors for a number of years, and also responsively to other sites and contexts on different time scales.
My performances and films have been presented throughout the UK and Europe, including recently by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), ]performance s p a c e[, IKLECTIC , and Venice International Performance Art Week. My writing has been commissioned by Chapter Arts Centre, ]ps[, and Undercurrent (USA).
In 2017 I established Future Ritual, a research and curatorial project exploring the place of ritual in contemporary queer and performance cultures. Earlier iterations of Future Ritual took place at the ICA, Arnolfini and SPACE Studios, amongst other partnerships. In 2023 I formalised Future Ritual as a Community Interest Company. In this new form Future Ritual brings my practices as a maker and researcher together with my organising and facilitating work, and holds important collaborative relationships such as those with Anne Bean and Martin O'Brien.
My practice has been shaped by a number of artist-led initiatives of which I’ve been a part. With Benjamin Sebastian, I am the co-founder and co-director of VSSL studio and formerly the co-director of ]performance s p a c e[. I am a frequent collaborator of Venice International Performance Art Week (Italy)and the affiliated Anam Cara Collective. I work as part of the programming team at The Place, a contemporary dance house in central London, having previously worked managing artist development at the Live Art Development Agency.”
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Joseph Morgan Schofield, 2020
contact, mailing list
producing & project management
all rights reserved
Joseph Morgan Schofield, 2020