Principles: Ritual, Sacrifice, the Eternal

Lab Author: Andrea Cetrulo


Example: Increasingly across the world, there is a new phenomenon wherein groups of office workers and bankers congregate on glass tower rooftops to practice their own forms of mysticism (yoga, meditation, mindfulness) and get back to business straight after. Sometimes they even feature mainstream DJ's to musicalise their contortions. 


Is the 72nd floor of a London skyscraper closer to heaven? What does the renewed interest in mystical practices tell us about future civilisations? Guided meditation sessions on glass tower rooftops; bodies contorting to the beat of clinical electronic music; the ancient smells of Aloeswood and Palo Santo extracted from foreign lands, pre-packaged in glossy cellophane, waiting to inebriate. Why does seeking the invisible, the immaterial, appeal to contemporary part-time mystics? Does the faith in the remedial powers of 'mindfulness' mirror the psycho-pathological distortions of our time, signalling the collapse of a civilisation? 


Image: Sunrise Yoga at Sky Gardens, London. Published in Timeout (2019).


Example: Every February the 2nd, the Atlantic shores of Brazil and neighbouring Uruguay recede announcing the return of Yemanja, goddess and mother of the sea, who travelled with the Yorubas of West Africa to the Americas accompanying them on involuntary displacements across the ocean. The syncretic deity, partly fish, partly human, mestiza in appearance, is an archetype that resists becoming ossified by way of fluidity, of water and of undulating dance moves that press against the waves. She embodies a futuristic sense of identity which is being constantly renewed and germinated, refuting any rooted historical accounts of culture. 

Iaõs, the shamans of the Orishas religion (often homosexual men and elder women) welcome her through performing ritualistic possessions, entering contagious states of trance and delirium: the audience is transfixed too. The swirling figures enveloped in sinuous white robes consume liquors to the sound of incessant drums, inviting anyone who dares witness the spectacle and enter Yemonjas realm of nocturnal secrecy. Yet when daylight comes and the tide is back, those spectators who have offered her their most precious possessions realize that the promise has not been fulfilled and that her secret remains a secret. 


Water is a vehicle for movement. It temporarily (or permanently) disfigures and transfigures anything that passes it. Seas have hosted migrational projects and carried the imagination of past and future movements with it. Liquidity, confusion, chaos. Amongst its powers is that of challenging, and often completely eroding our attempts at cementing sedentary architectures in space and in memory, reminding us that nature does not want us. 


The erosion of Sufi tombs on the coast of North Africa exemplify this: Atlantic currents sway the saintly bodies buried in these holy places into the murky depths of time. Here, the dissolution of material – the tomb, the body – does not signify a loss of function, given that its capacity relies on performativity and a living tradition of growth rather than on the solidifaction of the a statue or idol.  


Example: Moad Musbahi’s research investigates Sidi Ahmad Shashkal, a seaside Sufi tomb in Morocco as an illustration of migration as a social practice, suspending traditional categorisations of cultural heritage and speculating on how the past might be mobilised against the slow erasure of the future. 

Image attached. Credit: Sea Burial, Moad Musbahi. Jameel Arts Centre, 2020.