Building a Body of Belief (2023) Performance Lecture, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (duration: 30 minutes).
Props: Round black obsidian mirror (echoing the JVE logo) and hagstone worn as pendants, aspergillum, (small branch from a local tree), aspersorium (ceramic hand built pot made in memory of the womb of St Julian of Norwich, filled with water from the nearby river Maas), homemade bread from the Jan van Eyck Acadamie kitchen.
Costume: White cotton shirt, black skirt, bare feet.
On walls: Printed archival images of three moments in previous blessing ceremony by priest Monseigneur Roncken on opening of the site, 1961 (entrance hall; stairs; doorway threshold).
I was invited to contribute to the ‘Murmuring Matter: On the Cosmopolitics of Materials’ symposium at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. I wrote a script for a perambulatory lecture/ ritual reenactment that narrated the history of the academy, based on the Catholic blessing at the opening of the building by a priest. I reprinted three archival images of the original blessing ceremony and positioned them in the reception, on the stairwell and at the entrance, echoing their original locations. These points then formed three locations for me to narrate the history on the basis of orientation (it’s origin stories), disorientation (it’s rapid change throughout the decades of the twentieth century), and reorientation (the present moment of reorienting toward a more-than-human world). Wearing a black obsidian mirror (referencing the JVE logo), a hagstone, an aspergillum made from the branch of a local tree and an aspersorium (handmade, in memory of St Julian of Norwich’s womb, and containing water from the local river Maas), I re-blessed the site through a part Christian, part pagan ceremony, reworking the priestly figure as an unauthorised, somewhat heretical priestess.
Image courtesy: Jan van Eyck Academie
