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Slade Wolburn Research Center, London 2011.
Supported by Sattler the High Tex Company. A project in collaboration with Momoe Narita, Guilan Shen and Xinjian Wang. |
Considered as being the most influential figure in history where the ceremony of tea is concerned, Sen no Rikyu introduced the concept of ichi-go ichi-e. Literally meaning one encounter, one unique opportunity, it is a belief that each encounter should be used to the full since it may never occur again.
We will soon ingest light passively, but in this ceremony we enter into darkness where participants will be called upon to ingest light and digest it to later irradiate it actively. A ritual of altered perception and confused experimentation where space and bodies mutate and shudder affected by the ceremony of ingestion and absorption, they weave to the sound of the cacophony and shake with the beat of the ground beneath their feet.
The group is called forth beyond mere contemplation, and is incited to create and to form part of the writing of a place that writes over the recently written, changing what has gone before with each throbbing of the body. Just as in the ritual of tea, we go deep into the room following a path, not of water but of light that springs from the heat and energy of the bodies. The room, sensitive to heat, is stimulated thus, the space and the floor become a fleeting image of prints, disappearing just as soon as they appear, revealing themselves to then fade away, the tracks of those present, left without trace.
The morsel is eaten, and once consumed it stays in the memory, leaving only corpses to bear witness to what has happened here.