Liturgical Space
Liturgical Space is an exercise in and first attempt at the creation of a sacred liturgical space. This is a practice based on the highly aesthetic nature of religious and spiritual experience, specifically as it pertains to space and performance. In this work, light and sound installation are used as an interventional tool in a pre-existing space, in this case a storage room, as a way of exploring shrine creation and public worship (liturgy), and how that relates to religious and spiritual commodification of public and private spaces. The entire process of analysing and designing the space itself was a way to engage with these ideas and experience the processes involved.
In this installation, the sound and light create a narrative in the room by following the structure of the ‘Hero’s Journey’, a textual theory developed by Joseph Campbell. The ‘Hero’s Journey’ is thought to be the archetypal monomyth which narratives and myths from throughout history are founded around. Although the theory is plagued with issues, the structure itself works well to help construct a narrative for the space. Following this structure, the entire performance loops, always returning to the ‘Ordinary World’ though each time it plays, the beginning alternates between playing a single note and a full chord, representing the ordinary world having changed.