Communions
(2020 - ongoing)
The crowd - a ritual phenomenon that has existed for as long as humans have - offers a
distinct physical and psychological space, in which a common atmosphere is shared in
the sum of its gathered individuals.
The atmosphere of the dance club crowd is particularly heightened, intense and
immersive, where the mass of individual bodies move closely amongst each other,
stimulated further by the pulse of music in a darkened room.
In the very deepest moments of this immersion - when the crowd reaches its climax -
the individual may experience a kind of ‘letting go’; a relinquishing of conscious self-control. It gives way to a kind of surrender and fusion that both opens and envelopes
the enthralled person in their absolute participation. Here, for fleeting moments, ‘I’ can
come to assume itself as ‘we’, in the shared, immersive atmosphere particular to the
crowd.
Communions is an ongoing work that seeks to observe these moments of catharsis and
semi-spiritual connection in the weekly ecstatic crowd gatherings of the night club.