VORTEX
When Greenwich, London, was named Longitude 0°, it centred the heart of the British Empire within a system of standardised time.
The instituted temporal shift of Daylight Savings twice a year is a glitch in the system of colonial time that can be seized on as an opportunity to reclaim it.
Annually, BST becomes GMT after the autumn equinox; 02:00 becomes 01:00 for a second time in the twilight hours and a time vortex emerges.
ＶＯＲＴＥＸ ritual BTS documentation, October 2022
ＶＯＲＴＥＸ assembled four Chinese diasporic ritualists, with differing degrees of proximity to British soil, citizenship and statehood, on October 30, 2022 – at a site that extended the Greenwich Meridian Line beyond its entrenched 0° engraving and into a public green. Traditional Chinese Medicine identifies the liver meridian line as most active at the corresponding body clock window in time. Entering the vortex, the ritualists performed movements connecting to our liver meridians, coordinated using Taoist sorcery to pluralise and queer standardised time.
The ritual was documented and later edited into a docu-fiction video artifact. It forms the core seed of intervention from which all other rituals emerge and spiral. All credit to:
ＶＯＲＴＥＸ Creatrixes: Bea Xu & Celeste Viv Ly
ＶＯＲＴＥＸ Co-ritualists: Jenn Leung & April Lin
Co-Editing, Soundtracking & Design: Val Leya You
Colour Correcting, Co-Editing: Celeste Viv Ly
Camera Op: Maya Erin & Uchercie
Taoist Sorcery Consultation: Tzeshi Lei
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Pericardiumᵛᵒʳᵗᵉˣ emerged from a phosphorescent time-entanglement as a spark of dark-fire formlessness in August 2023 at Longitude -0.08629785045308501° 19:30 BST as part of Fluid Cosmologies II at FORMA, London.
Fluid Cosmologies II, photos courtesy of FORMA
Focussing on the dark yin Pericardium meridian that connects heart to libido, I choreographed the latest intervention so that it spiralled out from the docu-fiction video of the original ＶＯＲＴＥＸ ritual. The plan was to have the flow emulate the shape of the Pericardium meridian energy mesh in the human body; spiral out and upstairs to Peverill Gardens on the roof of the FORMA building; before back into the indoor heart of the venue to conclude.
Fluid Cosmologies II, photos courtesy of FORMA
However, a rain warning on the day of the performance forced us to panic install the ‘pericardium mesh’ on the walls of the FORMA interior rather than Peverill Gardens, connecting all gathered audience co-ritualists in the beating heart heat of the UV drenched main space instead.
Assisted by original ＶＯＲＴＥＸ ritualist Jenn Leung, a performative lecture about our protocol was followed by a heart-based creative gratitude exercise for the audience co-ritualists to contribute to the physical scenographic mesh, and some simultaneous Qigong for the Pericardium meridian to finish. The results were more intimate and gooey than any of us expected.
Fluid Cosmologies II, photos courtesy of FORMA
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Kidneyᵛᵒʳᵗᵉˣ metastasized the ＶＯＲＴＥＸ act of temporal reclamation into the providence of the kidney meridian. Earlier, in July 2023, this ritual took place at LungA Festival ~18:00 GMT, Longitude -14.008889° (Seyðisfjörður), constituting another ~day~glo bubble released by the ＶＯＲＴＥＸ intervention. Unfurling in the chilling, dark yin waters of a subpolar fjord, it tested the Will of its creatrix in the face of 11 of their deepest, most annihilating fears - while submerged in the wet unknown.
The 11 fear-charms worn, carried and held in(to) Fjarðará lake:
During LungA 2023, the original ＶＯＲＴＥＸ intervention was screening at Tækniminjasafn Austurlands (Technical Museum of East Iceland) as part of Tender Raptures: let them guide you - alongside works by Miles Greenburgh, Venus Jasper and Ra Tack.
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As part of Milan Art Week 2023, Triple Burnerᵛᵒʳᵗᵉˣ was performed alongside a premiere screening of ＶＯＲＴＥＸ at *•.¸𝐹𝒶𝑒𝓇𝒾𝑒 𝑅𝒶𝓂𝓅𝒶𝑔𝑒¸.•*. Curated by Yicong Song at Love Bar, Milan - the ritual was the first in a showcase of caring and healing performative acts from East & South East Asian artists based in London: alongside OT, Bones Tan Jones and CHIYU.
Taking place in April at 22:00 CEST in Longitude 9.18951° Milan, the Triple Burnerᵛᵒʳᵗᵉˣ was the first spiral that bloomed and glowed from a glitched documentation premiere of the original ＶＯＲＴＥＸ intervention, igniting and vaporising in yang crucibles of fire, spirit and water – and metabolising in the bodies of the creatrix and attendant ritualists altogether.
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Like many of my works, ＶＯＲＴＥＸ is iterative, site- and temporal-specific. Each movement grows a new spiral, with properties and shapes of its own. Each spiral is a new rhizome of the original timehack ritual. No subsequent iteration is ever the same.
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