Joshua Serafin

VOID is a conversation between performer Joshua Serafin and musician Calvin Carrier. In the performance, we see the god(dess) Void on an island installation blending into its environment. Two light pillars that extend to the sky create a portal that connects the spiritual and mortal realms. Void converses with the soundscape and the ecological and meta-realm landscape surrounding them. Their dance creates a ritual of birth, and rebirth, collecting global sadness and its beauty. It is an embodiment of our current society.

Pearls are the final form of all pains and hurt of society.

Void gathers all the pain of humanity and turns it into pearls to keep in the astral realm.

Here memories are kept for the gods to learn and archive humanity’s pain.

The love that’s lost, the pain of war, the pain of living and surviving,

The loss of the love that could have happened but never did.
 

In the performance VOID, we see the non-binary spiritual deity Void on an island installation, who seems to be merging with its environment. Two light pillars create a portal that links the spiritual and mortal realms. Void converses with the sound cosmos and befogged landscape: “Never fear to love!”

Void comes from the past and points to the future. Its inception derives from the Philippine-born artist’s research into pre-colonial animistic religions on the islands, which were suppressed by the Spanish imposition of Catholicism. Bolstered by a somnambulistic ambient noise soundtrack with live guitar input from Calvin Carrier, the dance unfolds into a visually powerful speculation about a future queer mythology centred around the “decolonisation of the self.” Bruno Latour opined: “We have never been modern.” Joshua Serafin’s god from a before time belongs to this We and guides the way into a new time.