Bea Xu: Plastic Lattice
Plastic Lattice (2021) | 93 x 73 x 28cm + site-specific extended length, performative installation: local mushrooms, PET bottles, foraged moss, vinyl tubing, plastic tubing connectors, scavenged metal chair, polyester, wool, cotton, modelling clay, safety pins, menstrual blood, water, foraged soil, paper diary with stickers
participating in the ritual:
Ahead of the experiment, the invitation is for you to prepare the following:
- Max. 100ml of your own blood (menstrual or extra-venus) in a sealed, easy-pour container. Small vodka bottles tend to work well. Any smaller quantity is absolutely fine.
- Arrange for a friend or friends to make direct contact with a patch of earth anywhere in the world at the exact time that you hope to be able to begin the ritual, with the intention to receive your signals. You can also confirm with them digitally immediately before you begin, so long as this is before you start the ceremony.
- The signals themselves can arrive spontaneously - there is an audio track that will guide you through this so no need to reflect on this beforehand (unless you want to!)
Once you've arrived at the gallery, someone will be on hand to help you dilute your blood in the wash bottle, set you up with the track and indicate all the other elements of the exhibition.
Do let us know if you're comfortable being photographed for documentation. Your experience of the ritual will be valuable data for the ongoing, iterative process of developing this work. Please let us know how you found it and whether you'd like Bea to contact you for more insights.
About the exhibition
Plastic Lattice is a land-based, site-specific piece of speculative ontological design, born out of a desire to connect humans across geographical distances via their psychic energy, blood and surrounding mycelial infrastructures.
With organic components foraged from naturally occurring sources local to wherever it is exhibited, the performative installation featured Lithuanian chanterelle mushrooms alongside moss from Vingis Park in its pentagrammic fairy ring formation when it was created for @rupert_residency ’s ‘Heavy Centre’ group show in Vilnius, 2021.
Fresh menstrual blood from the initiatory ritualist’s recent cycle is used to ‘activate’ the fairy ring – channelling psychic energy from them to each of the mushroom reservoirs, down the deconstructed mycelium network of tubing and out into the earth through a central tube that connects to soil outside the exhibition space. The hypothesis is that the energy, and any signals it carries, will reach all receptive co-ritualists making contact to earth and engaged at distance.
Each iteration of Plastic Lattice is different, but the ritualistic principles remain the same, with hypotheses tested and feedback collected to develop the fiction into a working prototype. On 4th October, creatrix Bea Xu (@_fei__fei_) will outline the techne behind the work before involving audience members in a live ritualistic demonstration. During the rest of its exhibiting period at Mehringplatz 20, you are invited to bring your own blood to try it out for yourself.
About the artist:
Bea Xu (@)_fei__fei_) is a world-builder, ritualist and psychic worker. Using collaborative play, speculative fiction and therapeutic intervention they design and means-test integral, post-capitalist cosmologies with live participants and fellow LARPers. Bea’s work can be seen as a narrative-driven engagement with archetypal shadow – often foregrounding blood magic, decolonized time and non-binary logic with an EcoGothic focus. Informed by their studies and clinical experience at London’s CCPE as a trainee integrative, transpersonal psychotherapist, she is also the creatrix of ritual laboratory LUNARCHY 2.0 (@lunarchycommunity).
They completed the 9th Alternative Education Programme at Rupert in Vilnius and have collaborated with Furtherfield Gallery (London), Omsk Social Club and Ittah Yodah - with work selected for Podium (Oslo); IAM Festival; UNFIX Festival; Solo Show; Virtual Futures; ONCA Gallery (Brighton); Baltan Labs; NewCon Press and Gods & Radicals Press.
