The Sacred City Project Description

The Sacred City is a collaborative project between Reality Research Center, an artistic research collective from Finland, and a group of forefront Japanese artists. During winter 2010-2011, the project will infi ltrate two very different cities: Helsinki and Tokyo/Yokohama. In both cities, we will organize a workshop followed by a performance.

The workshops center on the experience of the sacred in the contemporary society. The aim of the project is to look at the sacred from a personal perspective, outside the prevailing cultural and religious contexts. We will try to go beyond the connotations that the term normally evokes in us and to create new interpretations of it, both individual and shared.

At the beginning of the workshop, each of the participants will have a chance to explore their personal connection to the sacred and fi nd ways of experiencing it in the urban environment. After this, we will look for ways of sharing this experience with others through performative means. This will involve coming up with personal practices and rituals, which can be performed both alone and in a group, as well as evolving them with the other participants. The work will result in a series of performances or performance-like events, which will be shared with an audience.

We will approach the workshop as a continuous practice of the sacred. This means that all our actions, including meetings, being in the work space, talking or working with others, will happen in a relation to the sacred - whatever it may mean to each of us.