We started rehearsing Ekklēsia in March 2021 on a trip outside of the city. Vaccine euphoria had set in, luring us back to real-life, beckoning us to return to the studio, theater and museum. That’s when we got frightened and decided to run away. 

We felt the oddity of the moment, the collapse of sense, the great pain of the moment. As performance artists, we knew the artistic opportunity that lies in this moment is in its dwelling and lingering, furthermore its mythification. We escaped a few times to a pastoral and protected space where we could rehearse Ekklēsia; there we thought about the climates of creation, art as priesthood and meeting audiences as ceremony. 

 

When we made it back to the city, we took refuge in an underground shelter where we rehearsed different works developed in parallel: sunny islands of self-expression, but also shaped by devotion to mutual influence, relenting to an ecology of collaborative meaning, allowing for personal, group and various compounding signatures. 

There, hiding in plain sight, we conducted meetings as a secret circle of artists, and many different artists generously served as audience for our rehearsals. We made a pact to realize the artistic event, as performers and audience. 

 

Now, we invite you to a ceremony of further rehearsing Ekklēsia in the Bat Yam Museum of Art. For a revue of about four hours on three consecutive nights, up to thirty people will congregate for a ceremonial event consisting of different performances stitched together, sailing in and out of togetherness and loneliness, time and space in a museum-cum-theater.