Category Archives: Projects

Molecular Cults

1800150_10152295244770390_71382980_oThe term cult identifies a pattern of ritual behavior in connection with specific objects, within a framework of spatial and temporal coordinates. Rituals would include (but not necessarily be limited to) prayer, sacrifice, votive offerings, competitions, processions and construction of monuments. Some degree of recurrence in place and repetition over time of ritual action is necessary for a cult to be enacted, to be practiced.
Carla Antonaccio, Contesting the Past: Hero Cult, Tomb Cult, and Epic in Early Greece

AAS Molecular Cults are heterogeneous assemblages of possible elements that are performed as improvisations. These elements may be substances (fluids, powders, etc), processes, sounds, materials, or structures. The performances are improvised but not chaotic or random, in the manner of a series of interrelated processual refrains within a defined space and/or timeframe. The temporality for Molecular Cults is multiple, with loops and whorls of elements being sequenced and resequenced so that past, present and future begin to explicitly interact. This is in contrast with the more linear temporality of the Diagram Performances although there is, inevitably some cross-over.

 

Diagram Performances

Image by Jonathan Waring

AAS Diagram Performances are based upon a diagram supplied by the host venue, at our request, which influences or dictates the form and processes of the performance. During the development process, a second diagram is often discovered or generated that influences the physical shape of the performance. The performances are usually operate to a more linear temporality that the Molecular Cults, i.e. start, middle, end.

 

Dérives (Drifts)

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AAS dérives are periods of drifting, usually in an urban environment, during which time the group is in a heightened state of situational and environmental awareness. Dérives can last for several hours or several days. They can involve continuous walking or use of public transport. Dérives can also be static. The practice of urban drifting is a Situationist practice and can be used to develop a group psychosis/mythos or to explore and map a specified geographical area. AAS dérives may be projects in themselves or part of the ongoing development of AAS molecular collaboration as a work in itself.