“Samhuinn Fire Festival is a modern re-imagining of an ancient Celtic festival, marking the darkened end of summer and upcoming rise of winter. ” said the website, with detailed handdrawn old winter god above the text, and friendly round buttons below. Yes! I’d love to see some fire, wear a cute dress, go on a date with my partner and join in on a pagan tradition! It was a fun experience, and maybe I should write a post about it?
After walking for ten minutes just to get to the bottom of the queue to enter the park, we saw some people wearing horns, flower crowns, but mostly just normally-dressed people, waiting in a queue, calm and sober. After finally getting in and meeting up with my classmates, we just watched the activities. A line of people with painted face slowly walked past us, holding burning torches, looking solemn and sacred. I don’t know what’s going on. “What interests me is that there is a huge audience, and yet nobody seem to know what’s going on.” This is my partner’s groundbreaking PhD-level-informed conclusion after the night. We watched people fighting with flaming swords, some fake fighting and killing, a parade including people in body paint, and a winter queen.
I want to write about this in my blog, because I find folklore and folk tradition very interesting. The normally-dressed audience eagerly standing inside a story they don’t understand, and yet thoroughly enjoying the fire, wind, darkness and the connections to the past. Artist Ben Edge investigates, experiences, and documents folk traditions with paintings. In an interview, he shared how folk traditions make him realigned with nature, and felt a deeper connection with everything. “I think that people need folk culture now more than ever. We need to immediately reconnect with the land and to create new mythologies that reflect, and can keep up with, our modern way of life” “Folklore reclaims art and creativity as a necessary human endeavour for everyone, and not just for the selected few.” (Folklore Activist booklet, 2024) I think if my project is about power, ability to dream, and cultivated aesthetics, folk tradition might give me some academic support.
How do I connect “new mythology” with my themes? I know I will make some objects as alternative/dream containers, and maybe each object can be a multivocal symbol, open to interpretation, just like folklores. I recently read a choose-your-own-adventure book Deep Simulator, a poetic and abstract story about reality, barrier between life and death, no-whereness. Through a chaotic combination of narratives, the reader finally collect five “instruments”. Then the reader chooses one of the instruments, and get an ending like “Beware of attachment”. This example is perhaps too abstract, but I like the idea of using a few instruments to represent a few themes, and leave a vague message for the viewers.
These instruments will question the construction of “good” and “bad”, “beautiful” and “ugly”, “valuable” and “useless”. What do we seek in the future — Is it flying cars and VR meeting rooms, or putting on a pretty dress and watching some fire in the cold wind?
Thanks for reading x
________
PS. I still really like the word “rubbish” and I wonder if that could be my theme. The artifacts will be the rubbish, and the viewers have to choose what to throw away? Or maybe the artifacts are “useless” or represent “useless” things in life?
