Holy Hiatus - Ritual and Community in Public Art

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In May 2008, five temporary art events by artists Alastair MacLennan, Maura Hazelden, Simon Whitehead, Anna Lucas and Yvonne Buchheim, took place in public spaces in Cardigan explo ring themes of ritual, community and place. Holy Hiatus sought to examine the ways that artists can draw audiences into different, often unexpected experiences of place through ritual. The temporary, mobile and in some cases, understated nature of the works meant that the impact was often subtle, but the artworks nonetheless created a ripple of effect for audiences, leading witnesses to wonder what they had just seen and to what extent had they knowingly, or unknowingly, participated in it? Holy Hiatus could be seen as an experiment in ‘performative interaction’ and this publication aims to extend this dialogue beyond the actual artworks, which have left no physical trace, but exist in people’s memories and as documentation in the form of images and sound, and in recorded audience responses to the works. The book also offers a contextual framework for the project within a field of cultural theory that ranges from contemporary art to anthropology, sociology and religious studies. Show more