What happens when we make unseen worlds visible? What is possible when we expand our vision of the world to something we can’t quite see, something on the periphery? Bayo Akomolafe calls it “looking away at” the world, or, seeing at the edges. A kind of seeing that requires for us to not look directly at something, for it is in looking at something that we forfeit seeing what is outside of that gaze, or we diminish what we are seeing to a singular interpretation. To look away at might be to look, and then look back again, each time seeing something different. To look away at is to ignite our senses, to come alive in the not knowing, to feel as seeing.

Through ritual improvisational performance and immersive installation, a group of 11 artists engaged in collective investigation around these questions and themes, each bringing their own performance or installation. We each worked with the simple prompt of Sight. Held during open studios at the Arts and Industry Building, Sight invited people coming and going from the space to stay and engage with the installations and ritual enactments, immersing themselves in a world of surprise, wonder, and ethereal happenings. We organized the room by the 5 elements and participants were invited to walk in a counterclockwise direction through the space, creating a whirlpool-like flow in the room. The event also marked the end of building-wide scavenger hunt (organized by Sulis Studio) for all ages. 

The day was a feast for the senses. A person under a snail shell of her making crawled around all day long, poking her gloved hands out to engage and play. A tarot reader and palm reader flanked the doorway, offering their gifts of sight in readings. A weaver and ritualist sat at the center, inviting people to weave in a word of their becoming into a collective loom. Two gloved hands appeared from behind a puppet stand, concealing and revealing various black and white objects and holding up mirrors. An owl perched atop a tree branch and looked on. A mad scientist with a microscope showed lookers on the vast world of the microscopic. A collective grief quilt at the center beckoned people to whisper their grief into herbs and tie them into the quilt, after which a Curanderismo ritualist performed a Limpia on the quilt in the river outside. 

One attendant of the event described the space as “what I hoped the world would look like when I was born.” The space was alight with a sense of wonder. A collective intelligence with an enchanting, transportive quality emerged in the room. Sight initiated a series of similar collective performance pieces and community arts collaborations at Sulis Studio such as Tracing Water, Hands for Palestine, and more.