small ritual

greenbelt 3 - foundation 'babel'

bristol emerging church foundation produced one of the most entertaining services i've seen at greenbelt in recent years, complete with punky soundtrack and banksy visuals.

first, the congregation put on white masks and help to build the [jenga] tower of babel:

foundation 'babel' - building the tower from steve collins on Vimeo.

i wish i had had the wits to film all of this dylanesque piece - it built into something rather good:

foundation 'babel' - free from steve collins on Vimeo.

foundation 'babel' - anointing from steve collins on Vimeo.
in this clip people discard their masks and are given a copy of the lord's prayer in a random foreign language, which we will then all say in unison [illustrating the confusion of languages and its overcoming].

at the end we took away key-rings made from small jenga blocks marked with the slogan 'to confuse is to liberate':

greenbelt 2 - visions choral evensong

visions' second service at greenbelt was a choral evensong, reset into their own inimitable style. videos of sections:
psalm 114
psalm 115
the magnificat
nunc dimittis and creed

turn your bass up because the clips don't have enough. shame about the ugly room and the daylight. the room was packed, so this could have done with being in a better venue.

stuffed animal magic

best thing at 100% design - or at least the most startling - is the jericho hands tent. not sure if i want to applaud or scream. www.jerichohands.com

on the adjacent stand stephen johnson does slightly less disturbing things with kitsch sculptured animals. check his website for the 'now isn't that lovely' section.

leaving the hospital drunk

it's london design week/london fashion week and there are a lot of parties. tuesday night i was at the modular lighting and moroso show, and they kept filling my glass, and then we went to the hospital club with a colleague who's a member [he's the guy who is close mates with bek at the city space bar in moscow so there's maybe a pattern of upscale social drinking here].

by the time i left the martini lounge i was very drunk and decided to take pics on my phone on the way to the tube. i fell asleep on the bed fully clothed. the next day i was so sick i couldn't go to work until the afternoon when the room had stopped spinning. i do this once every five or ten years to remind myself why i don't get drunk. the photos were OK though.

new stuff on smallritual.org

at last, some new stuff on smallritual.org

looking at the dates on the menus there hasn't been any new stuff for a couple of years - just old material/website designs added.

except i just remembered this from 2007 which ought to be on smallritual.org too