contamination

now here's a church service to freak out unsuspecting visitors. grace's october service, called 'contamination', explored how humans have always attempted to achieve spiritual purity through rules and rituals, in order to approach god. so visitors were greeted by people in gas masks and paper overalls, who quizzed them for various 'contaminating' items before they were allowed in:

grace - contamination 1 from steve collins on Vimeo.

the first section explores some of the issues in history and religion [first clip is from 'protect and survive'], and then we head into the church [donning surgical masks]:

grace - contamination 2 from steve collins on Vimeo.

after the doctor who clip [from 'the empty child'] we play 'purity pairs', which shows that biblical ideas on clean and unclean were not static:

grace - contamination 3 from steve collins on Vimeo.

and then the service moves to its climax with the torn curtain and the taking off of our own righteousness:

grace - contamination 4 from steve collins on Vimeo.

and here's ozzie the disco dog in the cafe afterwards [it's so lynda can see him in the dark]

disco dog from steve collins on Vimeo.

Comments

[Christine Sine]

Steve,
I much appreciate this link. Tom was recently together with Jonny Baker and we have talked for years about the creative things that are being done at Grace. I am particularly interested in the use of ritual and liturgy though probably not quite like this.
Blessings