Rites of power, rites of labour, rites that will disillusion and reenchant. Taking our lead from the frenzied liturgies of club culture, the object-oriented rituals of Fluxus and the mysterious masked dances of Japan and Bulgaria, tonight will explore the paradoxical relationship between art, sound and ceremony.

Classic text scores by La Monte Young (Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc., 1960) and Alison Knowles (Work for Wounded Furniture, 1965) and a live set from celebrated duo O YAMA O will coax objects into sounding, delivering the kiss of life to our thingy brethren.

An assembly & Musarc performing La Monte Young and Alison Knowles. Image: Dawid Laskowski

History’s great store of discarded rituals are mined in Heleen van Haegenborgh’s Material Affordance (2019) – in which a huddled mass, armed solely with recorders and a head full of medieval tunes, shuffle around like a lost Crusader battalion – and Ulrike Ottinger’s alarming short film Superbia, in which a grotesque parade of fat bankers and venal overlords are scooped up and dumped in a German industrial wasteland.

O YAMA O performing at LCMF 2019. Image: Dawid Laskwoski

The night contains three enigmatic new commissions, all of which leapfrog the present and reconnect with older practices of spelling, mantra-making and conjuring: celebrated artist Cerith Wyn Evans nodding to Gagaku and mythical performances of James Lee Byars, poet Bhanu Kapil and artist Rohini Kapil at the orchard's verge, dreaming and grieving within an environment of 'wetness, mud, and the memory of citrus orchards in other parts of the world and in other times', and composer Alwynne Pritchard drawing on drag performance, butoh, dream states and hypnosis in her composition for pianist Zubin Kanga, Heart of Glass.

Image by Rohini Kapil, from A BAD LEISURE

Offering a rare glimpse of the astonishing folkloric ceremonies of Bulgaria (see image at the top of the page), we welcome the Kukeri Group from the village of Mogila. Equipped with bells, pipes and extraordinary homemade masks and costumes, they specialise in the ‘Ploughing, Sowing and Threshing’ rituals, restorative rites that will ward of evil spirits and usher in fertility for the land, people, animals, heart and spirit.

Chino Amobi performing at LCMF 2019. Image: Dawid Laskowski

To end a visit by the co-founder of NON Worldwide – a cross-continental network of artists of the African diaspora – and one of the most multifaceted electronic artists of his generation. Chino Amobi is celebrated for his alchemical work with the sounds and practices of everything from grime and techno to black metal and ambient. He has also written his first novel EROICA (2019), and it is this collage of history, myth and sacred text that is the starting point for his special new live set for LCMF 2019.