SHRINE OF THE GOAT | London Festival of Architecture
10 – 12 June 2022
Hidden within the bizarre dystopian world that is the Shrine of the Goat lies a fragile environment. The goats appear to have control but are they protecting it or taking it over? Tiny morsels of plant life remain in the hope that one day they will thrive once again.
Live performance meets VR meets installation and imagination. And goats.
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us for an extraordinary weekend, immersed in the Shrine of the Goat for London Festival of Architecture.
This was another fantastic collaboration with performance artist, theatre director and curator Jacek Ludwig Scarso, and architectural visualisation studio AVR London, which evolved and grew through conversations and a shared desire to combine multiple disciplines within the arts to bring something unique and magical to an audience.
Building on previous collaborations performed at Tate Modern, Shrine of the Goat merged theatrical live scenes with music and an integrated VR Performance, responding to the unique site of The Old Chapel and creating a dreamscape where visitors and performers could intermingle. Physically and virtually immersed in a surreal habitat, visitors were confronted with the image of goats as a poignant metaphor for stubborn resilience and an unpredictable future.
Playful, bizarre and mysterious, Shrine of the Goat was a direct response to LFA‘s theme of ‘act’, using performance as a vehicle to interact with the idea of architecture as spectacle, and to poetically reflect on the fragility of an urbanised ecosystem.
We were delighted to welcome over 100 visitors across the weekend, and loved seeing and hearing your responses to the piece – amazing, bizarre, intriguing and moving amongst the descriptions – with all visitors agreeing it was an unforgettable experience like no other, transporting them to an alternate world through performance and Virtual Reality.
We look forward to seeing where the goats take over next…
VR Experience by AVR London
With thanks to performers Riccardo Cracco, Iva Lazarova, Pablo Gomez Rodriguez, Anastasia Toumpourou, Joaquim Lopes Alves, Karol D’Amico, Alex Reinbothe, Alexandru Fieraru, Erfan Mousavi, Eleonora Salbaroli & Katharina Takacs.
Special guest soprano Maya Sapone.
Shrine of the Goat is part of a series of collaborations between Jacek Ludwig Scarso, Anise Gallery and AVR London, originally launched at Tate Modern in 2020 with The Pecking Order (Aesthetica Prize selection 2021). In partnership with CREATURE, Research Centre for Creative Arts, Cultures and Engagement, London Metropolitan University, and Fondazione Marta Czok (Rome/Venice).
