Vessels
Premiers May 2027
“In a post-apocalyptic world, the last remaining bodies, once called human, now exist as Vessels or carriers. Their flesh, once animated by desire and instinct, has become an archive of an ancient world. Connected to an immense machine, these bodies carry the last traces of memory: fragments of a planet slowly drifting into oblivion.
When the portal between the spirit world and the material world was torn open, the collapse began. Technologies absorbed spirits; spirits infected data. Memories of hope, resistance, and connection became the most valuable resource- the last material that could still be extracted, consumed, and traded.
These bodies became factories of harvested memory: channels through which the machine feeds and is fed. The machine is a relic of the world that came before, a residue of governmental failure. Over time, the cyclical history of that world corrupted human bodies.
Their forms began to mutate, twisting into hybrid beings: half spirit, half data, almost
forgotten.”
photo by
Jakub Michal Teringa
Vessels is a new performance by Joshua Serafin that explores ancestry, memory, spirituality, and ecological collapse through a speculative, post-apocalyptic world.
The work imagines the last remaining human bodies as "vessels": carriers connected to a vast machine that extracts and consumes memory as its final resource. As the boundaries between the spirit world and the material world dissolve, bodies mutate into hybrid beings - part spirit, part data - inhabiting a landscape shaped by colonial violence, environmental devastation, and technological extraction.
Drawing from Joshua Serafin's artistic research across the Philippines, Japan, and Brazil, Vessels investigates how bodies can become mediums for ancestral spirits and repositories of collective memory. Combining choreography, ritual, masks, and speculative fiction, the performance reflects on remembrance as an act of resistance and asks how we might reconnect with our ancestors, one another, and the living world in the face of systemic collapse.
Choreography Joshua Serafin
Performers Jasper Narvaez, Yen-Ching Lin
Scenography Ausgang Studio
Costumes and mask Nagi Gianni
Light Designer/ technical coordinator Emilio Cordero Checa
Sound Designer Marc Appart
Dramaturgy Dries Douibi
Movement coach/Outside eye Rasa Alksnyte
Executive Production Caravan Production
Coproductions Viernulvier, KAAP, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, HAU, Beursschoouwburg,
Theater Rotterdam, C-takt via Caravan, Workspacesbrussels
Residency Support Workspacesbrussels, Viernulvier, KAAP
With the support of the Flemish Authorities