JMS is a curator, artist and creative producer. At the heart of these entangled practices is an understanding of performance art as a potent, contemporary modality of ritual. He / they draws on queer, ecological and esoteric thought to engage with the lost, the unseen, the forgotten. He understands his performances and films as thin places, as ceremony, as a way of practicing sensitivity, of reorienting attention and touching the more raw edges of experience.
As a curator, they activate spaces for collective encounter through Future Ritual, cultivating intergenerational exchange and artist-led research, experimentation and creation. Future Ritual is a long term curatorial, research and organising practice initiated in 2017.
Since 2024, Joseph has worked as Curator, Public Practice at Tate. Previous roles have included those at Live Art Development Agency, The Place and ]performance s p a c e[. JMS is also co-founder and co-director of VSSL studio.
Across all this work, Joseph remains committed to the live and embodied practices which welcome complexity, senstivity, tension and difficulty, and which call towards the more raw edges of experience.
Joseph lives in London (UK) but most often works in dialogue with the wet, windy Pennine moors and Cumbrian fells of the English North West.
joseph@futureritual.co.uk
Instagram // Mailing ListSandra Johnston, Tiding, ]performance s p a c e[ at the church of St Augustine, Snave, 2022. Photo by Tristan Broers.
TIDING
Curated by Benjamin Sebastian and Joseph Morgan Schofield, and produced by ]performance s p a c e[. TIDING was supported by Ash McNaughton and Marcin Gawin. Presented at two historic sites of worship in Romney Marsh and Folkestone
The project was funded by ]performance s p a c e [, Kent County Council, Creative Folkestone and Roger De Haan Charitable Trust, and Kent Wildlife Trust.
Tiding, meaning a communication, or an announcement, or to drift with, or as if with, the force of the waves.
Tiding was a day of performance art taking place at two historic places of worship in Folkestone and Romney Marsh. Tiding was a celebration of the spring, the return of life after the retreats of winter and lockdown. Tiding also marked the last public programming ]performance s p a c e[ organised in Folkestone:
“]ps[ has made a home for performance art and artists on Tontine Street since 2016. We have organised festivals, hosted residencies, curated exhibitions, and worked in collaboration with our peers and communities. Across this time, we have remained in dialogue with the remarkable landscape of the Kent coast, and so it is fitting that Tiding occured at both the Parish Church of St Mary and St Eanswythe in Folkestone, and St Augustine’s at Snave, a remote church in Romney Marsh.
People have met to worship at St Mary and St Eanswythe since the 7th Century, and at Snave since the 13th Century. In inviting James, Kelvin, Léann, Lynn, Monstera, and Sandra to make works in dialgoue with these two old churches, we spoke about religion, and the histories of violence, exclusion and loss which these sites call in. At the same time, as we prepared the churches - negotiating space, sourcing materials, collecting dust - we thought about the spiritual funcitons of performance art - as a place for gathering, meditation, celebration and reflection. Thank you for joining us at Tiding.”
Participating artists: Sandra Johnston, Lynn Lu, James Jordan Johnson, Kelvin Atmadibrata, Monstera Deliciosa and Léann Herlihy.
> ]performance s p a c e[: Tiding
practices: curation / film / performance / writing
contexts: Future Ritual / Tate / VSSL studio / ]ps[
years: 2016 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 /