Future Ritual is a practice of gathering, curating and organising. We collaborate with artists to create contemporary expressions of performance and ritual, working to support the emergence of new and more attuned cultures. 

We are based in Peckham (London) and work from STUDIO: Future Ritual.


get in touch

producing@futureritual.co.uk or join our mailing list




News


STUDIO Residents wanted, deadline 31 May

Join our community of practice at STUDIO: Future Ritual, a new space for gathering, performance and embodied practice in Peckham.

> full call out
> about STUDIO

DISCHARGE
Saturday 18 July

A sanctuary of sickness with short sharp performances, hosted by IKLECTIK (Peckham).

> event info + tickets

Watch Our Work
 
Some of the performances, projects and events we have worked on are available to watch online
> watch









zack mennell, (para)site: a sea change, 2026. Still from video by Baiba Sprance and Marco Berardi.


zack mennell

COMMON HOST


This was a multi-stranded project by zack mennell, delivered in 2025 and 2026. Continuing zack’s psychogeographic explorations of the river Thames and adjoining landscapes, the project took the forms of: performance, with Rage Reactor, a new work commissioned by DaDa Fest: International and DUCKIE; film, with (para)site: a sea change, made in collaboration with Baiba Sprance, Marco Berardi and Leon Clowes; a public programme, COMMON HOST, situating ancient folk customs in new relation to the post-industrial landscapes of London, Essex and Kent; and a workshop, contaminated materials, exploring the transformation of relationships with difficulty through performance.

(para)site: a sea change is supported with DaDaFest International’s 2025 Live Art Commission and with public funds by Arts Council England. Further support towards the project has been given by Duckie. The project is produced by Future Ritual.

COMMON HOST

gathering the parasitic (un)natural

A weekend convened by zack mennell. Working with strange archetypes and inviting in odd beings, the gathering explores practices such as mumming, situating these ancient folk customs in new relation to the post-industrial landscapes of London and Essex.

In COMMON HOST, zack gathers their artistic community around these ideas - the exhibited works and performances reflect a plurality of responses to folklore, environmental degradation, industrial legacy and cultural inheritance. Across the weekend, readings of these different responses mutate in relation to one another, the gathering host to many parasitic practices.

Participating Artists
The programme features Julia Bardsley, Selena Chandler, Leon Clowes, Nathalie Coste, Ewan Hindes, Ella Johnston, Fenia Kotsopoulou, Ash McNaughton, Andrea Mindel, Jo Morrison, Martin O’Brien, Pianka Pärna, Baiba Sprance and Marco Berardi, Manuel Vason and Chanel Vegas.

> Artist Index: zack mennell


Key Info
Fri 13 - Sun 15 March 2026 | tickets

Safehouse 1 & 2, 139 Copeland Rd, London SE15 3SN


Further Information
Press: abstrakt@abstraktpublicity.co.uk
Producing: producing@futureritual.co.uk


Press
> The Guardian: ‘The smell wasn’t healthy’: the artist who wore 24 nappies to highlight sewage pollution – and fell ill
> Run Riot: ‘COMMON HOST’ convenes ecology, folklore and lived experience through film and performance art
> A Young(ish) Perspective: In conversation with zack mennell


programme


COMMON HOST is rooted in the landscapes of the Thames Estuary, especially Thurrock, a terrain marked by centuries of human intervention, industry, trade and decline. Retail parks and housing estates are built over historic sites; chalklands are cut through with ancient deneholes; quarries gape like hungry maws; rubbish rises from landfill burial grounds; animals and plants reclaim former sites of industry as collapsing structures become their unlikely new homes.

Drawing on folklore, archaeology, and contemporary mythmaking, zack mennell imagines a series of mutant, cryptid beings emerging from the sites where human structures have been overtaken by natural processes. In these overlapping layers of prehistoric ritual, imperial ambition, industrial collapse and ecological crisis, zack’s strange beings corrode temporal boundaries. 

Ancient belief systems infect new ruins; mystical residues leak into the infrastructure of late capitalism; industrial sites are revealed as the vacated flesh of Empire; and the Estuary's pylons, quarries and riverbed are haunted by cruising creatures, corrupted gods and half-remembered rituals - signals from past and future worlds, flickering within the present.

COMMON HOST is the final element of a wider project by zack, deepening their exploration of difficult ecological and personal legacies through performance, film and workshop activities. These works explore the resonances between zack’s experiences of madness and institution and the wider climate of political hostility to disabled, neurodivergent, queer and working-class communities.  




zack mennell, (para)site: a sea change, 2026. Still from video by Baiba Sprance and Marco Berardi.
(para)site

a sea change


a performance to camera made with Leon Clowes, Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi

Drawing on folklore, archaeology, and contemporary mythmaking, zack mennell imagines a series of mutant, cryptid beings emerging from the sites where human structures have been overtaken by natural processes. In these overlapping layers of prehistoric ritual, imperial ambition, industrial collapse and ecological crisis, zack’s strange beings corrode temporal boundaries.

This new work will be premiered during the COMMON HOST weekend. 






zack mennell, Bradwell Power Station, 2025. 

DaDaFest Live Art Commission 2025Rage Reactor
As part of the common host project, zack developed a new durational performand and installation, Rage Reactor, with performances at DUCKIE and DaDa Fest: International.

Rage Reactor contemplates care, estrangement, containment, and heritage. The work explores the long half-life of generational trauma, asking how its invisible legacy might be honoured and its cycle broken.

Performance artist zack mennell invites you into a strange world where the material remnants of childhood collide with the visual culture of the civil nuclear industry. In entangling their memories with the environmental and social damage caused by nuclear power, zack creates a unique, poetic reflection on lineage and the generational cycles of trauma.

Combining humorous and odd image making with materials drawn from personal and social archives with intense physical action, zack asks: What does this leave us with? Where does this leave us? Where can we go from here?




Rage Reactor, zack mennell, DaDaFest International, Bluecoat, 2025. Photos by Tom Horton.