"Popcorn" explores play as a ritual structure through which collective memory is activated. Drawing from a pre-Hispanic children's game in which ears of corn were placed over hot coals and the popping kernels were caught before they touched the ground, the performance reconsiders this simple gesture as a space where play, chance, and ritual converge.
Rather than reconstructing a historical practice, the work reactivates its underlying logic within a contemporary context. The ritual is displaced into the present, suggesting that ancestral forms of knowledge do not disappear but persist through gestures capable of being continuously reimagined.
At the centre of the performance is a hand-built ceramic vessel in which popcorn is prepared live. As the kernels burst, the audience is invited to catch them in midair, transforming spectators into participants. The performance unfolds through anticipation, collective attention, and the unpredictable rhythm of the popping corn, where every movement depends on presence, timing, and chance.
Corn, one of the foundational materials of Mesoamerican cosmology, functions here not only as food but as a living carrier of cultural memory. Through the transformation of heat into movement, and of movement into play, the work proposes ritual as an open, participatory experience rather than a fixed ceremonial form.
"Popcorn" extends my ongoing investigation into ritual as a living practice, proposing play as a space where memory, community, and embodied knowledge can be collectively rehearsed and continually transformed.