In a world where rituals are dying, alienated, overlooked and underscored, how can we tap into their power to transform present world order? Can rituals of transformation help us (re)-enchant the Mediterranean in confronting collective crises in a region of cataclysmic fragmentation? These questions are what grounds RITUAL, a physical manifestation of a rite of passage – something inherent in civilization long before societies spoke to each other.

As Professor Silvana Carotentuo writes about the work while collaborating with PONKS: “It is a ‘tunnel’, but it could be a viaduct, a walkway, a staircase, a train track, a subway station, a bridge, a gateway, all instruments marking connections and flows – here representation is a force, a mobile matter. The ‘receptacle’, indeed, is activated by another way of thinking, decentering and reconstructing the traversed territory in multiple interpretations, specifically deconstructing the time-space of its departure and arrival – what is its physical space, and where and how does it affect the mental space of the trespasser? It is primarily an expressive matter of intensity, a constant process, an endless transformation, opening and becoming ready for rhizomatic encounters.”

RITUAL is a travelling project by artist duo PONKS – French visual artist Julien Vinet and Maltese poet Sam Alekksandra working within the local context, with members of coastal Mediterranean communities, poets, sailors, residents, artists, craftsman and scholars to engage and reflect on rituals and challenge constructs of time, to engage  needed as a region in confronting 21st-century societal, environmental, and humanistic challenges.

The tunnel installation thus becomes a morphing, site-specific sacred space, an object for meeting and dialogue, and is activated through special programming. The artists invite poets and amateurs for nights of poetic interventions, produce workshops for children and the general public, and produce a series of poetic posters placed around the streets.