What a Pythie, Pity, Pythea, Pitta ! - Hélène Martin

The Grand Burstin’s 13th-floor Bridal Suite mutates into a fringe oracle chamber—where ancient ritual meets off-season motel surrealism.

#Happening #Performance #Ritualised residency visit

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What a Pythie, Pity, Pythea, Pitta … is an experiment in radical hospitality, staged in the Bridal Suite of Folkestone’s Grand Burstin Hotel. Perched on the 13th floor, the room becomes an oracle chamber—a liminal space between past, present, and future.

Guests are invited to bring a suitcase (real or metaphorical), receive a cryptic consultation, and share the sea view, a pitta bread, or a moment of stillness. A fringe ritual of care (fringe trimming available upon request).

Participants may come with emotional baggage or leave it at the door. They might receive an oracle reading or just enjoy a Pitta bread on a napkin. They might witness a shadow cast, a breath held, a lens. There may be invisible wine from the mini bar. This project began as a seminar-installation and was chiselled down to its essentials. What remains is simple: a room with a view and a willingness to host. A desire to gather without spectacle. A portal, shaft past, present, and possible futures.

The host is the cast. A figure shaped by myth and media: part Pythia, part outcast, part breathless mask of Greek tragedy. She carries the aura of the Ostrakon (the exiled), the paradox of the Pharmakon (both cure and poison), and the shadow of Maya Deren, Belphegor. Echoes of Edith Scob in Eyes Without a Face flicker behind an LED mask, vaporiser* in hand, wanders through this ritual space on holiday. The conjuress does not offer answers—she poses questions instead, cloaked in mist and memory.

• How might we gather in a fractured world to cast new rituals of care, critique, and transformation?
• How might we co-mould a system that welcomes both friction and fusion—between exile and invitation?
• How might we hold space where casting isn’t spectacle, but sedimentation—rituals shaped in silence and residue?
• How might we reimagine radical hospitality as a fringe broadcast—chisel-sharp, clay-soft, suitcase-shaped?

You can find out about all participating artists >>
What Connects Us
What Divides Us
(Un)Imagined Futures

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