Footwashing as Revolutionary Care
Workshop with Gideon Payten-Griffiths
Gideon Payten-Griffiths is an Australian-Brittish interdisciplinary artist, actor and performer who works extensively across theatre, dance, live-art, and experimental performance. Based out of Sydney and London, they are a founding member of Ninefold, a Sydney-based physical theatre ensemble.
Payten-Griffiths (who uses he/they pronouns) specializes in site-specific, immersive, and highly experimental theatre. They frequently focus on performance art that utilizes the human body as both a physical and emotional landscape, exploring queer spaces, sensory storytelling, and unconventional contexts.
This is a workshop designed to deconstruct traditional hierarchies and reimagine masculinity through the lens of somatic, intentional service.
By taking an ancient ritual of hospitality and stripping away rigid dogma, this session invites us into a space of radical vulnerability, mutual care, and sensory grounding.
What We Will Explore
The Politics of Service: Moving from a culture of dominant "providers" to active, grounded partners in care.
Somatic Vulnerability: Confronting the discomfort, tenderness, and power of touching and being touched in a purely non-sexual, care-oriented setting.
Rewriting Strength: Discovering how holding space for another person's weariness can redefine true, resilient masculinity.
Workshop Flow
Grounding & Context: A brief exploration of footwashing as a historical tool of counter-cultural humility and community care.
The Ritual Practice: A guided, step-by-step partner practice utilizing warm water, essential oils, and focused presence.
Reflective Circle: A safe space to integrate the experience, share what surfaced during the exchange, and discuss how to bring this level of care into daily life.
Dr. Sebastian Job is an Australian cultural anthropologist, researcher, and academic who specializes in the study of entheogens (psychoactive substances used in a sacramental or spiritual context) and their intersection with ecology, politics, and Western psychology.
A core guiding interest in his modern research is how psychedelics can address the global ecological crisis. In publications like DMT, Ecocide, and the Western Psyche, he argues that entheogenic experiences can help dismantle the psychological and capitalistic defense mechanisms driving environmental destruction, offering an altered standpoint from which humanity can reconnect with the Earth.