Ecce Homo - Pablo Pakula | BUZZCUT Festival

In this one-off and time-responsive piece Pablo Pakula will prepare and consume a black pudding made from his own blood.

Located under the long shadow cast by the AIDS crisis, the work is not just a re-imagining of the Christian eucharist but also draws on the figure of the sin-eater, one who consumes the sins and sorrows of the dead. A ritual in the Celtic tradition that peaked between the 17th to 19th century, in this practice a person would eat a meal of bread and beer in the presence of the recently deceased – symbolically taking on their sins and absolving the soul for passage into heaven.

The title, Latin for “behold the man”, recalls Pontius Pilate’s words as he presented the scourged Christ to the crowd; words which emphasised Christ’s humiliated human condition. In Christian spirituality, this moment and the words “Ecce Homo” became a site of meditation…