- CollegeCentral Saint Martins
- CourseBA (Hons) Performance: Design and Practice
- Graduation year2025
https://www.shan-huai.com/holy-communion
What happens when belief becomes a habit?
Holy Communion explores the tension between conviction and convenience by replacing the bread and wine of communion with water and blue pills—a reference to The Matrix. The performance asks whether faith today is driven by inner conviction, or if it has quietly settled into habitual ritual—repeated out of comfort, not questioning.
In this work, a single participant is immersed in a cathedral-like VR space where traditional communion elements await. The audience, however, remains outside, watching fragmented projections spread across gauze screens. What they see is not sacred, but sterile: a stark white lab. The duality echoes Plato’s Cave—truth as shadow, as inheritance, as projection.
The piece was born in the wake of 2020, when even sacred rites like communion moved online. The shift revealed how quickly rituals adapt—and how easily mechanical faith takes root. When the sacred becomes routine, what are we really practicing?
Holy Communion doesn't reject faith. It interrogates its scaffolding: the repetition, the symbolism, and the fragile line between reverence and automation. Whether immersed in the headset or watching from the margins, this is a reality-check—one that lingers quietly between conviction and routine, mystery and clarity, presence and performance.
