SPECIAL GUESTS INCLUDE
Alfie Bown is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Culture and Technology in the Department of Digital Humanities. His research focuses on psychoanalysis, digital media and popular culture. His books include Dream Lovers (Pluto, 2022), an investigation into dating apps, sexbots and virtual relationships, Post-Comedy (Polity, 2024), Post-Memes (Punctum, 2019) and The Playstation Dreamworld (Polity, 2017), a psychoanalytic study of video games which is available in Spanish, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovak and many other languages. Currently, he is working on the relationship between psychoanalysis and cybernetics. He is also editor of Everyday Analysis, a pamphlet house and monthly talk series and is a writer/producer for The Magician's Niece.
Kate Burgess is a doctor who has been working closely with me for the past few years. Ever since she did Atheism for Lent, Kate took a passionate interest in the work and world of pyrotheology and quickly consumed everything she could. Since then she has been leading studies and facilitating online groups.
Nicole’s martial arts career spans 24 years. She currently holds the rank of 5th degree black belt.and placed 4th in fighting in the women’s division of the world championships.Nicole’s presentation style is a combination of live demos, humorous stories, and analysis on the mind and spirit connections of martial arts, including psychoanalytic theory.
Duke Special has released 17 albums and EPs, toured all over the world and has been involved in a diverse array of other projects, including writing the music for Deborah Warner’s critically acclaimed 2009 production of Mother Courage and Her Children at London’s National Theatre and being commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to write a series of original songs based on photographs for their exhibition of the photographers Stieglitz, Steichen and Strand.
Kevin Crouse is an emerging church practitioner, community creator, social entrepreneur and coffee professional. He continues to reach back into his fundamentalist origins and teaches at Grace Christian University a course now named, “Ministry After Postmodernity.” He is currently exploring what it might mean to lean into a Metamodern Christianity influenced by ideas of Pyrotheology.
Bethany Garner is a longtime improv performer with ComedySportz in Portland, Oregon, where she plays, referees, and teaches. She’s also performed with ComedySportz theaters across the country and in the UK. Bethany believes improv is more than comedy—it’s a life practice that builds presence, mindfulness, and self-discovery, both onstage and off. She will also happily discuss all things Taylor Swift at any time.
Henrike Gootjes is an artist and regenerative strategist from the Netherlands, holds a Fine Art degree from Minerva, Groningen, and a Master's degree from ArtEZ. With international experience in arts, education, reconciliation, and ecology work, she applies an artistic methodology to enable regenerative processes and activate system change. She is the author of Regeneration, a critical examination into structures of power and a radical approach to reversing intertwined crises and initiating restorative processes.
Cadell Last is a philosopher with a background in anthropology, history and complexity studies. He is the founder of Philosophy Portal and the author of Global Brain Singularity and Real Speculations.
Ciaran Lavery is an Irish award winning, multi-nominated singer-songwriter and musician that has released four albums with over 150 million streams to date. Lavery’s music has been nominated four times at the NI Music Prize, winning album of the year in 2016, as well as being nominated for the Hot Press Magazine ‘album of the year’ and ‘single of the year’. Previously, he has been named as the Hot Press magazine 'One to Watch’.
Joshua Lawrence is a pastor, theologian, and scholar whose work brings together political theology, psychoanalysis, critical theory, and questions of race, subjectivity, and religion. He serves as Minister of Worship & Congregational Life at First-St. Andrew’s United Church, where his ministry is rooted in preaching, worship, pastoral care, and theological reflection. His work explores how faith communities can reckon honestly with identity, justice, lack, and liberation without rushing too quickly toward easy reconciliation.
Sawyer Macres is a filmmaker, improv performer, and community organizer. He has a background in philosophy and psychoanalysis and runs a group called Negative Space in Colorado, U.S. which - he claims - is his failed attempt at pyrotheology in practice.
Leonie McDonagh is founding member and director of ponydance, with a focus on marrying comedy and dance theatre. In 2014 she was choreographer in residence at the American Dance Festival and was associate artist at the MAC, Belfast. Leonie studied dance at Middlesex University, Sallynoggin College and London Contemporary Dance School. She has been granted several bursaries in professional development from Arts Council Ireland and Northern Ireland. In 2016 she was commissioned by Belfast International Festival to make her first solo show, which was supported by Belfast City Council and presented at Holland Dance Festival. With ponydance, she has produced numerous full scale productions. She also works as a facilitator for community projects in dance, movement and as a freelance choreographer and performer.
Julie Reshe is a Ukrainian philosopher who has developed a theory and technology under the name of negative psychoanalysis. She is a professor at the School of Advanced Studies (SAS) at the University of Tyumen in Siberia, and director of the Institute of Psychoanalysis at the Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS).
Helen Rollins is a writer, filmmaker and public intellectual who has worked on various award-winning projects. She lectures and writes across topics related to film and psychoanalysis. She has been a co-host on two philosophy podcasts and has a book on film theory (Psychocinema) with Polity.
Barry Taylor is writer, speaker and public intellectual as well as the chair of theology for GCAS .His work focuses on the intersections between religion, theology and culture, with a particular emphasis on the impact and interplay of contemporary digital life on religion and belief (particularly Western Christianity).
WAKE | Program
SUNDAY 17TH MAY
7:00PM | REGISTRATION | THE BARGE
Wake used to start on the Monday, but people would infomrally congregate on the Sunday evening, so we eventually incorporated that into the official program and made it into our registration event. Now people informally hangout on the Saturday night, which we will eventually incorporate. By around 2050 Wake will be about 3 months long.
MONDAY 18TH MAY
10 | COFFEE | NATIVE
For people who want to grab a coffee before heading to the first event, we’ll be hanging out at a beautiful outdoor coffee shop by the Lagan river, just a couple of minutes walk from Wake HQ.
11 | MOURNING SERVICE | THE WAKE OF GOD | FIRST CHURCH
For three of the days, Wake will begine with a type of church service coposed of three parts,
Liturgy
Decentering practice
Communion
This opening service turns toward the death of God: not simply as atheism, disbelief, or the collapse of religious doctrine, but as the loss of the fantasy that there is some ultimate guarantee behind existence. Here, the death of God names the disappearance of the One who would make everything whole, meaningful, and secure. Rather than filling this absence, the service invites us to dwell within it
13 | LUNCH
For lunch there are a lot of great local spots, or you can grab something and eat it back at The Barge.
14:3 | EVERYDAY ANALYSIS | ALFIE BOWN | THE BARGE
These sessions discuss the power or humor and the power of failure and their ability to help us overcome despair as humans who suffer. While tragedy is assossiated with seriousness and comedy with lightness and positivity, we rethink both as mechanisms for dealing differently with lack. Does the comedian face lack differently to the tragic or melancholic? We discuss these questions via psychoanalysis with examples of comedy and tragedy from the history of literature.
16 | BREAK
16:3 | NEGATIVE ANALYSIS | JULIE RESHE | THE BARGE
For Julie’s first session, she will present her vision of Feminist Satanism. A vision that challenges the way that traditional christianity privileges creation, ascent, redemption, and divine creativity, in favor of an approach that explores destruction as the more primordial force. As an abyssal pulse through which life, love, subjectivity, and relation emerge. Here love is not redemptive but monstrous, maternal, sacrificial, and annihilating, something that is expressed in the figure of the Devil Mother, a symbol of shared suffering, unredeemed negativity, and the dark ritual of existence itself.
17:3 | DINNER
19:3 | IT’S A MIRACLE | HELEN AND PETER | THE BARGE
Before the documentary showing, I’ll sit down with Helen to discuss the philosophical themes being explored through the life of Steve Peters
21 | GOD’S NOT READY FOR ME YET | HELEN ROLLINS | THE BARGE
A lyrical, poetic biographical film exploring the extraordinary life and work of AIDS-era minister Rev. Steve Pieters whose improbable story of survival and whose radical compassion and cultural impact raise a provocative question: what really constitutes a miracle and could Steve's singular, deeply human life be worthy of sanctification?
TUESDAY 19TH MAY
10 | COFFEE | NATIVE
If you don’t fancy Native, some of the other great coffee shops in the area include Est, Neighbourhood and Trait.
11 | MOURNING SERVICE | THE GIFT OF NOTHING | FIRST CHURCH
The second service explores how lack is not simply a private wound, but the very basis of the social bond. Rather than imagining community as something built around shared identity, common belief, or collective certainty, this gathering asks what it would mean to be bound together by what none of us possesses. At the centre of the service is the image of Christ crucified. An image of one who offers, in the most radical sense, his own lack.
13 | LUNCH
For lunch there are a lot of great local spots, or you can grab something and eat it back at The Barge.
14:3 | EVERYDAY ANALYSIS | ALFIE BOWN | THE BARGE
16 | BREAK
16:3 | NEGATIVE ANALYSIS | JULIE RESHE | THE BARGE
This talk approaches existence through the perspective of entropy, where the maternal appears as a central figure of death rather than life. The mother embodies a form of shared dying that passes through bodies and relations. Love emerges here as entropic, inseparable from loss, a force that binds through the work of undoing.
17:3 | DINNER
19:3 | WHAT ARE YOU FIGHTING? | NICOLE | THE BARGE
Through a series of demonstrations and conversations, fifth degree black belt in Uechi Ryu karate, Nicole, will discuss the alignment and divergent points of psychoanalysis and martial arts theory and practice.
21 | MANIQUINNED | SAWYER MACRES | THE BARGE
In a world where people where people sometimes turn into mannequins, Ally struggles to maintain a relationship with her boyfriend Tom.
WEDNESDAY 20TH MAY
10 | BUS TO THE OLD INN | NATIVE
This is where we’re getting picked up for our day away. Don’t be late!
10:3 | COFFEE | LOAF
First coffee is on us this morning, at the beautiful little coffee shop in the village of Crawfordsburn.
11 | The Clusterfuck & The Compost Heap | HENRIKE GOOTJES | GALLERY
This workship is a practical cousin of Pyrotheology: not a burning down, but a compos(t)ing. taking what is broken, exhausted or stuck, and finding in it the material for something new. Bring an idea you're tired of carrying. Use your hands and whatever material is in front of you and leave with something you couldn't have imagined walking in. No skills required. No product promised. Just attention, friction, and matter.
OR
11 | Pyrotheology in a Time Between Worlds | KEVIN CROUSE | LEWIS SUITE
Many of us have experienced deconstruction as a kind of luminous darkness—a space in which to strike a match and ask what should burn and what might remain. Drawing on thinkers engaging with the so-called “meaning crisis,” or perhaps a broader “polycrisis,” Kevin will explore voices wrestling with the limits of postmodernity. Is something new emerging, or are we being called to construct something beyond the ashes?
11:45 | Comedy to Communion | Bethany garner | gallery
Most folks automatically associate improv with comedy and performance and being on a stage in front of people. But improv is more than just an act on a stage - it’s a mindset, it’s a skill, it’s a way of navigating through life. Let’s have some fun playing a couple of games as a group and exploring a few ways improv could serve as a decentering practice or even, dare I say, an act of communion. (And a note just in case the word “improv” sounds intimidating or scary - nothing during this session will be performance based or involve having to stand up in front of the group on your own, I promise!)
OR
11:45 | Lack, Projection, and the Fiction of Whiteness | JOSHUA lawrence | LEWIS SUITE
This talk brings psychoanalysis, Black studies, and radical theology into conversation in order to examine the tension between Pyrotheology’s critique of fixed identity and the lived reality of Blackness as a racial designation. The talk asks how racial identity can be held as both penultimate and necessary: a site of resistance, solidarity, and survival, without becoming an ultimate foundation. In doing so, it challenges white practitioners of radical theology to discern the difference between genuine liberation from identity and the premature deconstruction of identities whose material weight they have not had to bear.
12:15 | LUNCH | MEET AT RECEPTION
Lunch will be provided today, from by a dear friend of Wake’s, sandwich Jonny. jonny has come along to a few Wake things in the past, and has also provided food. If you want a good conversation about music, football, local politics and much more, introduce yourself.
13:3 | FUTURE CHURCH | KATE BURGESS AND PETER | GALLERY
In this session I’ll be sitting down with Kate to discuss some plans for the future of pyrotheology. We will be laying out a vision for this growing movement and next steps.
15 | FOREST WALK OR FIRESIDE DRINK | RECEPTION/BAR
For those who would like to walk around the forest and see the waterfall, this is your chance. Otherwise people will be hanging out in the bar.
17 | PIZZA | LOAF
We’ll gather at a beautiful little cottage/coffee shop to have handmade artisan pizzas, baked in their wood-fired oven.
18 | BUS BACK TO BELFAST | HOTEL RECEPTION
19:3 | HYMNS TO NOTHING | BARRY TAYLOR | FIRST CHURCH
Barry’s talk explores the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a way of reflecting on two types of sacred music,. That which offers comfort, sedation and control, compared to that which embodies loss, lament and existential despair. Moving between storytelling, theological reflection, and live songs, Barry will look at how music can move from an attempt to escape suffering towards the idea of giving voice to it. The evening invites us into the tension between song as enchantment and song as lament, asking what remains when music can no longer rescue us, but can still help us bear the unbearable.
21 | DANCE PARTY | PHIL | THE BARGE
THURSDAY 21ST MAY
10 | COFFEE | NATIVE
Last chance to grab a morning coffee with everyone.
11 | MOURNING SERVICE | LIFE AFTER DEATH | FIRST CHURCH
The final service asks what it might mean to live, not after biological death, but after the death of the fantasy of wholeness. This is life after fundamental loss, life after castration, life after the recognition that there is no final object, no complete self, no hidden fullness that would heal the wound of existence. Yet this loss is not the end of life; it is the condition for another kind of life to begin. The service explores how we might move from the attempt to deny lack toward a life shaped by it. What emerges is not redemption from loss, but a form of life made possible by dwelling trasparently in it.
13 | LUNCH
14 | ROSY CROSS | CADELL LAST | THE BARGE
In this talk, Cadell will explore the philosophical and theological tensions at the heart of Rosy Cross, an ambitious work that brings together Hegelian philosophy, radical theology, and contemporary political thought. Moving between questions of right (how we organize social and political life) and the truth of Christianity, the text examines a world in which all stable values are breaking down, where freedom, love, and even God no longer provide secure foundations but instead reveal their own instability. Drawing on the tradition of Christian atheism, it proposes that this collapse is not something to be feared but confronted: a moment in which we are called to face the “becoming other” of everything we rely upon, including ourselves. What emerges is a vision of faith not as certainty, but as the courage to live without guarantees. To find freedom, love, and collective meaning within the very contradictions that define our existence.
15:3 | BREAK
16 | WHAT DOES THE DIVINE OTHER WANT | PETER ROLLINS | THE BARGE
Moving from the intimate structure of dreams to the sweeping narrative of the Bible, this talk asks: what does the divine Other want? The covenants attempt to answer, offering meaning and direction, yet something always escapes, generating a restless movement of failure and renewal. The turning point comes in the figure of Christ, where the question itself is transformed. No longer about satisfying a complete Other, but confronting a divided one. What emerges is not a new rule to follow, but a radical freedom: the possibility of living, and even finding joy, within the very impossibility of ever fully meeting the demand placed upon us.
17:3 | DINNER | JOHN LONGS
We’ll begin the evening at Belfast’s oldest fish and chip shop, that has been serving fish suppers since 1914. From this historic starting point, we’ll share some food. Once everyone has lined their stomachs, we will be moving on to one of how most hallowed traditions.
18:3 | PUB CRAWL | STARTS AT JOHN LONGS
The pub crawl has become one the most sacred tradition at Wake. Part pilgrimage, part mischief, part communion, the night will move through Belfast’s streets and bars. In case you get lost, here are the bars: The Crown > Kelly’s > White’s Tavern > Duke of York > McHughs.
21:3 | PUB QUIZZ | LEONIE MCDONAGH | THE BARGE
To finish off the night dear friend of Wake, comedian, dancer and builder Leonie, will be heading up a pub quiz, full of, mostly disappointing, prizes.
FRIDAY 22ND MAY - BOLT-ON
11 | SUPER EXCLUSIVE, EXTRA FANCY, VIP BREAKFAST
For those who were kind enough to purchase the bolt-on, we’ll be having a home cooked Ulster Fry together, along with glazed donuts, fresh orange juice, espresso drinks and Mimosas.