Mystical Musical Performance
A Soul’s Journey is a mystical and esoteric performance blending theatrical musicality, poetic storytelling, ritual symbolism, and experimental composition into an immersive contemplative experience exploring soul remembrance, spiritual transformation, and identity beyond linear time.
Combining classical, theatrical, ambient, and experimental music with poetic text, improvisation, humor, and symbolic imagery, the work unfolds through rich orchestral passages, meditative stillness, and moments of emotional intensity. Adorned in self-made zero-waste costumes and ritual-inspired garments, Stephanie Smit moves between performance, invocation, storytelling, and symbolic embodiment.
The performance creates an atmosphere suspended between ceremony, dream, memory, and theatrical ritual — inviting audiences into an emotional landscape shaped by rupture, longing, recognition, transformation, and return.
Ritual, Symbolism, and Soul Memory
At its core, A Soul’s Journey explores the shock of remembrance: moments of sudden recognition that destabilize identity, dissolve linear notions of time, and awaken dormant emotional or symbolic connections between souls.
Within the work, encounters between individuals function as initiatory thresholds — experiences capable of triggering transformation through intimacy, mirroring, separation, loss, and reconnection. What initially appears as disruption gradually reveals itself as part of a larger process of integration and self-remembrance.
Resonating with echoes of ancient churches, sacred spaces, mystical traditions, and symbolic ritual, the performance also reflects on spiritual knowledge hidden beneath religious structures, mythology, coded artistic language, and cultural memory.
Themes of queerness, devotion, embodiment, forbidden longing, spiritual repression, and emotional transcendence move throughout the work as symbolic undercurrents rather than direct narrative statements, allowing mythology, desire, spirituality, and identity to merge into a fluid symbolic landscape.
Performance, Identity, and Transformation
Blurring the boundaries between concert, ritual, theatre, mystical lecture, and conceptual performance art, A Soul’s Journey positions performance itself as a transformational and philosophical space.
Rather than presenting fixed conclusions, the work invites audiences into a shared emotional and symbolic experience exploring consciousness, soul continuity, memory, artistic identity, and spiritual awakening.
Humor, vulnerability, intensity, beauty, absurdity, and transcendence coexist throughout the performance, mirroring the contradictions and fragmentation of contemporary spiritual and emotional life.
The performance forms part of Stephanie Smit’s broader Reality Cult artistic research practice investigating reincarnation, symbolic identity, cultural continuity, mythology, and collective memory through interdisciplinary artistic forms.
Harvard Divinity School and Occulture Conference
A Soul’s Journey was presented during the 2025 Conference: Spirituality and the Arts at Harvard Divinity School, where the performance formed part of an international gathering exploring spirituality, contemplative practice, philosophy, artistic research, and expanded approaches to consciousness and culture.
The work was also presented at Occulture Conference Berlin and Hypertrove at SIGN Projectspace during ESNS Noorderslag Groningen ’25.
Following the Harvard Divinity School presentation, Stephanie Smit became part of the Vision Lab collective — an interdisciplinary arts and research network originally founded at Harvard Divinity School exploring consciousness, symbolism, spirituality, artistic research, and cultural transformation through collaborative exchange between artists, scholars, contemplative practitioners, and interdisciplinary researchers.
Watch the Full Performance
Frequently Asked Questions
What is A Soul’s Journey?
A Soul’s Journey is an esoteric musical performance by Stephanie Smit (Giek) combining theatrical music, poetry, ritual, symbolism, spirituality, and performance art into an immersive exploration of soul remembrance, identity, transformation, and consciousness.
Is A Soul’s Journey a concert, theatre piece, or ritual performance?
The work intentionally exists between concert, conceptual performance art, ritual, mystical storytelling, theatre, and interdisciplinary artistic research.
What themes are explored in the performance?
The performance explores soul continuity, remembrance, mythology, spirituality, symbolic identity, emotional transformation, queerness, longing, devotion, memory, and the relationship between consciousness and artistic expression.
What role does spirituality play in the work?
Spirituality functions as an experiential and symbolic framework throughout the performance rather than as fixed doctrine. The work draws inspiration from mysticism, ritual, mythology, contemplative traditions, and symbolic storytelling.
What is artistic reincarnation research?
Artistic reincarnation research is Stephanie Smit’s interdisciplinary artistic practice exploring reincarnation, symbolic memory, soul lineage, mythology, cultural continuity, and recurring identity patterns through art, astrology, symbolism, performance, and historical analysis.
Where has A Soul’s Journey been presented?
The performance has been presented at Harvard Divinity School’s 2025 Conference: Spirituality and the Arts, Occulture Conference Berlin, and Hypertrove at SIGN Projectspace during ESNS Noorderslag Groningen ’25.
What is Reality Cult?
Reality Cult is an artistic research platform founded by Stephanie Smit (Giek), exploring reincarnation, symbolic identity, mythology, spirituality, consciousness, cultural continuity, and soul lineage research through performance, visual art, writing, astrology, audiovisual work, and interdisciplinary artistic practice.
Leave a Reply