Washing strangers’ feet at Houghton Festival

It’s lunchtime on the Friday of Houghton Festival, and my thumb is in between a stranger’s toes. As I crouch down and splash water on his feet, and dust dribbles off onto a silver plate, he shows me his collection of Nintendo DS games. He’s got Mario Kart, Nintendogs and Animal Crossing, along with a host of other nostalgic classics and niche digs from the 2000s in a case that flips like a CD wallet. 

Around us are over 60 other people sitting in a circle, either washing or having their feet washed and massaged. Those cleaning are wearing all white, with some dressed in body-length white robes. We are all participating in Pedilavium, a group performance artwork conceived by artist Henry Krokatsis for the festival. I have never cleaned another person’s foot before, nor really had the urge to, but as I reminisce with a stranger over the hundreds of hours that I spent playing Pokémon as a pre-teen, there’s a joint moment of realisation that the moment isn’t about cleaning feet at all, but the people taking part.

Pedilavium is part of this year’s arts slate at Houghton, which since its first edition in 2017 has become one of Europe’s most important get togethers for underground electronic music, and increasingly a hotbed for a unique spread of visual art. There’s clean cut, industrial sculptures in festival director Craig Richards’s signature style, light art pioneer Chris Levine’s ​‘Full Beam’ show that saw festivalgoers gather round the lake for a laser show that was seen for miles away, Ryan Gander’s inflatable, play-like inflatable balls, as well as a new ​‘Water Tower’ pavilion built out of regenerative reedbed material. On top of that, daily tours run to Houghton Hall’s famed sculpture garden, which is highlighted by James Turrell’s  Skyspace installation.

With the festival hitting full swing on Friday afternoon, Pedilavium is a union of visual and performative art that evokes ancient human group ritual. It’s one of those experiences that feels hard to capture in 2026, in an era of ever-present digital communication, content and grind culture. According to the Newport Institute, one-in-three young adults report feeling lonely, and the two-hour session is a moment that celebrates human connection, while highlighting the power of festivals to bring people together. I chatted to Henry to find out more.

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Can you tell me about your background as an artist, and your history with Houghton Festival?

I trained as a painter at the Royal College of Art, then when I left, everything I made was object based. I use found materials and bankrupt materials – things that have been overlooked. At the very first Houghton Festival in 2017, they asked me to make a work, and I think they thought I was going to make a physical work, but making a solid, static piece when you have thousands of people who come together for this very short period of time and everything’s moving didn’t really feel like the right thing to me.

And because I use a lot of found materials, I respond a lot to what’s here. In a way the material is people, and their expectations and what they bring. I’ve made four or five different things there. In the first work we had a campervan and you sat between these two lovely women in a tight environment, and they just told you how amazing you were – they’d talk about how beautiful you looked and comment on your hair, things like that. In a short period of time, you’d start developing a radar for what’s actually going on with someone. They might be in a situation where they’re being put down by their partner or they might be having a really hard time, but they’ve come through it. The girls said in the beginning that they thought it was going to be quite a funny thing, but probably about 50% of people were in tears by the end. It’s also free, and being non-transactional is key, because pretty much everything we do is transactional. This is not – it’s a total stranger giving you time or telling you how wonderful you are.

What other pieces have you done?

We did one where you went into a large tent, you lay down and had a heart monitor strapped to you and then attached to a PA speaker. So you’re there listening to your heartbeat very loudly, and you’re surrounded by seven or eight musicians, and they’d start playing a beat to your heart. But when you hear it, your heartbeat changes, so they adapt to your speed. Some people have very uneven heartbeats, so it’s kind of like jazz. But it also reverses the performance at a festival. At Houghton, you’ve got one DJ or performer, and there’s thousands of people in the crowd. In this you’re the one person in the audience but you’re surrounded by all the musicians.

We did a small foot washing, with two people having their feet washed, and we did another work where we’d do a diagnostic from six different sounds, with tuning forks that relate to the chakras and the Solfeggio Frequencies. We’d make these sounds and see what people’s bodies would respond to and you’d talk to them a bit. Say we chose the throat chakra – which relates to how you express yourself and associated with 741 Hz – we’d play the frequency and that person might open up about something that they felt they needed to say to their father, for example.

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Why foot washing?

As you can see, the works are all done kind of in the language of wellness. But with the foot washing, it looks like a cult. People see a load of people in white and are slightly weirded out by it. All the aesthetic is very considered, from the signs to the costumes. We designed the tent and benches where it took place as well. If you’re asked, ​“Do you want to have your feet washed?” for most people it’s really intimate. People are a bit odd about their feet – no one really ever sees them and for most people you’re really having to push outside your comfort zone. So [I was wondering], what’s the difference if you’re seeing 30 other people all having that done at the same time? 

Does that allow you to more easily go ​“okay, fine”? Some people are very good at being like, ​“Fuck it, I’ll do the thing that’s unusual or uncomfortable.” When someone says, ​“Let’s go to this party,” half your friends might not fancy it, and another half will go every time, ​“Yeah, come on, let’s do it.” There’s a balance between what we need to be safe, and what we need to expand. All those things that are high risk, which potentially put you in difficult of dangerous situations – going off with a stranger, doing something you’ve never done before – they are the things that often have the greatest reward.

It’s interesting, because when I was washing feet, I had responses that ranged from ​“amazing” to ​“no, thanks”. But when I could sense someone was a bit uncomfortable, it made me tense up too. How much of the ritual is a two-way process?

It totally is. If you spent another three or four hours doing it, you would have worked out what you could say to the 5% of people who were uncomfortable, to make them feel comfortable. It’s trial and error, and it’s an intense test because you have someone coming through every 10 minutes. Even when you press the feet, you might see four out of five people respond really well to that and you refine [your technique] including what and what not to say because you have this constant succession of people.

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In the training for it, there were a lot of references to Chinese medicine – can you explain the inspiration behind it?

Yeah, I’ve had a physical practice for 30 years, which is Taoist. And in Taoism, everything goes through the body. There’s an idea in Chinese martial arts if medicine and reverse medicine – so the same information to damage a body in martial arts is the same information to heal the body. So you’re exploring what pressure points do what, and it’s very system focused. The system I use is called Ba Gua, which runs through the fascia and a lot of issues with the fascia runs through the feet. So it’s about bringing together all those bits of research. The martial arts is research, the ritualistic cult thing and aesthetic is heavily researched, and it’s a chance to combine everything and see what happens.

A lot of animals groom each other as a form of bonding, like monkeys that pick bits of dirt or scabs out of each other’s fur, or cats that lick each other. Should we as humans be cleaning each other more?

It’s a really good way of feeling connected isn’t it? You pick up a sense of someone looking after you in some physical way, and you feel safe. But usually you might have a partner, who would stroke you or massage you, or you’re paying someone to do it. But in this scenario, it’s quite intimate but there’s no transaction. It may look like a cult, but I wasn’t trying to convert anyone to anything – we literally want nothing. So, you’ve got someone literally putting their ego aside to do this thing for you, and it’s a really intimate way of connecting. As we’ve said, it’s strange, but to do it you have to put something aside, which is that usual question of, ​“What’s in it for me?” It’s a chance to go completely outside of your logical ego, and that’s a valuable place to be.

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I feel like festivals are one of the last few spaces in the modern world where people can engage in ritual. People gather to listen and dance to music in nature, and also connect with each other. Sometimes in the right setting I think you can feel the presence of people doing the same thing for thousands of years, and Pedilavium felt like a concentrated expression of that.

I think the nature part is a big part of that. It’s very beautiful at Houghton, with the forest and the lake. I also think there’s something about dance music that allows you to be totally in the present. And when you’re in the present with a whole load of other people who are too, [it’s ritual]. That’s why people get so obsessive about certain DJs, like, ​“Oh, we need to go see Jane Fitz,” because those DJs allow them to lose themselves, their sense of identity and space, and their sense of time – when three hours feels goes past and you think you’ve been there for half an hour. In a way, those are all the elements of a spiritual experience.

Follow Houghton Festival and Henry Krokatsis on Instagram.

Isaac Muk is Huck’s digital editor. Follow him on Bluesky.

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