RITUAL AS SENSOR; RITUAL AS CARE
I feel disconnected to nature.
I understand that I and my recent ancestors have never had a flowing connection with the spirits of the land. This project is a personal exploration of methodologies to find ways of countering that disconnection and form new relations with Land close to me, in this case the river Ilm in Weimar.
Through a series of rituals, sensing experiments and forms of storytelling I seek to challenge myself towards a more spiritual and reciprocal connection with the river, to find ways to deeply engage with the land around my highly urbanised lifestyle. Acknowledging that colonialism, white privilege, dominant scientific practice and capitalism have shaped my worldview and my relationships with more-than-human worlds I choose to stretch my imagination towards possible futures of co-evolution: to imagine how a close relationship with a body of water might look. What a spiritual connection to water might entail, resemble, or signify. What can I offer a river to form a mutually beneficial relationship?
A ritual can simply be a set of protocols, not unlike a scientific experiment, that allow us to give space for gratitude, restoration and acknowledging stakeholders (relations) in all their forms. Ritual is a technology that allows us to slow down, make ‘good relations’ (Liboiron, Pollution is Capitalism) with the communities (bodies and environments) closest to us and bring new imaginaries into being. Following Michelle Murphy’s concept of Alterlife this project uses ritual to make “words, protocols, and methods that might honour the inseparability of bodies and land". In this project I use ritual to clearly mark out a time and space to challenge the accelerating pace of our techno capitalist world, to be in the moment with my body and to navigate new ways of being-with nature. Ritual becomes a vehicle to make connections across bodies, scales, cycles, offering a way of ‘staying with our troubles’ (Haraway) whilst envisioning alternative ways of being in the world. This is not an easy process for me. Addressing spirituality brings up uncomfortable feelings of being a fraud, an imposter, the fear of embarrassment and the fact that all my education does not acknowledge spiritual and ritual practice (including song, movement and crafts) as legitimate knowledge. I fear a collision with the knowledge structures of 'dominant science' that I have been brought up with, so it is a struggle but it is liberating to explore other ways of being in the world.
METHODOLOGY
RITUALS
I will develop and enact one ritual or action per week. The rituals will use different approaches inspired by deep listening, feminist ritual practice, body work, practices of more-than-human care, meditation, performance/body art. The process is working towards finding modes of connection that speak to me, make me feel.
- Ritual for sensing, to extend the senses
- Ritual as practice of care
- Ritual to slow down
- Ritual to listen
STORYTELLING
- Explore future narratives, how might ritual change the relationship between the Ilm and I when practiced across generations?
- Through ritual and storytelling bring into being new possibilities.
- Digital storytelling tools: VR, audio. This side of the project has been explored in the Fachmodul Immersive Essays and takes the form of a ritual experience in VR.
BOOK
The process and outcomes of this research have been collected in this wiki and in the form of a book. The book contains; the outline for each Ritual 1 - 8 including the aims and instructions, a personal reflection on each ritual after its completion and photo documentation. It also includes the beginnings of speculative stories and assemblages created by the river.
Online documentation via the following links: