On Rituals

workshop and event/exhibition at Circuits + Currents, 17–22 June 2016 Athens & Delphi.

Society constitutes itself in ritual cultural practices. Rituals (sacred or secular) are social activities within different fields: religion, politics, sports, every day life and art. Ritual therefore refers to many kinds of performative acts, which require participants as well as spectators or audiences. The term is also related to its neighboring terms such as custom, ceremony, mythological archetype, repetition, theater and performance. The workshop at Delfoi aims to set the outlines of performative ritual practices and experiment with aesthetic forms and methods of artistic production. Theoretical and art approaches on rituals serve as our starting points: from Les Rites de Passage (A.v. Gennep) to the conditions of collective effervescence (É. Durkheim) and the conception of Liminality (V.W. Turner), up to the film studies of Maya Deren in Haiti and Dada performances.

Event & Exhibition: Nikos Arvanitis, Sofia Bempeza, Christoforos Christodoulou, Jonathan Daza Ospina, Shu-Chi Huang, Katia Karveli, Basil Meister, Marianne Mueller, Nektarios Pappas, Argiris Rallias, Suzanne Richard, Philipp Rupp, Lionne Saluz, Anna Stüdeli, Fabian Zemp, Lucas Ziegler.

Tutors: Sofia Bempeza (Zürich University of the Arts), Marianne Mueller (Zürich University of the Arts), Nikos Arvanitis (Cirquits + Currents), Vassilis Vlastaras (Athens School of Fine Arts). Participants: Students group of the BA Media & Arts ZHdK and Athens School of Fine Arts.

Concept & theoretical framework: Sofia Bempeza // Seminar: Go South. Reviewing the "exotic" gaze in times of crisis.