The third in a series of conversations about the transiency of FoAM bxl. This time we asked ourselves what if FoAM bxl would consider rituals as a focus of our work in the coming years? The conversation developed from the Macrotransiency of Barbara Raes, looking at a possible follow-up of her research into rituals related to death and dying as a FoAM project or a structurally funded lab.

What do we associate with a ritual?

• Connection, social cohesion, inclusion, enriching, giving, “Every man and woman is a star”
• Peak experiences, contact with the supra-human, divination & invocation, rapture, conversion, honouring
• Focusing of purpose, clarity
• Tradition (een verhaal onderschrijven dat uit een traditie komt)
• Transition, transformation, change of status, giving meaning
• Time marker, a moment to remember, life & death
• Emotional conduit, tears and smiles, sharing emotion, energy, rapture, crunchy delirium
• Energy, fire, smell of smoke, river water, rain drops, beauty, colours, dressed-up, decorated
• Silence, space to breathe
• ▢,△,◯

What do we associate with FoAM?

• Grow your own worlds, bubbles (many), tangles, 'groeigrond', a temporary autonomous zone
• Healthy environment, home, food, a place to be yourself, individual togetherness, generosity, responsibility
• Total experience, a caress for the senses
• Taste of brilliance, hidden treasures, supernatural, deadly mushroom ballet
• Interstices, open ended (processes, effects…), unfinished experiments
• Silence in the storm, motionless fireworks, space to think, do, breathe, meet…
• Playful, nuclear proactor, childish adults, swings, characters, voodoo quaker bellydance, ping-pong
• Constant flux, polyrhythmic, different rhythms
• Sustainable environment, green, green, green
• Saving the world, scale vs scope, perpendicular heavenly instruction

What lives in the cross-section between FoAM and rituals?

Most things mentioned above can be relevant for both FoAM and rituals, so we can draw a larger circle around the two, in which the characteristics of FoAM as a lab for rituals are already described. However, there are a few specific words that appeared in both discussions, which could be seen as a foundation of FoAM as a lab for rituals:

• Celebration
• Process
• Participation, care
• Alternatives, reframing, recodification
• Aesthetics
• Connections, “ontmoeting”
• Transition and transformation

What does it mean for you (FoAM members present at the conversation)?

• Study and appreciation of the existing history and context of rituals. Understanding and uncovering rituals that are already out there, both rarified and non-rarified, including things that aren’t yet considered rituals and border on (unconscious) habits (e.g. employment, dress-codes, greetings, negotiations, etc.). Learning about the structures, codes and formalisms of traditional rituals
• Participaning in out-of-the-ordinary experiences; partaking in non-conceptual, pre-linguistic and/or Dionisian celebrations
• Developing our culture of hosting and hospitality, food and drinks in the framework of rituals
• Becoming a place where magic can happen and lives are changing
• Being a garage for rituals (construction, repair, maintenance…), customised rituals that are unique yet grounded in tradition (for individuals and communities)
• Moments of deep seriousness punctuated with moments of lightness, silliness and humour
• Developing FoAM’s specific aesthetics
• Connecting to people from divergent fields (e.g. artists, technologists, druids, anthropologists…) and creating unholy alliances
• Working with rituals in a secular context and working with appropriate technologies (e.g mobile phones aka tracking devices) to connect rituals to the contemporary zeitgeist (e.g. geomancy using GPS satellites)
• Rituals related to our relationship to the future - contemporary invocation and divination practices
• “The Method of science, the aim of religion” finding FoAM’s place in relation to the the post-enlightenment pantheism, occultism, avoiding the failings of fundamentalist religion and reductionist science.
• Becoming aware of our own cultural traditions and contemporary realities in which we live (e.g. we can’t escape being embedded in our societies)
• Collecting existing rituals from various traditions (ancient, syncretic, contemporary) around the world
• Developing a fieldguide for ritual techniques, flows, processes and methods
• Looking at different ways to document, reflect and analyse rituals (e.g. State specific science and irrational, irreal methods)
• Connecting the world outside to the 'hidden treasures' in FoAM
• Engaging in 'soul midwifery' - deep listening during dying and other transformational processes
• Finding a multifaceted language and different ways to talk about rituals in different contexts (e.g. young people, scientists, businesses, paliative care units, cultural critics, school children, etc.)
• Conducting Learning journeys, immersive experiences and training expeditions in traditional communities (e.g. monasteries)
• “To foam” as a verb that needs no explanation
• Be very careful and aware of unintentional (yet inevitable) branding as a ’sect’

What does it mean for the ritual as an art form, with a place in the art world/sector?

• Participatory events of different durations, where the process and performance inform each other
• Guided tours the gardens of Earthly Delights / Eden
• A combination of music and architecture, sonic spaces
• Direct experiences: singing, breathing, listening, dancing, sleep deprivation…
• Nature walks and storytelling, slowing time, “time unbinding” (see Human Plant Interaction)
• Rediscovering (cultural/environmental) pilgrimage and old routes as an alternative to 'consumerist tourism’
• Ritual architecture
• Experience and event design: small everyday rituals and extraordinary total experiences
• The art field can become a neutral space, an entry point to (re)introduce rituals (to atheists, good communicators, potential art donors, etc.) as participatory events. The danger is that if we frame rituals as art they might not be taken seriously.
• Reframing and reclaiming art as part of (daily) life
• Licensing requirements: a ritual commons
• Revaluing of collective, anonymous creations, acknowledgement of horizontal and vertical lineage (transdisciplinary and historical)
• Artisanal ritualcraft

What does it mean for society and ’the world’?

• Small, mundane, prozaic rituals AND non-ordinary peak experiences
• Social cohesion, family in the broadest sense of the word
• Life-changing experiences
• Safe and supervised spaces for non-ordinary experiences and alternative states of consciousness (including a political and/or pragmatic approach to end prohibition of psychedelics (in rituals; possible collaboration with MAPS))
• Raising awareness of the need for secular rituals to fill the void left in the wake of grand (religious) narratives (see Religion for Atheists); reclaiming and reframing christian rituals in secular contexts (e.g. baptism, communion, marriage, etc.)
• Transdisciplinary and transgenerational, building bridges between cultures, creating space for next generations
• Reframing traditions as well as creating rituals for situations in which they could exist but don’t exist yet (e.g. rituals for miscarried children)
• Reframing what 'spirituality' might mean in a materialist society
• Finding a more mutually beneficial relationship between humans and the rest of the world (ref. McKenna’s “Planetary Other”)
• From a culture of fear to a culture of trust

In the conversation on the 1st of June we continued looking at the societal relevance of rituals in general and FoAM's take on rituals in particular. We also discussed what kind of organisational structure would make most sense for continuing this work. The most important decision was that we decided NOT to apply for structural funding in 2015, to give ourselves the time needed to explore the subject through (university) research and as a project.

Present: Barbara, Rasa, Alkan, Angelo, Bart, Nik, Maja, Stevie

Rituals used to be a more significant part of (social) life until more or less the last 50 years. Since then there seems to be a need (which isn't new) to fill the social and spiritual gap that was left the wake of the collapse of grand narratives in the 20th century (religious, ideological, political, etc.). We're not sure whether the need is increasing or not is debatable, (e.g. due to increased environmental and economic uncertainty that replaced the 'nuclear' uncertainty), but what is certain is that this gap hasn't been successfully filled for many people. Who these people are, why and how rituals would need to be reframed in the contemporary context is the topic of Barbara's research project which will start in September. This project focuses specifically on rituals around death and dying, but at FoAM we could complement the research by casting a wider net to look at an ecology/typology of rituals. We could map different traditional ritual approaches and strategies without attaching a meta-narrative or our particular description of reality to them. It would be interesting to pull apart different functions of rituals as used in religious contexts (e.g. social, spiritual, transitions, etc.), and looking at whether this can exist without the whole culture in which religion exists (c.f Botton's Religion for Atheists and Phil Torres' Atheism, Emerging Technologies and the Future of Humanity, Ulrich Libbrecht's Is God dood?). A question was raised whether this pulling apart of technique, narrative and cultural context is too much of an intellectual exercise in deconstruction, which can be quite problematic. We agreed that our approach to rituals should be (embedded in) an applied philosophy, with links to Object Oriented Ontology, Speculative Realism, Pataphysics etc. A good person to talk to this about would be http://antoonvandenbraembussche.be/Antoon van den Braembussche, currently working on a book on silence/stillness. The question remains whether adding a philosophical framework can be done without it turning into another description of reality (that can then be turned into a dogma etc.), without it being mere methodology (which might be a problem as well)?

We talked about the connection between rituals and two other possible present and future directions for FoAM: speculative culture (c.f Resilients, Future Fabulators, PARN, etc) and techno-ecological pantheism (c.f Machine Wilderness, Thalience, Romantic Machine, Silent Dialogues, etc). The connecting aspects between these three themes are design, participation and holism, focused on building (new) connections and relationships. This is a much broader topic of discussion which we'll continue at the FoAM retreat in autumn, with people from other FoAM studios as well.