GMU:Designing Utopias: Theory and Practice/Jemma Woolmore

RITUAL AS SENSOR; RITUAL AS CARE

I feel disconnected to nature. I understand that I have lost (or 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 the Land I find around 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 I can 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. 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

COMPANION SPECIES

• Daphnia as biological sensors for river health.
• Explore what relations of care might mean between Daphnia and I.
• Grow and study Daphnia in the lab.

STORYTELLING

• Digital storytelling tools: VR, AI, audio
• Explore future narratives where I partner with Daphnia as a companion species.
• Through ritual and storytelling bring into being new possibilities.

WORKING PROCESS

RITUALS

Inspiration and References