What are contemporary rituals?
Welcome to the first Roundtable & Debate of the autumn season.
Roundtable & Debate is a conversational forum for exchanging knowledge, ideas and points of view across different fields of knowledge and professional interests. It is an opportunity to open new, perhaps unexpected, perspectives on themes and phenomena that concern artists in their work. It is way to create an encounter between the artistic program we are presenting at Black Box teater and the lines of thought and practices that are being explored and developed in other societal arenas.
We invite all curious audience members to join us around the table on 20 October, together with our knowledgeable invited guests, for a conversation about rituals in contemporary culture. Rituals can serve different purposes. They can be a force that creates or confirms identity, belonging and community. They can mark transitional thresholds in the lives of individuals and communities. They can mobilize action and change, but they can also be instruments of discipline and control. The topic of this Roundtable & Debate is inspired by STATE, a new production by Ingri Midgard Fiksdal and Jonas Corell Petersen.
We ask: What are contemporary rituals, and what lies behind them? What needs do they fulfill or serve? How are they formed, who initiates them, and what are their purposes, forms and impacts? Are we witnessing a revival of rituals as vital practices in contemporary culture?
We have invited three guests with diverse backgrounds in social anthropology, sports science and the study of religions to join the discussion. Through their research, they engage with ritual practices taking places in different arenas in society and with issues of identity and identification. Choreographer Ingri Midgard Fiksdal will also participate in the conversation. There will be prepared presentations and discussions following different topics and lines of questioning with both the invited guests and the audience. This is an informal gathering with an easy threshold for joining in the conversation or simply listening. Refreshments will be served. STATE will be performed the same evening at 19:00.
Invited guests:
Ingjerd Hoëm is a professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. She has conducted fieldwork in Tokelau, Samoa, New Zealand and the Salomon Islands, and was previously head of research at the Institute of Pacific Ocean Archaeology and Cultural History at the Kon-Tiki Museum. Hoëm’s research interests include ritual communication, identification and space, ethnicity, social organization and fourth world or indigenous peoples. She is the author of “What We May Find – Outside of the Ordinary”, which can be found in the publication on “state” initiated by Ingri Midgard Fiksdal and Jonas Corell Petersen in connection with the artistic production STATE.
Hans K. Hognestad is a social anthropologist and associate professor of sports science at the Department of Sports and Outdoor Life at the University College of Southeast Norway. Identity and football has been an important line of interest in his research, with empirical studies of football supporters in England, Norway and Scotland. Lately, he has been focusing on sports and issues of development. Hognestad’s research interests include the production of meaning in sports, identity, globalization, transnational networks and sports, as well as partnerships for development.
Ida Marie Høeg is a professor at the Department of Religion, Philosophy and History at the University of Agder. Together with Jone Salomonsen and Cora Alexa Døving she is engaged in the research project “22. July: Performance violence and public ritual response”, which is part of the multi-year research initiative Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as Cultural Resource (REDO). The aim of REDO is to examine how ritual actions reveal and mobilize society’s cultural values. Høeg’s research interests include the sociology of religion, religious and secular rites of passage, religious socialization, gender and religion and public grief.
Ingri Midgard Fiksdal is a choreographer and research fellow in the program for artistic research at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, where she is researching choreography as a collective and affective event. Her work deals with perception and affect in performance and the experience of performance, and she places equal emphasis on sound, light, choreography, costume and set design. The audience is integral to the performances, which aim to create the potential for immersion and transformation to occur. HOODS, a collaboration between Fiksdal and scenographer Signe Becker, was awarded the Dance Critic Award for 2014. The Norwegian premiere of STATE, a collaboration with director/dramaturg Jonas Corell Petersen, will take place at Black Box teater 19-23 October 2016.