Ritual without Myth (2012)

Joachim Koester, To navigate, in a genuine way, in the unknown necessitates an attitude of daring, but not one of recklessness (movements generated from the Magical Passes of Carlos Castaneda), 2009. Photograph courtesy David Pearson

Installation view, Foreground: Ioana Nemes, Relics for the Afterfuture (Brown); Rope (Z), 2009; Background left: Ioana Nemes, Relics for the Afterfuture (Brown); Birdman (Negative and Positive Ring) 2009; Background right: Ioana Nemes, Relics for the Afterfuture (Brown); The White Team (Satan), 2009. Photograph courtesy Dominic Tschudin

Ioana Nemes, Relics for the Afterfuture (Brown); The White Team (Satan), 2009. Photograph courtesy Robert Chilton

Danai Anesiadou, I KISS YOUR ECTOPLASM LIKE I WOULD A SHARK III, 2012.  Photograph courtesy David Pearson

Amalia Pica, Final de Fiesta, 2005, tissue paper, thread, dimensions variable. Photograph courtesy David Pearson

Patrizio Di Massimo, Una Turandiade Buzziana (in forma di note), 2011. Photograph courtesy David Pearson

Erick Beltrán, Demonstrative Figures (Assimilated), 2012. Photograph courtesy David Pearson

Installation view, Foreground: Erick Beltrán Demonstrative Figures (Assimilated), 2012; Background: Lygia Clark, Viagem 1973, Excerpt from the documentary O Mundo de Lygia Clark, by Eduardo Clark, 1973.  Photograph courtesy Dominic Tschudin

Joachim Koester, I myself am only a receiving apparatus, 2010. Photograph courtesy Dominic Tschudin

Danai Anesiadou, Asco, Erick Beltrán, Lygia Clark, Joachim Koester, Patrizio Di Massimo, Ioana Nemes, Ocaña, Amalia Pica, and Yeguas del Apocalipsis

Royal College of Art, London, 2012

Ritual without Myth is an exhibition that considers the potential of ritual as a catalyst for transformative experience. Including newly commissioned and existing contemporary works, the exhibition explores art practices that combine cultural repertoires (that is aggregates of actions and symbols that structure social systems), thus freeing them from the authority of a unitary, dominant myth. As Suely Rolnik notes, that absence of an absolute and stable identification with any repertoire is a condition from which hybrid cultural forms can emerge, to undermine a dominant ideology.

The idea of “rituals without myth” was used by the artist Lygia Clark to describe her work, in particular her project Structuring the Self (1976-1988): a therapeutic practice carried out in one-to-one sessions that explored the affective potential of her tactile Relational Objects through the mind and body of participants.

Ritual without Myth is curated by the graduating students on the Royal College of Art’s MA Curating Contemporary Art Programme: Daniela Berger, Laura Clarke, Sabel Gavaldon, Katie Guggenheim, Lily Hall, Egle Kulbokaite, Mette Kjærgaard Præst, Laura Smith, Borbála Soós, Elizabeth Stanton. Graphics by Rustan Söderling.