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• Students will explore how ritual intersects with artistic practice. • Students will reflect on rituals in daily life and living. • Students will consider how rituals effect culture. • Students will consider how culture effects rituals. • Students will enact a ritual and document their observations. • Students will perform a new ritual, either by acting it out themselves or instituting it as a practice for others to follow.
Art:21 Web Site • Lick & Lather – Janine Antoni interview & clip • Setting a Good Corner – Bruce Nauman interview & clip • Staircase – Bruce Nauman interview & clip • Thinking in Clay – Gabriel Orozco interview & clip • Games... – Gabriel Orozco interview & clip Additional Web Sites • http://classes.csumb.edu/MAE/MAE637-01/world/ Essay on 1970s feminist practice, with information on Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Maintenance Art Performances Classroom Materials • Sketchbooks & journals • Performance space
• How is ritual reflected in contemporary art? • What is the difference between a ritual and a habit or a routine? • When or how does a habit or routine become a ritual? • How is a habit or a routine like a motif in art? • What is the purpose of a ritual and why do communities engage in particular rituals? • How is a ritual related to the idea of commemoration? • What is a rite of passage? • What value systems are revealed by the choice to mark or ritualize specific aspects of life?
Defining the Terms Have each student write their own definitions and examples to describe the following words: habits, rites, routines, and rituals. Ask students to add a list of examples for each definition. Reconvene as a group and have students share, discuss, and debate definitions. Keep a running list of all of the examples they have come up with. Eventually, create 4 different definitions that the class agrees upon. These will help frame the rest of the conversations and activities in this lesson. Ritual in Art: Janine Antoni Have students watch Janine Antoni’s Season Two Art:21 video segment, read her interview on the web site, and look at examples of her work. Discuss the following quote from Antoni and discuss how it relates to the definitions the students have created: “I imitate fine art rituals such as cheiseling (with my teeth), painting (with my hair and eyelashes), molding (with my body).... The reason I’m so interested in taking my body to those extreme places is that that’s a place where I learn, where I feel most in my body... I’m really interested in the repetition, the discipline, and what happens to me psychologically when I put my body to that extreme place.” With your students, discuss the role of the body in performing daily tasks and rituals. What are the physical, emotional, and psychological effects of performing a task repeatedly? Are certain routine activities like mopping, sweeping, washing, or dressing universal? Do specific rituals carry meanings that denote the role of the person performing it in society? For example, are the rituals performed by a domestic laborer different from a corporate CEO, a woman from a man? What is the effect of marking or ritualizing specific activities? (Time: Two to three 45 minute sessions) Ritual in Art: Gabriel Orozco Have students watch Gabriel Orozco’s Season Two Art: 21 video segment, read his transcript, and look at examples of his work. On the relationship or tension between work and life, Gabriel Orozco talks about recovering “leisure time or pleasure time or knowledge time or research time or that space that is left over—because the important thing is to work and to sustain your life. But then all the spaces in between are a bit lost.” What can be done to rediscover or reclaim lost time? Orozco says photography for him is “like a shoebox. You put things in a box when you want to keep them, to think about them.” What small gestures can mark a moment in time as being special, or worth taking note of? Have students consider the small gestures, acts, or rituals they perform to mark time - whether it is writing in a journal once a day or discussing events with family or friends over meals. (Time: One 45 minute session) Bruce Nauman Have students watch Bruce Nauman’s Season One Art: 21 video segment, read his interviews, and look at his art. Nauman finds inspiration in the activities, speech and materials of everyday life. His statement, “I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing must be art” seems to suggest a belief in the power of art to ritualize or mark something as important. This can be related to Maintenance Art Performances by Mierle Laderman Ukeles in the 1970s, in which the artist turned “house work” into “art work” by the act of performing it in an art context, such as on the steps of a museum. Discuss with the students the role that context and environment play in creating and performing a ritual. Are rituals site-specific? How does changing the setting affect the act? (Time: One 45 minute session) Make a Ritual Initiate a discussion with your students about specific rituals that mark significant aspects of human activity such as weddings, graduations, or funerals. Ask students how these rituals affect the consciousness and culture of individuals and communities as well as how individuals and culture affect or alter the rituals. Have students identify areas of everyday life that they have not established as a specific ritual but perhaps do repeatedly or often. Ask them how they might turn this action into a ritual and the reasons they would like to give this action more attention. Ask students to perform a specific action at the same time every day for a week. Have students’ record how they feel about each of these new rituals and what the differences are between them after they perform them each day. Do their feelings change over the course of time in which they perform them? Have students create a ritual for the classroom. Suggest that students can either begin this ritual by themselves or institute it as a practice for others to follow. For example, a student may designate a particular song to be played at the end of every class; through cooperation and participation by the rest of the class, this becomes a ritual. (Time: Two to three 45 minute sessions and after school work)
• Have students articulated an understanding of the role of ritual in a variety of artistic practices? • Have students identified rituals in daily life? • Have students articulated how rituals effect culture and community? • Have students articulated how culture and community effects rituals? • Have students enacted a ritual and documented their observations? • Have students created and performed a new ritual and documented their feelings about performing it? Find out how this lesson plan correlates to your state's education standards! On PBS TeacherSource do a search for "Art in the 21st Century" and click on the Standards Match icon.
This lesson could be extended by combining with other lessons such as Traditional Crafts and Contemporary Practice Personal Stories in the Public Did you use this lesson or generate your own activities based on ideas inspired by the lesson? Submit student art work, new lesson plans, and your comments to Art:21 and have them posted on the site. Help the Online Lesson Library grow!
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