Ouroboros – Funerals at Creation

Project Leads: Matteo Maccario and Arthur Goulliart

Number of participants: 20

Duration: 4 days

Project Outline:A workshop to reexamine the endings of the things we create. A cross-disciplinary focus, for all practitioners looking to redefine their creations’ life-cycles through the lenses of funeral rituals, mythology and the circular economy.We are proposing that designers and art practitioners stop focusing on how to create new things, new needs and desires, but rather closure experiences to foster a more aware materialism. For so, we will develop new approaches to engage and inspire practitioners and users: Ritual Design. Rituals offer a specific frame for creating new highly meaningful interactions for raising awareness on an issue. In our case, current problematic materialism: barriers to recycling and difficulties to separate from unused objects we are too emotionally attached to. Rethinking the life of the mere “things”, found objects and artworks by allowing them to die.An introductory example of this approach would be the Hari-Kuyo rituals: A buddhist-shintoist funerary ceremony where seamstresses pay homage to the sewing needles broken in their service during the year.

Timetable:

Day 1 (Tuesday)
AM: Intro Lectures to Endings Philosophy & MethodologyPM: Series of Activities to Apply and Develop the Methods/Philosophy to Different Cases

Day 2 (Wednesday)
AM: Anthropology Lectures on Funeral Rituals & Traditions
PM: Research activities on ritual, Individual/Group Self-Reflection and Project/Direction Selection. Mapping Current Lifecycle & Endings & Imagining New Ones

Day 3 (Thursday)
AM: Lecture on Circular Economy
PM: Project Development

Day 4 (Friday)
AM: Project Finalization
PM: Project Presentation & Recording