“Don’t you understand? The grapes ripen when the sun sets. The wolf’s fur thickens when winter comes. The treetops become lighter when the autumn wind blows through them. The cartilage ossifies, the riverbed dries up and the flesh decays.” (translated from Der Traum ist der Flug, 1989)

Memories are fluid. Our body consists of up to 90% water. A gateway that connects life and death. We all swim in the river of our memories. They nourish us and connect us to our roots.

In my ritual, I want to create a space where I/we can meet the deceased who are important to us. It is a living source that keeps me in touch with them beyond death. I will remember five people whose life and death are closely connected to me. And on behalf of all those not named.

“that they are // a speck of dust in the rays of one of the suns // resound with” (quote from unknown)

✴︎ Dedicated to my father Tilmann Steinert, Angelika Ducamin, Fe Reichelt, Robert Rutman, Stefan Zednik and all the people not mentioned here by name who have died.
✴︎ Special thanks to Bettina Plesser, who sewed my wedding dress from my grandmother’s sheets, which I wear in my ritual.

• Language: German and English

This year, I experienced the death of someone very dear to me. I realised that I had no personal rituals to deal with this loss. As a diasporic Singaporean Chinese who grew up with a western-influenced, English-speaking upbringing, I was not familiar with many Chinese cultural rituals. He was German and an Evangelical Christian, I consider myself a nominal, non-practicing Taoist. I currently live here in Berlin with little memory of Taoist mourning rituals. I am also unfamiliar to Christian death rituals practiced in Germany.

My ritual is a ritual of contingency: One borne out of my fragmented knowledge and memories of the various cultures I am living in currently, as well as a sincere desire to find closure and connect with him even though he has left this earthly dimension. It foregrounds fire and the act of burning, two elements that are central to Taoism as a way to communicate with people in the afterlife and to bring closure.

I want my ritual to honour his life and our cross-cultural relationship. One that allows me to navigate my unfamiliarity with mourning practices in a foreign land, as well as the cultural incongruity of my diasporic Chinese identity. For those of you who also wish to have a space to contemplate someone or something you have lost, I warmly invite you to join me, as I share my ritual with you.

✴︎ Dedicated to Michael Mücke.

• Language: English
• Content note: This ritual involves the burning of incense.

When the sun goes down and the day dies, the dark night awakens the sorrowful soul and the troubled heart. Many German evening songs not only sing about the sorrow and restlessness of the day’s ending, but also about the dreaded closeness to death at night and in sleep. Some of these evening songs are still known today as lullabies. They soothe our worries and help us find peace without fear of death.

In my ritual, I lament all the pain that catches up with me, which can happen any time, not just before I go to sleep. I mourn everything in me that had to die involuntarily because it was taken from me. I say goodbye to all the parts in me that I have to let die. Because I can only survive without them. I sing evening songs to calm myself down. I give myself comfort and cradle myself in safety and love. I breathe out to let go of the pain and lay it to rest in peace. I breathe in to let new life flow into me and to be able to move on fearlessly into the unknown.

I am offering a ritual that invites you to experience the vibration of my voice. A ritual where we can set our own pains in motion and be comforted by the songs. Together we breathe in and out, and let go of what is ready to die.

✴︎ Dedicated to my brothers, Thoren and Ansgar.
✴︎ Special thanks to Irena Z. Tomažin and Cavana Hazelton

• Language: English (songs in German)
• Content note: This ritual involves loud sounds.

My death ritual is born out of key questions in my death research: can we experience dying as a living body? Can we really foresee this turning point that we all have to take at some point? Can we touch the moment of dying that is always lying in wait for every one of us? Can we sense the living and the dead cells in our body all at once? Through our common dying, can we feel connected to everything and everyone around us?

In my ritual, I want the light to be so bright that we can see with our own eyes how death is happening right now, in the present moment. I want us to actually see ourselves dying, at the rate of forty thousand cells per minute. To see the edge of our skin – the border between us and the rest of the world – disappear into dust. When the body becomes space. 

✴︎ Dedicated to my grandfather, Felix, and everyone involved in the SMRTЪ dance piece and Death Lab.

• Language: English
• Content note: This ritual involves bright light and dust. 

My ritual is dedicated to the small and large circles in life, their repetitions and meaningful variations. It is dedicated to the friction that dissolves the big into the small, and to the force that assembles the many small things into a big picture. It honours the dust of the planets in the universe, as well as the same dust that is in our earthly objects and actions of everyday life.

In the ritual, I use shards as a metaphor for life, that will always remain incomplete, rough and fragile. A wide variety of stories can be read and images can be recognised in a pile of shards. Through the beauty in the shard’s imperfection, I want my ritual to reveal and celebrate the fragility, the provisional and the incompleteness of life. And also of death. I invite us to embrace the laughing and crying of the shards and to let go of our expectations. 

✴︎ Dedicated to my grandmother. 

• Language: German and English
• Content note: This ritual involves loud sounds.

I am a female dervish and whirling is my practice. Dervishes whirl in communion with the universe. They whirl to let their ego die and dissolve into emptiness. Stripping down layers of identity to arrive at the truth, and therewith one’s own true self. This is then the death of any relation to and separation from an “other”. It is being no-thing and everything at the same time – a medium for transformation.

With Ha’this I invite you to a ritual in which I aim to fully lose control of myself. The title is a wordplay of “coming into this”: into this reality, this space, this time. The here and now. The present moment. It is about breaking down my habits, behaviours and desires to open up to the pure essence of “me”. Who is this “me”, when my ego disappears?

Through the repetitive movement of whirling, I intend to create a shared experience, where we can come together to reflect on our true selves. Ha’this is a reminder that we all originated from the same source and that with our death, we return to it.

✴︎ Dedicated to all sentient beings.

• Language: None
• Content note: This ritual uses dim lighting for a prolonged period of time.

(In collaboration with Veronika Heisig, Lee Mun Wai, Birte Opitz, Vera Shchelkina, Hilla Steinert, Lisa Stertz, hugo-huga x tibiriçá)

“Day by day the blossoms fall,
Year by year the people go.
Where the dust blows through these heights,
There once shone a silent sea.”
–  Hánshān / 寒山 (Cold Mountain)

When I read these words, I feel comforted in an inexplicable way. Surrounded by the uncertainties of life, the certainty and ubiquity of death actually help give me grounding. It tenderly reminds me that all will pass, and even when everything and everyone is gone, the world will still be achingly beautiful and magnificent. All I need to do is be thankful that I have the chance to experience and be part of it, even if it’s just for a brief moment.

As the final and closing ritual to the 8-day journey, I invite all the seven performers to join in a collective act of gratitude. We thank each other for the kindness, openness and generosity shown throughout the whole process. And for holding a space that dignifies our grief, pains and vulnerabilities. As we say goodbye and drift away, we wish each other gentle strength and clear light for our individual journeys ahead.

✴︎ Dedicated to everyone who has gone on this journey with me.

• Language: English