Part of dunaPart7 - Platform for Contemporary Performing Arts in Hungary.

What makes us feel part of a community, even among strangers? How can rituals create community without communication?

Dávid Somló’s work is characterised by a sensitive exploration of the relationship between sound, space and movement. In recent years, an extremely mundane object – a twig – and the act of balancing it have become the crux of Dávid Somló’s artistic practice. This simple task simultaneously focuses attention to the most minuscule movements of the body, to the perception of concentration and time, and to the community situation in which all this takes place. What is particularly fascinating about The (Dis)appearance of the Ritual is that participation in this work does not entail any pressure to be active, express oneself or communicate; instead, it offers an opportunity to slow down, focus, and experience non-verbal forms of being together. By interweaving lecture, choreography, participatory performance and meditative practice, The (Dis)appearance of the Ritual offers a format that is at once artistic research, communal experiment and performative event. (Ádám Czirák, dunaPart curator)

The performance emerges from an artistic research process that grew out of his Halász Péter Award-nominated participatory work Delicate Balancing of a Twig. Through this research, Somló investigates the community-building potential of shared symbolic actions. The performance takes the South Korean-born German philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s book The Disappearance of Rituals as its artistic and sociological point of departure. According to Han, rituals give lasting form to time and can create forms of community that are not primarily based on the exchange of information or constant communication. Theoretical reflections are interwoven with forms and collective prcatices drawn from Somló’s participatory artistic practice. The audience is therefore not simply listening to the performance, but actively taking part in a shared inquiry into how ritual experiences might reappear in contemporary life.