Lecture workshop / free school only in Hungarian.

How can we form part of a community even if the others are strangers? From January to May interdisciplinary artist Dávid Somló invites us to a five-session free school: a participatory research, or as he calls it ‘lecture workshop’ that explores the nature of ritual in our everyday lives. The sessions can be visited individually, but the free school can also be followed as a whole.

In most traditions meal preparation, food offering, and the shared consumption are all presented as symbolic, meaningful processes. For the fourth session of the Ritual Study series, we can explore the ritual aspects of eating while preparing food ourselves. Our guest for the session is Zen monk Tamás Luspay, who, through his experience as a tenzo—the role of head cook in Zen communities, a person carrying great responsibility—offers a perspective in which cooking itself is a spiritual practice.

About the series:
How do rituals create a community without communication? What happens to our attention and perception of time when we no longer have methods for pausing or closure?

In his five-session lecture workshop series, Dávid Somló explores what remains—or what is missing—from community rituals in the accelerated everyday life of contemporary society. The artistic and theoretical starting point for this shared reflection is Byung-Chul Han's book The Disappearance of Rituals, while its practical form is inspired by elements of Somló's participatory art practice. The sessions unfold between thought-provoking theoretical discussions, participatory exercises, and impulses from invited guests (artists, researchers and others) on the topic.