Use the Power of Ritual
This article is excerpted from Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution, edited by Andrew Boyd with Dave Oswald Mitchell, recently released by OR Books. The book includes contributions from some 60 activists across the continent, and was launched with a book party [unlike any other].
In my strange career as a prankster and provocateur, I've often gone to the well of ritual for inspiration -- whether my intent has been serious or comic. I might be leading a procession of hand-made lanterns to lay at the foot of the still smoking ground zero, or posing mockingly-somber at a Billionaires for Bush's "vigil for corporate welfare" during the Republican National Convention or even staging an elaborate 1000-person-strong exorcism to purged the commodity value out of a bunch of recycled bicycles and thereby liberate them as free anarchist transportation (we do strange things in college)... but in all these cases it's been the conventions and power of ritual that I've been working off of.
So it's no surprise that the Principle "Use the power of ritual" would be one of the very first pieces I would write for Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution. I wrote it in the very early stages of the project when my co-editor and I were doing proof-of-concept of the book's unusual modular structure. It worked, and subsequently became a model and template for the 140 other modules we were soon to invite 60 other authors to contribute to the book.
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"Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses." --Terry Pratchett
Rituals can connect us to the deepest truths of why politics matters. As anyone who has participated in a candlelight vigil will know, sometimes the act of quietly bearing witnessing to an injustice can carry more moral force than railing against it. A ritual can also give an otherwise mundane political gathering a stronger storyline, such as the 2011 protest of mortgage fraud at Chase Bank in New York City, where hundreds of members of faith communities and several ministers performed an exorcism on a bank "possessed by the demons of selfishness and avarice."
The ritual you choose need not be elaborate for it to have a powerful impact. You can imbue your political street theater with some of the power of ritual just by borrowing its rhythms. Imagine two characters on the street: a military general and a politician, slowly tossing a huge sack of money back and forth across a wide expanse. In between, a regular Joe, sitting forlornly, watches the sack sail back and forth. Nearby, a spokesperson hands out a fact sheet that tells the rest of the story. Often this kind of nonverbal, ritual-like performance, which repeats a simple but visually arresting motion, can be more powerful and effective than a full-length skit crammed with facts and figures.
Ghost Bike shrines -- old bikes whitewashed and decked with flowers stationed as memorials at urban crossroads where cyclists have been killed -- are a haunting presence, protest sculpture and fitting memorial all rolled into one.
Because they are such well-worn forms, rituals are ripe for mockery and comic adaptation, whether it's the Billionaires for Bush doing a vigil for corporate welfare, or Reverend Billy brandishing a stuffed Mickey Mouse on a cross while doing an exorcism inside the Times Square Disney Store. In 1967, antiwar prankster Abbie Hoffman led 20,000 protesters in an attempt to levitate the Pentagon -- the National Guard was under strict orders to never allow an unbroken chain of hands around the building.
Our familiarity with ritual makes it a great format for self-organizing. A ritual provides a natural script and symbolism. Even complete strangers naturally fall into a rhythm around it. This is even true for recently invented rituals such as monthly Critical Mass bike rides or the yearly ritual of Buy Nothing Day. In more repressive environments, the sacredness of a ritual offers protection, or at least courage. Think of Catholic Mass in Stalinist Poland or death squad-era El Salvador. In the Iranian Revolution (of 1979, as well as the revolts in 2010), the funerals of martyrs killed at the last protest fueled the next round of protests in an accelerating cycle.
At its best, a ritual is a cathartic, transformative experience. At a bat mitzvah, a child crosses over into adulthood. At a funeral, mourners grieve and find closure. A ritual harnessed to a political purpose should have an equally powerful effect, whether it is recommitting to a cause, finding courage, voicing dissent, or building trust.
In sum: Rituals like weddings, funerals, baptisms, exorcisms and vigils are powerful experiences for participants. By adapting sacred and symbolic elements you can use the power of ritual to give your actions greater depth and power.
PRACTITIONERS:
Living Theater
Women In Black
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
Suzanne Lacy
Artists Network of Refuse & Resist
Rivane Neuenschwander
Billionaires for Bush
Abbie Hoffman
Reverend Billy
Arlington West
"I Dream Your Dream"
Related TACTICS:
Artistic vigil
Image theater
Guerrilla theater
Distributed action
Trek
Related PRINCIPLES:
Know your cultural terrain
Show, don't tell
Be both expressive and instrumental
Consider your audience
Balance art and message
Anger works best when you have the moral high ground
Don't dress like a protester
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Hope is a muscle, flex it
Create a theatrical motivation that keeps the action going
Be the change you want to see
Related THEORIES:
Action logic
Ethical spectacle
Cultural hegemony
Floating signifier
Expressive and instrumental actions
Related CASE STUDIES:
Trail of Dreams
The salt march
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Critical Mass
Our Grief is not a Cry for War
Ghost Bikes
I Dream Your Dream
Further insights:
I Wish Your Wish @ The New Museum
Memorial Ritual and Art @ MICA
SEE GREAT PHOTOS HERE.
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- 4-30-12
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Comments
Ritual and Dogma
One unique feature of the "Occupy" movement is that they had no desire to ritualize and dogmatize their sheer "presence and purpose." {presence of purpose}
In a more indirect sense one can see how in Christianity, the very simple organic life of Jesus has been ritualized in so many ways to the point of mass institutions and mega churches ... often at the very expence of a more simple and organic spiritual sensibility.
Of course that one can use art and comedy to highlight points of social contention is one thing, but one has to remember that the actual art-of-protesting itself is not the goal.
Actually it is ritual itself that is used to promote domination over the masses to begin with. {Boheminan Grove} All of our governmental and courtroom rituals actually, due to the inertia of standardization and conformity, take away from the more spontaneous conscious participation in life as it organically presents itself, to where the very boundries of structure hinder the freedom of expression itself.
Not trying to be overly critical of any point in this article, just trying to point out the fine line {and sometimes not so fine line}between reality and it's symbolic representation.
That there is power in the collective mind is understood .. how to get everyone on the same page, especially in these days of mass media... well if we were already, as a whole living closer to the land without war and poverty, even without mass communication, wouldn't we already be on the same page .. all ritual and dogma aside.
As if the social body has become addicted to media representation itself, as if we could never be of one mind outside of the recorded image and sound ... as if descriptive representation itself taking precedence over conscious presence.
Showing ourselves and others "how it is" rather than simply living "as it is"
Of course desperate times may require desparate measures, so "do what one may" ... just be a little conscious about how ultimately the very energy used for promotional concerns will always be at the expence of conscious participation in actual life neccesity..
Spontaneous ritual
http://sistertongue.wordprpess.com
I find that the contrived rituals usually emanating from the western brain to be very flat, boring, inauthentic and really just designed to promote the leaders. I've also seen them used as trite photo ops for new wagey folks and I never attend those advertised. And, indeed, they can and are often used to control the masses.
I live very remotely and have often been quite astonished watching the unconscious, spontaneous and authentic ritual that often occurs in my neighborhood (which is a very conservative, cowboy sort). Nature herself determines the nature of the ritual and the more we live within it, the more organic and real it becomes.
Just wrote of this on my blog in a post called Super Moon Afterglow.
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