Until not so long ago, rituals were closely tied to the circumstances of daily life within communities. They served multiple roles, shaping and protecting the rhythms of existence. Spirits, too, were often practical guardians of resources and life-streams, woven into both individual and collective experience. Today, ancient rituals, spiritual practices, and traditions are often engaged with in ways detached from their roots and necessities, transformed into abstract forms that are said to carry healing energies within the frameworks of self-care under neoliberalism.

Rice, Ritual, Spirits is an invitation into ongoing research on the disappearance of traditional rice agriculture since the Green Revolution. This project reflects on how changes in conditions of production simultaneously transform life practices, rituals, farmers’ knowledge, community labour, women’s status, care labour, commons, and the relationship with local flora and fauna. In the workshop, practicing the allegory within Southeast Asian rice goddess mythology, the sacrificial death and earthly rebirth, the group is invited to contemplate the erasure of once vital spirits, ceremonies, and practices across diverse rice agricultural communities. Together, we envision new stories of future communities, opening our minds and bodies toward reconnection with worlds more than human.

The workshop further explores methods of sharing knowledge and experience through collective reading and writing practices.

Concept & Guide: Suh Yeongran
Soundscape: Juniper/Rik
Research support: 7 ½ project (2020), Tårnby Park Studio (2023), Haut (2025)

Suh Yeongran is a choreographer and practice-based researcher active in Copenhagen and Seoul. She creates multidisciplinary dance performances based on her background in anthropology, shamanism, and traditional dance. Between dance and creating situations, Suh Yeongran’s work reconnects with the ancient intimacies, with the organic and mythological, offering viewers and participants a safe space to explore their own agency, in regard to care, social mothering, friendship, and politics of gathering. She is a member of Becoming Species, a climate activism performance collective, writes, guides workshops, and creates performances on multi-species traditional ecological knowledge and collective storytelling.