SOFT RITUALS
In the morning, the hand that reaches for the keys twice. The chipped mug no one else is allowed to drink from. The neighbor on the third floor who waters the geraniums in the courtyard every evening. A day is made of repetitions like these. Hardly anyone would call them rituals, and yet that is what they are.
Soft Rituals are ceremonies without an altar. They live in kitchens and stairwells, at the counter of the corner Späti, in the voice message that arrives every Sunday at nine. Turning away from rigid routines, this theme looks at the quiet, changeable acts of our everyday lives. Habits become rituals; small gestures take on great meaning.
They make time habitable. Sometimes they are refuges, sometimes scaffolding that an everyday life holds on to. They give structure, offer comfort, and anchor us in times of crisis, upheaval, and new beginnings. Rituals arise from all kinds of motives: love, tradition, loss, or the need for safety. They range from the familiar morning movements through the Kiez to practices brought along by people who had to leave their homes and who, through repetition, preserve stability, memory, and identity.
At the same time, these acts are not free of ambivalence. They range from unnoticed care work as a practice of community to patterns that hold us tighter than we would like. And the market discovered softness long ago, selling “soft rituals” as a consumer good.
Neukölln is changing fast. Shops close, rents rise, neighborhoods come apart and form anew. What gestures does a city like this need in order to grieve, share, celebrate, and bear with one another together? Which of them do we want to practice before we need them?
The theme is meant as orientation and impulse, not a corset. We invite artists of all disciplines to approach it personally, politically, poetically, or critically – in studios and shopfronts, on streets, in backyards and living rooms. For 48 hours, Neukölln becomes a place of shared ceremonies: tender, headstrong, and sometimes uncomfortable.