Moving rituals : re-interpreting rituals cross-culturally

Within the scope of EU Erasmus Intensive Programs 2012-2013, the aim of this project was to re-interpret cultural rituals, together with the cultural dimensions of different communities, within the context of the design field. The notion of culture is understood to be continuously moving and changing, developing it-self dynamically via the encounter between differences and similarities. The focus of the project was on rituals that play a significant part in everyday life and are formed and re-formed with the norms of modern daily life. In other words, the traditional structures evoked by the word ‘ritual’ - and taking ritual as a frozen entity in time and place - are being avoided. Accordingly, due to the understanding that takes culture as a dynamic con-tent and form at the core of the project, the ritual approach was concentrated on how rituals have been changing with the norms of modern life and how new rituals are created due to the dynamics of modern life. This dynamic understanding of culture is a relatively recent approach within the scope of sociology and an-thropology. Within the framework of existing dynamics of modern life, the possibilities of expressing and living iden-tities and differences are getting more and more perplexing and multi-faceted each day. In addition, today, identity politics is on the agenda of discussions and experiments at multiple levels. In this respect, apart from its focus, the significance of this project is also visible due to the very multicultural and diverse educational backgrounds of the workshop team: the workshop was not only conducted by participants from the Nether-lands, Belgium and Turkey, but students from Jordan, Iran and Ecuador were also involved. Thus, both with its multicultural structure and focus, this project was about re-interpreting the cultural differences and similari-ties of rituals through a cross- and multi-cultural perspective.