My name is Maho. I'm a multidisciplinary artist, and currently an Associated Artist at Culture Push. I am researching a series of events connecting Japanese Tea Ceremony, Zen meditation, and personal ritual. Through this research I hope to design a performance that incorporates audience-participation.This project aims to help people find peace through the custom and philosophy of Tea Rituals.
Japanese Tea customs bloomed in the 16th century among Samurai warriors, who developed the rituals to heal and calm their minds. In order to recreate the Japanese Tea custom in present-day NYC, where I live now, I'm interested in taking a survey of how contemporary New Yorkers calm their minds and heal themselves (mentally, spiritually, and physically) with their own rituals.
I am reassessing the definition of "ritual" for this project, and the definition of ritual/ custom in this survey is stated below. It could be related to your religion or not, private or public, and as casual as "comb my hair slowly," if it means something to you consciously or subconsciously.
This survey is just for my research and your personal information will not be shared with anyone. However please keep in mind that some of the actions submitted in this survey have the possibility of being anonymously presented (by written words or live actions) at my project at the Culture Push symposium in June 2023.
If you don't think you do your rituals/actions in your daily life, please write freely about your thoughts/ ideas about rituals in the questions below.
I look forward to learning your own rituals.
Thank you.
Maho