Fellows

TROPIC MODELS / UTOPIAN VOODOO - Ruschka Steininger - L.A.MÜLLER

Ruschka Steininger - L.A.MÜLLER

The artistic research project TROPIC MODELS/UTOPIAN VOODOO tries to look on the own society through the lens of Haiti. It is searching for contemporary cults of pluralism in an urban, heterogenous, postmigrant and capitalistic society.           
Voodoo - representing creole religious practice with its enormous power of integration and transformation is considered as an inspiring method: the veneration of "ancestors" with simultaneous integration of new and newest elements into an unfinished, changeable, somehow queer pantheon offers a perspectives on society, coexistence and the city, which are (despite all conflict) productive, even utopian.
Moreover, the Haitian Revolution opens up a highly interesting view on the European Enlightenment and its colonialist paradoxes, which extend to the present day.        
The research is situated in the realm of Enlightenment - Obsession - Europe - Haiti - Voodoo - Atlantic - Syncretism as a variety of pluralistic (democratic?) processes.
It searches for methods how to transform ideas into other contexts, how to get inspired respectfully and how to learn from others. So which could be the Goddesses and Spirits we should worship on a specific shrine of Moabit?