Ritual Art – Saying farewell to Fossil Fuels
Ida van der Lee | TrainCamp Project
Ida van der Lee is working on a Ritual to say farewell to Fossil Fuels. Together with a few others members of ‘The Turn Club’, a community of over 300 artists in The Netherlands searching to engage their artist mindset in complex social issues, she is traveling to the Green Culture Festival by train.
Slow traveling gives the opportunity to develop the idea further. At the festival she will host a workshop on Ritual Art with a focus on her newest project; How to say goodbye to Fossil Fuels.
JOURNEY
Saying goodbye to the old fuels means we need to welcome the new, the sustainable energy sources. Saying goodbye to luxury and convenience and getting ready for the job. Cause it requires effort.
Through a ritual you prepare yourself mentally, you shift perspective in your inner self.
The energy transition means a grieving process of years, because something precious is going to lose, of which we do not oversee what it means. It is good to thank the earth for the fossil fuels and open ourselves to the unknown.
That is what I want to design together with traveling companions en route to Montenegro. On the train, at the platforms or during the events.
Playfully and in cooperation with many people, the ritual arises. The approach will be simple and light-hearted, but the seriousness is not missing. This ritual will touch people.
This ritual can also be performed at other places in the future, for example in Zeeland where a coal-fired power plant will close.
I have been a visual artist and have been designing rituals for years. For buildings that disappear, every
to commemorate the dead, to shape conversations.
It is my second nature that I do with guts and love.
PITCH (in Dutch)
IDA VAN DER LEE
Visual Artist
In 1995 Ida van der Lee graduated from the University of the Arts in Utrecht, department of autonomous design.
From 1996 to 2008 she carried out six large-scale art projects concerning demolition and change. The main theme was saying farewell. She became a leader in the field of community art.
Since 2012 her project Namen en Nummers (Names and Numbers) is a highly respected project to commemorate the 2800 Jew deported from the Oosterpark neighborhood in Amsterdam. It shows that in modern time, new forms for commemoration and rituals are needed. People are deeply moved. At the moment, Ida van der Lee carries out this project with 80 volunteers and school children. She presented it at the International Congress of Memorial Museums in Israel.
She discovered that rituals are not only suitable for commemoration and saying farewell. They are also instruments for communication and telling stories. Van der Lee wants to set sensitive or unspeakable issues in the light and make them lighter.
She works under the name Studio Ritual Art with many volunteers and artists from various disciplines. Studio Ritual Art is an informal community built around her ritual practice. Rituals are developed and carried out. She is a member of the European Ritual Trainers Network.
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