Turkish marriage ritual: design for experience based embodied interaction

By means of choreography, movement and bodily interaction, developed by design-choreographer Si-etske Klooster (www.sietskeklooster.nl/), we observe and explore the complex rituals revolving around Turkish marriage and develop a new ritual, based on expressive, interactive and physicalized movements and gestures (Klooster, 2005). From this process and research progress, we want to give shape, in an organic way, to a new ritualized form, gesture or artefact, bringing it to life and giving it a new intercultural meaning. This paper is the reflection of the intensive exploration of the possibilities of participation with a family from the Turkish Muslim community living in the Schaerbeek vicinity of Brussels, as a process of explor-ing/making/doing/performing and a way to get grip on marriage ritual through design and choreography. Auto-ethnography (Reed-Danahay, 1997) mediates as Kloosters personal and explorative way to grasp this complex, culture related creative practice. Kloosters auto-ethnographic insights are rendered in this paper as a full narrative