Family Embodiment Programme: Ritual 5 - Synthetic Ancestors, Becoming-With Symbiotic Kin

The Family Embodiment Programme is a monthly ritual organised by artist Sun Chang. It invites participants to explore what it means to become family and to imagine different ways of building kinship. The programme is tailored to an intersectional community of queer and BIPOC migrants, creating a space to reflect on feelings of (un)belonging and to practise relationships of care and temporal kinship.

Across the past four sessions, the rituals approached kinship as something extending beyond fixed categories and blurring the boundaries between the genetic and the social, the human and the non-human. Moving beyond time, geology and biology, participants engaged with forms of connection that are layered and deeply entangled.

The ritual brings together celebration and restoration through an ongoing care relationship with the programme’s ritual body: a giant synthetic fibre. The material gathers remnants of prehistoric life and manifestations of energies shaped by physical, chemical and human-driven histories, functioning as a multi-species companion marked by postcolonial and capitalist histories.

In this final session, shared knowledge emerging from the past rituals is revisited through visible repair techniques that preserve and foreground this inter-species family story. Participants are invited into an embodied practice of temporal, fragile and symbiotic kinship. This closing ritual signals a transformation rather than an ending. Family embodiment is understood as a pedagogical practice and holistic performance that extends beyond a single lifespan, holding “being-with” as much as it holds “dreaming and making otherwise.”

The Family Embodiment Programme is a space for group healing and building community resilience. Participants practice radical rest, intentionally stepping away from pressures to be productive and reconnecting with their body’s wisdom, emotions, thoughts and community. The programme invites participants to imagine and nurture a more-than-human family, creating connections outside the norms of white-supremacist, colonial, capitalist, patriarchal and heteronormative nuclear-family culture. Participants are welcome to take part in whatever way feels right – whether that means actively sharing or simply being present with the group.

Dates & Times

The ritual takes place every second Saturday of the month, during the natural transformation from day to night.

Saturday 17 January, 15:30 – 18:30 (walk-in at 15:15)

To keep the group intimate, the ritual’s maximum capacity is 15 people. Please register here.

This event is in English. Admission is free.

The space is accessible for those using wheelchairs, strollers, or other mobility aids, with a lift available for those who cannot use the stairs. The ritual is held on a floor setting with cushions, but chairs are available if required.

This is a research project led by artist Sun Chang, developed in collaboration with Framer Framed. It is supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and het Cultuurfonds. The ritual space holds co-creations from its participants. The incense sculptures Scentscape were created by Enaam, Isa, Kirti, Linus, Margo, Nardelly, Sonja, Sun, Sterre and pedagogically consulted by Sophia Simensky, as part of the welcoming ceremony for the programme; the hanging fabric installation Wind House was created by Eddie, Echo, Jinxiao, Jiwon, Les Lie, Min, Nikki, Sun, and Wang Xue in the first ritual; the kinship lexicon Water Bodies: Speculative Writing & Coining Kinship Lexicon was co-authored by belit, Denden, Echo, Isa, Jaadu, Jack, Jiyoung, Less Li, Neo, Qianyu, Sophia, Sun and Zaynab in the second ritual; the kinaesthetic drawings Discomforts were created by Dani, Gaia, Hân, Jaadu, Jack, Jiyoung, Jiwon, Less Li, Qianyu, Sharon, Sun in the third ritual; the Liminal Spaces were created and the Bio-Narrations were written by Emma, Hân, Jiwon, Minhong, Ran and Sun in the fourth ritual.