Ritual Ecology · Naxi Community, Anagu Forest (Yunnan)

This field project developed through four repeated visits to the Anagu Forest on the Yunnan Plateau, working alongside Naxi communities whose ritual practices articulate a reciprocal relationship with land, ancestors, and non-human forces. The practice centers on attentive listening within ritual contexts, where sound, gesture, and environment form an integrated system of ecological knowledge. The project documents sky-offering ceremonies, ancestor rituals, and the presence of Dongba priests, whose practices emphasize giving back to nature rather than extracting from it. Ritual sound, chanting, movement, and silence are understood not as symbolic performance, but as practical acts of repayment—acknowledging that life is sustained through borrowing from the land and must be returned through care and offering. Field recordings, photography of Dongba priests, and visual documentation of the highland old-growth forest form the core materials of this project. Rather than interpreting ritual through external frameworks, the practice focuses on careful presence and ethical restraint, allowing ritual sound and environmental conditions to unfold on their own terms. Through repeated return and long-term engagement, the project listens to ritual as living ecological practice—one that sustains relationships across generations, species, and landscape. The Anagu Forest emerges not as background, but as an active participant in shaping sound, memory, and collective responsibility.