Back to the Source

mudac – Museum of Contem­por­ary Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne, jumps head­long into a creat­ive design research around Swiss mira­cu­lous springs together with the designer Felipe Ribon. The project explores the mater­ial and symbolic ties that these waters, charged with extraordin­ary prop­er­ties, main­tain with those who dare to place their trust in them. An initial phase of obser­va­tion and photo­graphy of these ritual sites revealed that these inter­ac­tions gave rise to a number of prac­tices that are more or less codi­fied and constantly evolving and have always involved objects with multiple mean­ings. These arte­facts, defect­ors from their custom­ary use and often pieced together or impro­vised, never­the­less help bridge the gap between myster­i­ous phys­ical phenom­ena and human and social bodies.

Baden, Tues­day, the 13^th of Febru­ary, 2024. I meet Felipe Ribon on the station plat­form. We walk down to the thermal springs district and stroll across a square, as square as a square can be, the Kurplatz, where you have to touch an equally square stone. The stone is unusu­ally warm and beneath it gushes the Aquae Helveticae spring, one of the eight­een that have made Baden a choice spa resort since Roman times. A small statue of Saint Verena nestles atop a build­ing under construc­tion, barely emer­ging from the plastic sheet cover­ing the scaf­fold­ing. She gazes down at us lovingly with her jug and comb, remind­ing us that the bene­fits of these springs have produced any number of earthly repres­ent­a­tions over the centur­ies. An unin­hib­ited worker joins us, also feel­ing the warm stone. Could this bring good luck?

We soon reach the banks of the Limmat, the river that crosses the city. Numer­ous more or less vintage hotels still bear witness to the city’s heal­ing spa tradi­tion. A recent archi­tec­tural complex by Mario Botta comes into view. The uses of thermal water are still very much alive. More intriguingly, beneath a small urban kiosk we are treated to a display of plumb­ing work that could have come straight out of a Star Trek space­ship: in a trans­par­ent column, water gurgles with outsized bubbles, defy­ing grav­ity as they rise to the surface.

On either side of the river, between the banks and the street, are baths access­ible to all and free of charge: eleg­ant concrete tubs and foot baths. The first foun­tain invites us, albeit in moder­a­tion, to drink the water from the local spring with a very high mineral content. One glass a day, no more. I comply. Ugh! The water, the most miner­al­ized in Switzer­land, is said to have been swill­ing under­ground for between 4,000 and 12,000 years. We finally settle down on the right bank, facing the sun. We take off our socks and shoes and dip our feet into these mira­cu­lous waters. It’s midday. By our side is a large bathtub. A cyclist arrives, puts his bike up against the wall, undresses and soaks in the water with other half-naked people he does­n’t seem to know. For me, an observer from out of town, this is – already – some­thing of a miracle.

For more than 10 years now, Felipe Ribon has been prac­ti­cing what might be called “encoun­ter­o­logy through objects”, a form of design that rejects the util­it­arian norm and goes beyond the mater­ial stand­ard to take an interest in what eschews dual­istic West­ern under­stand­ing and yet plays a major role in the well-being of the senses and mind. He creates objects that support, endorse and clarify prac­tices that modern­ists would describe as irra­tional or super­nat­ural. These prac­tices – from spir­itu­al­ism to hypnosis to mira­cu­lous waters – are scoffed at for “fear of being fooled”, and thus releg­ated to the status of rituals deemed occult or even devoid of culture. Yet they are still very much alive and well despite being dismissed by the world of science. With this project, we propose to take them seri­ously and show our support.

In 2012, at a time when the prac­tice of hypnosis was becom­ing insti­tu­tion­al­ised and gradu­ally taking root in hospit­als as a means of treat­ing pain, Felipe Ribon broke new ground as an “encoun­ter­o­lo­gist” designer and unveiled his Mind the Gap project: objects (mats, bowls, tables…) that, through their shape, mater­ial and sound, are capable of trig­ger­ing a state of trance and enhan­cing the thera­peutic process of hypnosis. The approach is very much akin to design: taking a close look at usages in order to create mech­an­isms. A few years later, the Franco-Colom­bian designer went ahead and decidedly crossed the Rubicon of natur­al­ist ^[1] design. He presen­ted the “ae series” – medium-related objects whose main func­tion is to facil­it­ate contact with the beyond. He presen­ted his project in two histor­ical museums popu­lated by ghosts ^[2]. With turntables, auto­matic writ­ing tablets, ghost­busters and other medi­umistic inter­faces, Felipe Ribon enriched a typo­logy that has remained unchanged since the 19^th century, when spir­itu­al­ism reached its peak. As Vinciane Despret so aptly put it: “If we don’t look after them, the dead die completely”^[3]. Enter­ing into a rela­tion­ship with the invis­ible is neither simply real nor purely imagin­ary; rather, it’s a ques­tion of co-construct­ing a space for encounter, a rela­tion­ship, a non-Euclidean dimen­sion that Felipe Ribon’s objects produce.

Through their pres­ence, “encoun­ter­o­logy objects” are part of a vast network of exchanges between indi­vidu­als, dead or alive, but also with other living people and other living forces. In the face of the polit­ical, health and ecolo­gical chal­lenges we are now facing, this obser­va­tion opens up compel­ling perspect­ives. It is in this explor­at­ory under­tak­ing that Mudac, at once closely attent­ive to the appre­hen­sions of our day and age, absorbed by the complex intric­acy between mater­ial culture and ecology, and ulti­mately seek­ing to multiply ways of being in this world, jumps head­long into this creat­ive research around Swiss mira­cu­lous waters with Felipe Ribon.

Of the four elemental substances that go to make up the universe, water – asso­ci­ated in many cultures with life, puri­fic­a­tion and emotion – is today a crit­ical geopol­it­ical issue. We believe that the answer cannot lie solely in the rational manage­ment of a resource. We urgently need to respond to ecolo­gical issues by acknow­ledging the crisis of sens­it­iv­ity. Whence the urgent need to connect with the forces that, although beyond the reach of math­em­at­ical equa­tions and predic­tion models, are nonethe­less very real. We urgently need to deepen our rela­tion­ships with worlds in an approach that is not only tran­shis­tor­ical but also gener­at­ive. It is exactly what this design research project sets out to do. It explores Swiss mira­cu­lous springs. There are many springs through­out the Confed­er­a­tion that are known, listed and much visited. For example, wells with votive objects dating back to the Bronze Age have been discovered in St. Moritz. They are accom­pan­ied by swords and needles, suggest­ing a place of worship dedic­ated to protec­tion. The water from this partic­u­lar spring was then expor­ted through­out Europe for its heal­ing virtues. Sacred to certain pious or pagan peoples, these mira­cu­lous waters were very often person­i­fied through female figures. Their virtues are attrib­uted to redemp­tion, heal­ing, puri­fic­a­tion, fertil­ity or simply the joy of being together and alive. There are also what are known as Swiss fortune wells. The most widely repor­ted^[4] are often consul­ted to predict the weather – known as “weather foun­tains” (Maibrunnen), as at Engs­tlen­brunnen in the Bernese Ober­land – or crop harvests – known as “hunger foun­tains” (hungerbach), as at Selten­bach in Eglisau.

Back to the Source begins with a study of the mater­ial and symbolic ties that these waters, charged with extraordin­ary prop­er­ties, main­tain with those who dare to place their trust in them. These inter­ac­tions between humans and natural springs give rise to a number of rituals that are more or less codi­fied and constantly evolving. They are backed by objects with multiple mean­ings. These objects, defect­ors from their custom­ary use and often pieced-together or impro­vised, never­the­less help bridge the gap between myster­i­ous phys­ical phenom­ena  and human and social bodies.

“Just as ecolo­gical inter­de­pend­en­cies have no general defin­i­tion, humans can make them­selves capable of popu­lat­ing or repop­u­lat­ing areas of exper­i­ence that modern­ity has left in ruins, and of creat­ing attent­ive rela­tion­ships with the other inhab­it­ants of this earth.”^[5].

It would be naive to think that this propos­i­tion is noth­ing more than an indi­vidu­al­istic new-age delu­sion for lost contem­por­ar­ies in search of a spir­itual exper­i­ence. It would be equally simplistic to think that mira­cu­lous waters are noth­ing more than waters with a high mineral content produced by subter­ranean geochem­ical phenom­ena. Felipe Ribon’s work helps to re-estab­lish not only links but also trust and, in the end, consent to that trust.

The idea is actu­ally about consent­ing to irra­tional but very real connec­tions with living elements and accept­ing that these connec­tions can be life-chan­ging. Cultiv­at­ing these encoun­ters and making them effect­ive through purpose-designed objects thus contrib­utes to ecolo­gical regen­er­a­tion. These objects of encoun­ter­o­logy become vehicles that allow us to enter into the depths of the earth, to connect or recon­nect with these terrestrial powers and in so doing to accept our inter­de­pend­ence. They could prove to be thera­peutic devices for over­com­ing today’s addic­tion to the notion of “slim­ming down” injec­ted by the mater­i­al­istic dual­ism of modern­ity. Enter­ing into a rela­tion­ship with mira­cu­lous waters could be one source among others of bifurc­a­tion, provid­ing the energy we need to break down the brick wall of aporias that are very much a part of the Anthro­po­cene and into which we together seem to be running head­long.

Autor : Scott Long­fel­low