A Phenomenal Process
Phenomenal Museum is a series of teachings and ritual engagements led by Jessica Kung to recover the museum as a site of spiritual and creative activation. In these happenings, participants engage with objects of art and culture in the museum using practices of attention, breathing, and energy work drawn from Yogic and Buddhist traditions, as well as forms of collective creative engagement designed to bring one’s own experience, imagination, and sense of play to the work. These rituals hold space for the collective practice of what we’ve come to call a practical phenomenology.
In consideration to art objects, a phenomenological approach emphasizes how a work of art affects us with its energies and presence. But suppose you wanted to do more than describe the way the world appears—suppose you wanted to change the way it appears, to transform your experience of it. What if you want something more out of your experience than you currently find in it?
Practical phenomenology transmutes our experiences from a cluster of perceptions into lives of completely embodied interdependence. When the practice of deep breathing shifts our knowing of a person or tree from objects of our seeing into beings we hold in relationship, when hours of practice with a paintbrush or guitar renders the instrument inseparable from your own body like a limb, or when soil and rain are remembered as sites of listening, we can encounter them as consciousness, as being(s) who offer teachings, hold reservoirs of memory, who speak to you. As the “genius loci” spoke to the ancient Greeks, the mountains and rivers speak to Kogi elders, and an archaic stone torso of Apollo spoke to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the phenomenal world asks us all to listen.
What makes it phenomenal?
The term phenomenal emerges from “phenomenology” - a tradition in Western thought where the viewer assesses the way “things” appear to us in lived experience— in place of a perception that gazes at “things” through an objective or impersonal framework. This tradition diverges from another lineage of thought, from the lineage of René Descartes, that focuses attention on that which can be known objectively and with certainty through empirical methods of research. For thinkers in the phenomenological tradition, it is important to describe the world not according to what it is “objectively” but according to how it acts on and appears to us.
Inside the Phenomenal Museum Experience
Every session follows a clear flow, shaped by the unique energy of the group.
1- Grounding Ritual
It all begins in a quiet space, inside or outside the museum, where we meet and create a sacred space of play.
This includes a guided meditation that introduces us to the spirits of the land we sit on, the spirit of the museum as an institution, and our own Muses
2- Entering the Galleries
We then move into the museum and follow resonance, finding objects that connect with what emerged in the opening meditation.
3- Speaking the Object
We take turns looking at and speaking about the objects that called to them, giving voice to memory, presence, and imagination.
4- Closing Ritual
Sessions end with a closing ritual shaped entirely by what emerged in the “interspace” created by the group.
5- Every Session Is Unique
Because each group brings different transmissions, no two Phenomenal Museum sessions are ever the same. The structure shifts according to the contributions, energies, and stories that arise.
The Shift Phenomenal Museum Creates
Current Museum Experience
Art is at a distance
You follow a map
You read its label
The museum is a space of observation
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Phenomenal Museum Experience
You meet art directly
You follow what calls you
You engage with its presence
The museum becomes a space of relationship