Absurd Rituals is the fourth chapter of NOIA magazine. 

Rituals are deeply human constructs that emerge from belief and intention. Some are devised through necessity or deliberate thought as efforts to structure meaning, order, or identity; others persist beyond the relevancy of the original logic. In this way, rituals are both rationally composed and ritually re-enacted, performed less to fulfil a conscious aim than to preserve inherited forms of sense-making.

This issue investigates the tension between the internal logic and external perception of (absurd) rituals. A daughter, raised within her father’s conspiratorial rituals, experiences the tragic gap between belief and consequence. Computer overclockers engage in elaborate cooling ceremonies, transforming functional necessity into obsessive craft. Presidential golf outings, presented as leisure, serve as carefully choreographed performances of power, conducted across manicured landscapes with arcane codes of access.

Each of these rituals operates within its own closed circuit of meaning. Their apparent absurdity depends on which interpretive codes we possess, which contexts we inhabit, which roles we play—participant or observer, insider or outsider. What we call 'absurd' is often just unfamiliar logic in unfamiliar dress.

The question becomes not whether rituals are rational or absurd, but how they operate, what they accomplish, or whose interests they serve.

Articles & Photo Essays:

Entropic Fantasy
Tyrone Williams

Roadside Overdrive
John Margolies

True Magic
Hannah Pezzack

An Incomplete Compendium of the Ritual of Playing Golf
Bethany Rigby

The Suspicious Eye
Carloalberto Treccani

Front de Libération des Images
Eliès Jurquet

Stabilising Cooling, Privatising Knowledge
Cyrus Khalatbari

A Collection of Poems
August Moen

Dipthycs
Various Artists

Kukeri
Eric Scaggiante

Featured Artists:
More than 70 photographers, filmmakers, and artists from around the world

Details
148 pages, offset print, open spine binding.