This is the abbreviated transcript of a Zoom conversation that took place on March 26, 2021, on occasion of the conference ‘The Workshop: Investigations Into an Artistic-Political Format’, hosted by the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI) Berlin. In this conversation, Kai van Eikels and Aernout Mik speak about the various contexts of Mik’s performative installation Speaking in Tongues , which explores the intricate interweaving of workshop culture, religious rituals, and corporate culture. Focusing on the ritual practices of neo-Pentecostal churches, this project asks whether contemporary work culture functions as a secular alternative to religious ritual in modern society. In doing so, it experimentally revisits Max Weber’s classical thesis that in modern capitalist societies, the rational and disciplined pursuit of work and profit becomes a moral duty—a ‘calling’ (ger. Beruf ).
Mik et al. (Sun,) studied this question.