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‘In any creative work, be it the artist or the artisan, the creatve person unites with the material they are working with, which symbolises the world outside him/herself. The worker and the artefact become one. The human being becomes one with his creation. ‘ Erich Fromm
The word Poiein in Ancient Greek (ποιεá¿–ν) means making. It is where the word Poetry comes from. Plato had pointed at the connection between craft-making and poetry, calling us to gaze at the rich worlds of form and meaning that come to life when we take raw material from our landscape and create with it. It is possible, when we look at a handcrafted object, to appreciate the emotion and soul life that the maker had infused in it.
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Sefrou is located in the heart of the middle Atlas. Traditionally, a market town located amidst fertile farming lands, it is known for its fruit orchards, cherry festival and the large Jewish community that lived there up until the last century. Sefrou is still home to a large community of local artisans, metal smiths, woodworkers, weavers and button makers. Though the community is still thriving, few are the ones of the young generation who wish to learn these skills.
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Visiting local crafts people in their workshops, we will learn about their work and daily lives as a way to get a sense of the place through the people and their working spaces. An orientation of the city from the inside out hosted by Culture Vultures, will lead us into a deeper relationship with Amazigh women who spin and weave and we will participate in a hands own textile workshop.
We will be introduced to ‘The Loom in Local Rituals’ and how women used the loom as a sacred medium for protection. On Sunday we will make a day trip to a mountain market town in the Middle Atlas where the wool comes from, to meet women who practice unbroken textile traditions in the region.
Alongside these visits our work will consist of listening to the stories that emerge from our activities, as well as engage with traditional stories from around the world to bring into clearer focus the role of craft-making in the life of the Soul. On our last day we will share these stories in a storytelling evening (no previous experience necessary). Daily shamanic practices will help us access ancestral knowledge and seek healing for modern day’s rupture between skill and community, craft and Time.
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KARMIT EVEN-ZUR
Avalonia Re-membered
Art based research
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Avalonia developed as a volcanic arc on the northern margin of Gondwana between 730 and 570 million years ago. It eventually broke off, becoming a drifting microcontinent in the paleozoic era.
As the continental plates moved across the earth’s surface over millions of years, Avalonia connected to, and fragmented from other land masses within this ever slow shuffling, as continents formed and re-formed, making space for new oceans to grow and shrink and grow again.
Geological remains of the Avalonian microcontinent can now be found in England and Wales, In the Ardennes of Belgium, in the South Western edge of the Iberian peninsula and in Northern Morrocco, in Southeast Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Northern coastal Maine, Rhode Island and other coastal regions of New England.
This project is planned to take place in various locations where geologic remains of Avalonia have been found and include various walks and workshops, inviting a collaboration between artists, geologists, cultural geographers, shamanic practitioners, and geomancers to contemplate the possibility of common threads that may live on in the various continents, countries and cultural locations where Avalonian rocks can be found. We will seek to access a space between the cultural and geologic registers of these places, to imagine and re-member Avalonia, calling on the deep past to help us process a mythical way of thinking about places and their memory
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Get in touch if you want to know more or be involved in this project in some way.
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Among the great coastal rocks, a silent sermon remembers how the seas advanced and receded, how volcanoes brought to light the deepest secret of the earth, how water and wind shaped the landscape, carrying its seeds and stories to other faraway places.