With Karmit Even-Zur
in collaboration with
Culture Vultures
dates to be confirmed
Register your interest
here
THE POETICS OF CRAFT SEFROU, MOROCCO
‘In any creative work, be it the artist or the artisan, the creative 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 (ποιεῖν) 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.
Praxis Mundi
A collaborative psycho-magical act of healing and
metaphoric redistribution of power along the 0º Meridian
Jane Glenzinska & Karmit Evenzur
Praxis Mundi
A collaborative psycho-magical act of healing and
metaphoric redistribution of power along the 0º Meridian
Jane Glenzinska & Karmit Evenzur
Praxis Mundi
A collaborative psycho-magical act of healing and
metaphoric redistribution of power along the 0º Meridian
Jane Glenzinska & Karmit Evenzur
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.
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.
Karmit Even Zur
EARTH SPEAKS
THE CRYSTAL CHRONICLES
As an immigrant to the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Jane has always been struck by the abundance of history and mystery in the landscape along England’s South Coast. In recent years, one of the mundane routines of single motherhood left her waiting around for an hour twice a week, in a small coastal village called Peacehaven. Any visions of a harmonious heartland evoked by its name are in stark contrast to the reality of the place so that it was somewhere she had only ever been while driving through. Now forced to spend time there, she was walking along the tops of the iconic chalk cliffs when she noticed a monument marking the final spot where the Greenwich Meridian passes through Britain. Where the meridian stops is where our story begins.
The meridian itself is intangible, an imaginary line, a vertical equator that passes through The Arctic Ocean, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, North Sea, United Kingdom, English Channel, France, Spain, Mediterranean Sea, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana, Atlantic Ocean, Southern Ocean and Antarctica.
There is much research that points to the Greenwich line as an ancient pathway of astronomical and telluric significance. Some say Kings and Queens and certainly their freemason advisors knew of and made use of the power connected to places along the meridian to empower and assure their dominion. Accounts of medieval magic connect this line with mysteries of an ancient axis, a portal into the Axis Mundi, the connection between Heaven and Earth
But instead of conjuring up notions of time zones and maps and navigational tools for which the meridian was officially established, Jane was filled with imaginings of the meridian as an energetic line such as is used in acupuncture. She began to wonder in her twice weekly wanderings between the Eastern and Western hemispheres about what healing potential the meridian might have for this seemingly soulless town.
In November of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic and in the context of a collaborative inquiry around colonialism, racism, social justice and spiritual activism, Jane met Karmit who inspired grander perspectives and created an energetic container for the witnessing of a story that is being told by the landscape along the coastal cliffs of Britain. Living in Spain, Karmit is a magical mix of Geomancer, shamanic practitioner and artist so that her holding allowed for an unfolding of a story about the crumbling of Empire and an energetic reparation from North to South along the Prime Meridian.
From Aboriginal prophecies to Astrological alignments, there were many predictions that the Winter Solstice of 2020 would bring about the beginning of the end of the old order of dominion: an order that seems to have been assisted by the telluric energies gained from the Meridian. It was around this time that Jane began to notice cracks appearing. Much like the crumbling of the power systems that have held our world on unequal ground for far too long, literal cracks in the cliffs began to appear. The cracks led to cliff fall on either side of the Greenwich Meridian Line so significant that there were unprecedented closures of the under-cliff beaches from Brighton to Eastbourne. Just inland, the most southerly castle along the meridian line also began to crumble so that it too was closed to pedestrians. It was exciting and compelling as it felt like the energetic shifts in earth’s alignments with the heavens were drawing not only the energies down the meridian but the land itself. At this point Karmit suggested to bring an element of this story for the upcoming exhibition/artist collective Línea SuR-NoRtE which would be a good container for the story as it recognises the North South flux while the stone circles of Mzoura reflect the stone circles in Britain and echo the stories whispered by the cliffs.
At Longitude 0.045602, just around the corner from the Meridian monument, there is a Nature Reserve where the cliffs are always crumbling. The unique geology there makes for an ever shifting landscape of instability and glimmering surprise as the cliff fall contains a crystalline variety of the mineral, gypsum known as Selenite. Like the Axis Mundi, the Selenite Crystal is said to anchor the light body in the earth vibration connecting chthonic and stellar energies. It is heralded as an assistant in spinal alignment, in grounding our feet on the earth while keeping our heads touching the stars.
On the 23rd of February, Jane went to collect Selenite as a gift from the cliffs with the intention of sending the crystals south along the meridian as a metaphoric redistribution of power that has accumulated and been held for so long.
The box of crystals was taken to the post office in Peacehaven at Longitude 0.007107 E and posted to Emilio (an artist and curator of Línea SuR-NoRtE) who also happens to live along the Greenwich Meridian in Valencia. From there it will be sent onwards from host to host in the hopes that the crystals will reach the final point along the coast in Ghana where the meridian leaves the African continent. The crystals are sent with the invitation to collaborate in this conceptual piece and with the intention that the selenite’s energy can concentrate and dissipate along the meridian, its synapses, its networks, in a flux, in a dance of its own, not tethered to one nation, or one hold of power.