Mark





















Mark










Planetary 
Mess—Age

—-

    Humanity is in a perpetual search for transcendence, on a constant quest to develop and evolve. This has led us to advance through different Ages throughout history; the Ancient Age, Medieval Age, Modern Age and the Contemporary Age. Each age demarcated by a shift that totally changed the course of humanity and the way humans perform and interact with & within their habitat.

  Our current Information Age started with the idea that information can be encoded in series of ones and zeroes and transmitted without error. Since then many things have changed, and we have made big advances in communication, science and technology. However, despite all these advances, humanity still cannot understand that we live on a fragile planet, where our actions can and have altered the patterns of nature, not for our benefit, but rather accelerating the destruction of our spaceship Earth.

  There is no doubt that we inhabit a complex planetary system - where once there were oceans now lie salty deserts, where there were jungles there are now glaciers and ice. Climate change is inevitable, everything is always changing, but we need to understand that we have only existed for a small fraction of the lifespan of our planet and what used to take millions of years we altered in decades. Our actions are elevating the global temperatures dramatically, increasing the danger of our poles melting down and releasing the tons of methane that lie under them; accelerating the rise of global temperatures even more!



Initiating a massive mess!
A planetary mess!
Giving rise to the Mess Age!


  This is a message to avoid the Mess Age; a message that invites us to re-question the direction that our future is taking by embracing a planetary consciousness; this means recognizing and comprehending ourselves as planetary beings interacting in a planetary system where everything is interrelated and where our actions have consequences. A message that could lead us to act and take decisions on a planetary scale. If we are to change the patterns of nature, we should seek to benefit the whole planet, or at the very least to prevent its potential destruction!







Why together?              

Where to gather?
   How to—gæther?


—-

    Understanding ourselves as part of a whole; being and living in a complex network of relations, where everything is connected, from the smallest particles of an atom, until far beyond the imaginable universe. We are linked; attracted by an intense force; joined in a constant dialogue of æ-motion.
 Nevertheless greed has branched out in our society, looking to find happiness and success in individual satisfaction. Living in environments that are no longer significant. A society that is potentially very creative ends up disarticulating itself.

    This is an invitation to creatives of all kinds to spread and start creating the  situations, atmospheres and relations, that promote the constant æ-motion of our reality. Communication is fundamental for this porpuse; it is necessary to put two types of communication in synergy.


to gather


/tə/ /ˈɡæð·ər/



Communication with the environment
We need to start gathering from the spaces themselves, begin a dialogue with the elements that form our surroundings, given that we interact with them and at the same time inhabit them. This dialogue is enabled by the examination and articulation of the different aspects of culture and the varied natural and geographical conditions of our surroundings. This is necessary, because we are in a dynmic relation with the environment.


together

/təˈɡeð·ər/



Social communication
This occurs in the space of meetings, where contact between people takes place. It is about the intersection of different visions and perspectives, which often pass each other untouched in the everyday rhythm. It is a matter of bringing these in direct relation with each other, allowing interfaces, which promote the interaction and learning process of something different. This dialogue is fundamental to create an opening which is elemental for a common creativity.




to-gæther



/təˈɡæð·ər/



    This synergy (æ-motion) should evoke and expand gatherings or rather to-gætherings, inviting us to re-define and practise our environment with a pro-active attitude, allowing us to talk, reflect and experiment in collective actions;   creating something to-gæther. The value of what takes place, is not (only) in the completed product, but rather in immaterial characteristics, like the experience, of being part of what is taking place, itself. Through this paradigm we stop seeing the present and the future as static concepts, but rather as an interrelated net where different dimensions and conditions interweave. An “augmented” perception is created, which offers new possibilities to identify with spaces, with others and with ourselfs.






techno-imaginary


—-


    No matter how many discoveries are made, there always be an unknown, a mystery, an intimacy that will lead us to fantasize and imagine beyond.

 Since antiquity, different societies have developed a cosmology, their own imaginary, to give sense to their reality and its unknowns; creating mythologies, ceremonies, sacred spaces, symbols, thus interpreting the functioning of the universe and its relationship with “the whole”. Allowing many ancient cultures to live as natives of a place; what it meant to inhabit as if the future of their descendants mattered, caring for the earth as if their lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.

 It is not surprising, however, that during history, many cultures experienced so-called religious syncretism; a process by which two distinct societies end up sharing or uniting two or more traits of different origin. An example of this, is what happened in Latin America, after the arrival of the Spaniards, although this event enriched the current Latin American imaginary, there was no exchange towards both parties, it was rather unidirectional, forcing to camouflage, for example, Andean deities
forbidden under Catholic iconography, as the last means to perpetuate their history and culture.

 Our present Western culture has a prosaic relationship with the unknowns; it has tried to rationalized them, through the scientific method, reducing everything to properties of matter. Explaining what is still inexplicable, through reason, with quantum physics, for example. However, this rationalization, without a “poetization” has led our society to disassociate us from the sublime, from the divine. This has led us not only to desertify our land but also our spirit.

 But, can our scientific enigmas be understood as our modern gods? If so, how can we relate to these divinities? And which values can they represent for our present society?

 Is a “scientific poetic” syncretism possible; in which there is a balance between the material-modern and spiritual-ancestral cosmovision, where the scientific and the poetic appetites of Humanity merge?





Mark