Metals, coal, silicon, salts and similar crystalline raw materials have hitherto served us as means of development and progress. Today, silicon or silicon processor cores control almost all computer systems in the world. However, the general euphoria about the endless possibilities of sustainable development is fading. Concerns about exceeding the horizon of the sustainability of life are real. Increasingly, it turns out that exponentially growing powerful systems communicate more with each other than we who created them. The Axis Mundi installation represents a materialized consideration of the interconnectedness of energy sources across time and space. The system of crystals created from recycled raw materials suggests the constellation of primordial structures contained in the minerals that are the core of human civilizational rise.

Axis Mundi, or Axis of the World, is a mythical term used by ancient civilizations to refer to the most sacred places of their religions and cultures. Axis Mundi symbolically connects several spheres of the world - the underworld, the earth and the heavens. The axis can be a tree, a rope, a mountain or a tower. Energy flowed between gods and humans through the axis, through which the light of order reached the human world of chaos with the help of the most varied rituals. Will today's Axis Mundi be controlled by processors? Where does our axis actually lie today? Hasn't it long been a part of human digitized worlds? Environmental sustainability is not only a theoretical or artistic theme of this installation. Through recycled materials, the author suggests a possible way to maintain the ecosystem of life as a counterbalance to the technological-informational dystopia.

(Pavel Mrkus)