Axis Mundi / Signal festival 2023

Odl town / Staroměstské náměstí Praha
curator: Pavel Mrkus
12 October 202315 October 2023

Metals, coal, silicon, salts and similar crystalline raw materials have served us so far as means of development and progress. Today, silicon processor cores unprecedentedly drive almost all the world’s computer systems. However, the general euphoria about the endless possibilities of continuous development is fading. Concerns about exceeding the sustainability horizon are real. Increasingly, it is becoming apparent that the exponentially growing powerful systems are communicating more with each other than with those of us who created them.

The Axis Mundi installation is a materialised reflection on the interconnectedness of energy resources across time and space. The array of crystals created from recycled materials suggests a constellation of the primordial structures contained in the minerals that are at the core of human civilization’s ascent.

The Axis Mundi or Axis of the World is a mythical term used by ancient civilizations to describe the most sacred places of their religions and cultures. The Axis Mundi symbolically connects several spheres of the world – the underworld, the earthly and the heavenly spheres. The axis can be a tree, a rope, a mountain or a tower. Through the axis, energy flowed between gods and humans, through which the light of order entered the human world of chaos through a variety of rituals. Will our Axis Mundi of today be controlled by processors? Where exactly does our Axis lie today? Is it not already part of our digitized worlds?

Environmental sustainability is not just a theoretical or artistic theme of this installation. Through recycled materials, the artist suggests ways of possibly sustaining the ecosystem of life as a counterbalance to the technological-informational dystopia.