URANIA’S GARDENS
It all started, in a friendly meeting, in my place, for a cup of tea, in December 2008.
The conversation centered around the Mystery of Time; issues like the possible coexistence of past, present, future, or, of parallel possible futures..
The biologist of our group, Yannis Almirantis, spoke about the paradox of the planetary metals; how in the geocentric ancient Greek system the sequence of the metals attributed to each planet follows the sequence of the atomic series, which was discovered many centuries later and professor of AI John Kontos referred to the anti-Kythera mechanism, known as the ‘ancient Greek computer’ which seems to incorporate technological knowledge of the 17th-18th c. Thus, the conversation centered on the Year of Astronomy 2009 and on the possible ways we could contribute in it.
Our roots are in the sky, according to Plato, but should we recover first our roots in the earth to recollect this memory? Or, are our roots in both, simultaneously?
Finally, after many trials, the physicist of our group, Poly Chatjimanolaki uttered the title of our endeavor: What about “Garden of Urania”?
The ‘Garden’ was turned into ‘Gardens’ and the spaceless Idea started finding its way in the insufficiencies of our spacetime, collecting like a super modern spacecraft, its fuel on its way.
Urania is the Muse of astronomy, the daughter of Mnemosene {Memory}; we know that by looking in the sky we are looking at the past, eg. in Chile, the movement of an ancient galaxy was detected, , through a telescope, as it was, ‘only’ 3 milliard’ years after the Big Bang.
We created, on the spot, a blogspot; a working pool/ fishing net, to collect possible projects and we agreed to set, an expiration date for the end of October 2009.
As the months went by, proposals were falling in this quantic pool of superimposed states.. Some ideas were finding their way like powerful seeds; others were shattered in the atmosphere, like meteorites, others were dying like bee workers protecting and nurturing a hidden queen, still unseen, inside the beehive.
As time went by, many of the founding members of our group started to scatter absorbed in other projects or in the loops of everyday life.
I, faithful disciple of the uncertain, was left sitting on the resonant borders of the dynamic system of the working pool, interfering minimally on its edges, watching the powerful changes taking place in its center.
At certain critical times, space-states started emerging, like islands, springing from abysmal depths:
The Grandmothers of North Greece were exhibiting their archetypal weavings with astronomical, cosmological motifs, in the proposition of Mariana Zikou, post-graduate student in the University of Ioanena.
In Thrace, the man-eagle carving on the rock of Roussa, came into prominence through the joint effort of 30 young people. This was a proposal by K Kaltsou and film director N. Droutsis
The student team Homo Ludens restarted its playful world expeditions under the dynamic guidance of professor of physics Alexandros Tsantoulas
And in Crete, through the intervention of Chrysa Vathianaki, the municipality of Rouvas responded to our call, to make out of Gergeri, which name combines the sound of the gargling water and the permanence of rocks, a place “of eternal departure and of eternal return” to our archetypal depths, through the generous donation of works from 50 international artists, with the collaboration of K-Droz, Paris and Poesia e Spiritualita, Milan.
The logos of the soul, says Heraclites, “grows out of itself” in a continuous process of regeneration. Urania’s Gardens could keep opening indefinitely; they are urns of open possibilities, small Arcadias of Sky/Earth interpenetration
Project Urania’s Gardens proposes a way of life centered on the vital ‘Erotimatikon’{question-mark}, in the heart of our existence; that keeps growing and keeps us going.
This is our offer to the Year of Astronomy, a “dispersive structure” that links vertically
theYear of Astronomy event to its primal beginnings, to its ‘logos’[reason to be}, this
“Indescribable Logos which is all down here and in no way absent above” {Akathistos Hymnos}, cultural heritage which has penetrated in our genes and which molds our universal cultural particularity..
Polyxene Kasda, August 2009
