Ripe Stones Gathering
1. Protomyth & Metaphora Format and Media: Objects, sculptures, paintings, video and photography, music, performance Participants: Nataliia Musikhina, Roman Melnikov, Joanna Stawnicka, Adrien Tibet, Trevor Revor
What month is the best for collecting spider honey? Why does a chair have legs and arms, but no head? What color is the void? How many notes in the eggshell’s crack?
Is there any meaning in such questions? Yes, at least because we are capable of uttering them. Metaphor is a unique instrument of cognition; it makes the barrier between thought and the world porous. Human exploration of ourselves and of outworld begins when, upon discovering this instrument, humanity created the first myth.
The first event of the series RIPE STONES GATHERING explores protomyth as the initial manifestation of metaphor, and metaphor as the continuation of myth-making in everyday life.
During this first event RSG reconstracted the proto-myth of the creation of the world, the imaginary origin of mythology and religion. It is an artistic fantasy about what a single myth might have been, standing at the origins of Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures.
Since the myths of this time were not recorded in writing, they exist only in fragments-as traces in matterand images that have survived to this day. Drawing on archaeological finds, ancient figurines, and recurring symbols from varjous cultures, disparate mythological motifs are assembled into a unified poetic stary of the world's greation.
At the first meeting of RSG we aim to illustrate the connection between our ancestors' poetic perception of the world and the way poetry has permeated everyday life—specifically through linguistic metaphors.
Through objects, video, photography, and performative elements, the viewer is invited to read and experience the myth-to enter the space between the everyday and the sacred, between the memory of matter and the imagination, between ancient myth and contemporary experience.