Marko Pogačnik - Galerija Prešernovih nagrajencev Kranj

M ARKOTPHOEGTAHČINRIDK ART

Cosmogram of Gaia as the Mother of Life, 2018

M ARKOTPHOEGTAHČINRIDK ART

2 Marko Pogačnik

Miklavž Komelj

The Third Art of Marko Pogačnik

1.
Marko Pogačnik is one of the most complex artists of our time not only in Slovenia
but in planetary space as well – for the very reason that he is not satisfied with em-
placing things into space, but sees the power of art truly in the fact that he makes us
aware what space and time actually are – and thus attempts to enable their function-
ing, an active transformation of their relationship in multidimensionality.

Most significant, as far as Pogačnik is concerned, is that art has no access to its true
potentials, if only something that people are up to in relations between one another
remains. Art is not limited by Pogačnik to humaneness and interhuman communi-
cation; his work sets no less exalted goal as is the recognition and formation of a
universal language, through which people can establish communication also with
beings not using human language, and even with beings not conceived by rationalis-
tic civilization as living being.

This aspiration was essential already for the OHO movement, with Pogačnik as its key
personality. In Slovenia, OHO was the predecessor of what is currently called mod-
ern art, but if we carefully read the OHO Manifesto, published in 1966 in Tribuna mag-
azine by Pogačnik and Iztok Geister Plamen,1 a fundamental deviation from today's
practices can be observed, which set out the communication role of art in such a way
that art is conceived relationally; for OHO, the communication that is beyond appro-
priation is taking place not as establishment of relations, but as liberation from them;
when OHO members attempt to establish nonappropriational communication with
beings and things, they are hoping to attain absolute view, which is not a relation but
implies »to look into oneself«. It is not the case of renouncing one's strength through
the renouncement of appropriation; appropriation itself is the greatest renunciation
of our own strength, as every appropriation brings us into a relation instead of persist-
ing in free view as in absolute view. OHO, which postulates mutual exclusion of the
relative and absolute, insists that real denouncement of appropriation implies a turn
from the relative to the absolute. For this very reason, OHO needed art as indispen-
sable for studying how to attain absolute view – and this is why art in OHO already
stood out from itself, considering that absolute view is feasible only in such a way that
we see, through the attention with which we see a work of art, everything else as well.
Marko Pogačnik, whom Iztok Geister described as »that kind of man who is taking
life as art«2, was not satisfied, as early as during his first quests, with the notion of
working within the given and in advance defined field of art; from his first attempts
onwards he was striving particularly to define anew what art actually is; he never
fetishized it, but by enabling it to get out of itself gave back to it its specific sacral
capacities, which are renounced by solipsism of the current system of art. (In this

1 Reprinted in the catalogue: OHO, a retrospective; Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, second updated edition, 1994, pp. 13 – 15.
2 Iztok Geister »Life As Art«, in the catalogue: Marko Pogačnik, The Art of Life – the Life of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, 2012, p. 12.

sense I understand his parole »the art of life – the life of art«, which was also the title
of his retrospective exhibition in Ljubljana Modern Gallery in 2012; it is only the art
of life that can give real life to art itself.) In this fundamental standpoint lay, from the
very beginning, his distinctly avant-garde orientation; his brave intransigence, with
which he embarked upon his first solitary quests, void of any support, inevitably led
via individual to the superindividual and collectively binding movement.

2.
Marko Pogačnik's exhibition in the Prešeren Award Winners Gallery and Prešeren
Gallery in Kranj in 2018 is his first exhibition after more than half a century in the town
in which the OHO movement was also established.

Yet Pogačnik's work is constantly present in the very centre of this town, too – al-
though so subtly and unobtrusively that it's quite possible that it will remain unno-
ticed: his work in the fountain, which stands in the main city square, are two heads of
the Kokra and Sava Rivers elementary beings with water flowing from them. During
my visit of Kranj, when the exhibition was being prepared, Pogačnik explains to me,
while passing the fountain, that these are in fact nymphs. Still, this has nothing to do
with anthropomorphic depictions in Antique aesthetic canons, but rather with cer-
tain visualization nearer to Celtic masks. Pogačnik tells me how he immersed himself
into the characters of these two beings. »And so I made their portraits, « he adds as if
portraying invisible elementary beings and communication with them is something
most natural in the world.

On the premises of the Prešeren Gallery, where his exhibition was set up in 1965 as
the Way of the Cross – albeit as the Way of the Cross, which as a brutal walk upon
blades takes place in a human being himself, the exhibition that upset the city com-
munist rulers to such an extent that they banned it – Pogačnik’s narration is so vivid
that I feel for a moment as if I myself am a visitor of the exhibition that I physically
could not see. With his words and gestures he recalls his installations so clearly that
it seems to me that I see it myself: on one of the walls a mirror was hanging, the sur-
face of which was covered by wooden boards, while behind a column in the centre
of the room a plaster statue of a naked girl was hidden (stolen by the sculptor from
the attic of the Academy of Art in Ljubljana, from which he scraped the patina to at-
tain its whiteness); when you entered the place you could not see the girl behind the
column, but you could catch sight of her mirror image together with your own mirror
image behind the bars … Girl as an image of soul, a captivated soul (which can at
the same time be seen as a pre-image of what eventually became the Goddess in his
opus). Pogačnik explains: »I wished to say that we are the prisoners of nonfreedom
… That we are not free beings … As rational civilisation we do not allow souls any
impulses of freedom ...«

There are very few artists that would place their entire work so uncompromisingly in
relation to truth. Not truth as something given in advance, but something that has to
be endured in order to be established at all.

For the party rulers in Kranj, Pogačnik became a persona non grata; but when he was
prohibited to exhibit his works at a group exhibition in 1966, he exhibited himself.

4 Marko Pogačnik

Initially, Pogačnik comprehended his rebellion as a rebellion against ossification of
the society that legitimized itself as revolutionary, but was in fact very rigid and es-
sentially bourgeois; for Pogačnik, the socialism as experienced by him in Kranj was
a great fraud void of truth. Soon, however, he realized that the problems were much
deeper; together with his OHO-an comrades he recognized the entrapment of ideol-
ogy as such as placed by OHO against it with its epochal concept of reism; let us
underline that the conceptualism of reism was not only artistic (in the interview pub-
lished in the catalogue of Pogačnik's retrospective in 2012, Peter Weibl stated how he
was convinced that »reism« was the most important contribution to art in the last fifty
years «3) but also a philosophical deed of the same weight at least. The OHO mem-
bers fought a Wittgensteinian battle for the liberation from limitations of their own
language, for the liberation from their own mental schemes established in advance.

Liberation that is aware that the very thing we wish to liberate ourselves from has to
be liberated. If OHO no longer comprehended a wok of art as an object, it did not
achieve this through the object's elimination but through its liberation by radically
siding with it. Malevič imagined defetishized way of living as an objectless world,
the world liberated from objects, whereas OHO comprehended a true liberation as
liberation of the objects themselves, of things themselves (which can again be as-
sociated with the Russian avant-garde, i.e. revolt of things according to Mayakovski).
A seemingly banal ascertainment: today we think that we have to liberate ourselves
from plastic packaging ; Pogačnik, however, knew that this could be implemented
only if we liberated packaging itself; as written by Geister, »Pogačnik managed to
liberate things from the curse of usefulness for all times with a series of casts of plas-
tic packaging«.4 In Pogačnik's OHO-an comic, it is electric bulbs, coffee, forks and
knives that revolt against people as well as against the characteristics attributed to
them by people, while in a cycle of drawings entitled Tinza the rebels become stereo-
typed commercialized images of naked women, which start asking absurd questions
and thus create an »alogical« situation.5 Pogačnik's early OHO-an books, on the other
hand, liberate themselves from being packaging for texts … The essential difference
of the OHO-an view from the ordinary criticisms of reification lies in the fact that as
far as OHO is concerned, appropriation is not taking place only by things that are
attributed certain usefulness, but already by being attributed with a meaning. So it
is not a case of materialisation but of something much more radical. Pogačnik, who
is convinced that rationalization of the world destroys life, underlines: »Specifically,
the OHO-an doctrine demands objects and all beings in general to be liberated from
human appropriation in the form of purpose, function, sense, etc.«6 Liberation is not

3 Christian Höller, »The Sixties, Sweet and Sour«, Conversation with Marko Pogačnik and Peter Weibl about the beginnings of their artistic
paths« in the catalogue: Marko Pogačnik, The Art of Life – the Life of Art (see Note 2), p. 245.
4 Iztok Geister, op. cit. (see Footnote 2), p. 12.
5 At these Pogačnik's drawings and their recent critical reactualization by Vesna Bukovec it would be worth calling attention to the essential
difference between the spirit of OHO and the prevailing spirit of current contemporary art. With her cycle of drawings, Vesna Bukovec
wishes to upgrade Pogačnik's drawings and, in a certain sense, to feministically radicalize the matter; her interpretation suggests that
Pogačnik's drawings still remain inside the »male« view; opposite to the beautiful girls who ask from Pogačnik's drawings alogical questions
of the type »You don't want me because I love aeroplane?«, he places drawings of women in everyday situations with comments of the
type »You don't want me because I am critical?«. Here Vesna Bukovec overlooks that her drawings are to a much greater extent caught into
the convention than Pogačnik's, for they remain in the order of logicistic rational discourse, while Pogačnik's drawing brilliantly break with
this very discourse and therefore remain so very liberating. But most important is the fact that Pogačnik's drawings are nothing but a pure
flow of energy, whereas the drawings of Vesna Bukovec are merely illustratively and figuratively modest explanation of an idea.
The conceptual strength of Pogačnik's drawings is, on the other hand, in the very fact that a drawing is never just explanation of an idea,
but has its own autonomous energy.
6 Beti Žerovc, »Conversation with OHO members – Marko Pogačnik«, in the catalogue: Marko Pogačnik, The Art of Life – the Life of Art
(see Footnote 2), p. 212.

in the criticism of reification in the name of sense, but in such a radical viewing of
things as things that even a human becomes a thing among things in it. Hence he can
establish communication with all things and he himself can become »unreachable
for the anger of animals«, if I refer to a verse by Tomaž Šalamun.

The OHO movement was collective and had in its nature a planetary character, al-
though physically concentrated mainly between Kranj and Ljubljana (but retained
intimacy even in intercontinental communications; it is indeed wonderful how al-
most all OHO-an works are unusually gentle with all that conceptional sharpness
inside them); but the beginnings began to take place in a solitary search without
any support, and everything that Pogačnik had at his disposal during the first years
of his quests for the premonition of a different art and consciousness a copy of the
magazine Tank, which was kept by the library of Kranj Grammar School, Eliot's Waste
Land and three Kosovel's Kons in the notes of Ocvirk's publication of his Selected Po-
ems, about which Pogačnik made the seminary work (in which he translated, among
other things, Kosovel's verses into rhythmic drawings), which consequently became
a pretext for the local party rulers to send him to a psychiatric institution.

One of the most beautiful materializations of his initial quests with no support that is
demonstrated as a total dedication to the Goddess from the perspective of Pogačnik's
later functioning, which the young artist was able to catch sight of through a con-
crete young woman, is his drawing Looking at Marija made in the summer of 1964.
Pogačnik was looking at this girl named Marija and making a drawing – he was not
attempting to portray her, but was nearing her image with seismographic recording
of the trembles of his hands (»I shall only draw / how my hand is trembling«, I myself
wrote in a kind of love attempt in a poem when attending grammar school) while
looking at the being his eyes had caught sight of, into the frame of the contour of her
face he was drawing »light impulses«, as he told me while having a chat with me. And
with this very thing he revealed something non-human or something beyond-human
in the core of human presence. This drawing totally breaks down and demystifies
portrait painting, while at the same time there is almost a religious moment of adora-
tion in its procedure, which today's art is usually so afraid of.

Tomaž Brejc described this wonderful drawing with the following words: »In the
drawing Looking at Marija, Pogačnik's grammar school muse, the pen does not touch
paper in the manner of impressionist stroke, hence does not manifest her face but il-
lustrates the drawing procedure itself. Monet and Pissarro insisted that painters should
not look at the object but at its picturesque impression, which is rapidly registered by
colour strokes: the object will then wrench itself out somehow and recognize itself
in given strokes. To Marko, however, a stroke of pen is a means and an image at the
same time. He looks at Marija's face and already draws a stroke. Where he perceives,
for example, a piece of skin on the face, eyes, nasal fold, lips or eyebrows, there and
then he draws a line, one beside the other, so he is not portraying but actualizing the
method of impressionism itself, disregarding the mimetic impression. The result is not
a portrait but a total sum of strokes he drew while following her face. The same as
the impressions (individual looks) followed each other, so did the strokes, right to a
complete inner fulfilment of the facial contour. The look and the stroke are actualized
in the material drawing that is seemingly »abstract«, but in truth he follows the impres-

6 Marko Pogačnik

sion detail with total dedication and thus provides for metonymic proximity (his look
does not shift away from the face at all), without mimetic illustration being made
from it. One cannot be nearer to the »portrait«, but at the same time the method, too,
cannot be consistent and truthful. Here lies the beginning of the OHO-an method: to
see without seeing something anticipative, founded in illustrative conventions in style
art, in modernistic »isms«, but only what turns out or appears from pictorial work and
thus has its own content and character.«7

In fact, this drawing already contains the entire method of the subsequent Pogačnik's
kinesiograms, although these kinesiograms function, in comparison with tentative
attempts of this early work, as visualizations within a certain system. Joachim Prenzel
had the following to say about them: »Still, kinesiograms should not be read as visual
messages to a human being, but rather as a direct record of energy of a certain place.
In this sense they are similar, on the one hand , to seismic records with which it is
possible to record the most delicate oscillations, while on the other hand they can be
compared with patterns according to which elementary particles are arranged, the
patterns with which strong magnetic or electric fields are illustrated in physics.«8

In contrast, we can take Pogačnik's sculpture – about which Iztok Geister wrote that
Pogačnik carved from a conglomerate mass a human in nobody's image – carved in
1962 in live rock at the entrance to the Zarica Canyon (which was eventually flooded
with the damming of the Sava River at Medvode) that marked the location of subse-
quent OHO-an projects and is recorded in the OHO chronology as the initial deed
of this movement even before its establishment, as a predecessor of Pogačnik's later
»megalithic« sculptures, although here we are again dealing with the difference be-
tween a solitary deed with no support and sculptures created in the process of ex-
tremely thoughtful system of lithopuncture.

This tension between full openness to the unknown, ready for the soul and hand
with no support to directly follow the impulses coming from other dimensions, and
systemization is one of the major characteristics of Pogačnik's opus: he invents com-
prehensive systems, but it seems that the purpose of this systemization lies in the
very fact that he retains this openness void of support. Systematization is a way of
concentration that retains uncatchable vivacity. Pogačnik is a great critic of rational-
ism, his standpoint being that rationalisation kills life. But as early as in the 1960s he
used the elements of computer logics with his OHO-an programmed works, even
though he knew nothing about computers at that time. With these procedures he
rendered these works a certain objectivity, a certain liberation from the subject's
arbitrariness. And how unusual and free forms sprang up from his most complex
system – the system of medial forms! It should also be specifically emphasized that
cosmogram, as far as Pogačnik is concerned, is not something abstract but some-
thing extremely concrete. In a certain place in his book on the universal language
Pogačnik refers to Kandinsky; Kandinsky is considered a pioneer of abstract art, but
he himself wished to affirm, particularly in his late period, the term »concrete art«. In
such a way, Pogačnik' line could be seen, too.

7 Tomaž Brejc, »Marko's Drawings«, in the catalogue: Marko Pogačnik, The Art of Life – the Life of Art (see Footnote 2), p. 87.
8 Joachim Prenzel, »Kinesiograms and cosmograms – the language of the universe. With Marko Pogačnik's drawings«, in the catalogue:
Marko Pogačnik, The Art of Life – the Life of Art (see Footnote 2), p. 166.

At the same time, the tension between the openness to the unknown and the systems
on Pogačnik's art and life path is also manifested as oscillation; there are periods and
works where the first prevails, and there are periods and works where systematiza-
tion nears the edge where it could prevail over that in the name of which is imple-
mented. Pogačnik is not afraid of going to the edges neither in one nor in other direc-
tion; here, he is led by his exceptional intelligence and extreme alertness that tell him
when to change direction if he wishes to remain loyal to the one and only direction
had been following from the very beginning. In his youth, when everybody bad-
mouthed Gothic, Goethe discovered the beauty of Gothic and popularized it; towards
the end of his life, however, Gothic became so very fashionable that it began to get
on his nerves. Pogačnik, too, experienced a few times how certain things that he had
discovered as new and as something that opened the path for him against the cur-
rent, became mainstream. Pogačnik's role was certainly of key importance in the de-
cision for OHO to implements its self-abolition in the name of loyalty to its own goals
at the moment when a possibility sprang up to prosper as part of the international
capitalist art system. At the end of the 1970s, Pogačnik was very close to the new age
movement and was even a co-organizer of the first world congress of this movement
in Florence – but he distanced himself from it at the very same moment, for he be-
came aware of its manipulativeness; in spite of it, he retained some of its elements
which, however, should not lead us astray in such a way that Pogačnik's opus would
be judged by them. Pogačnik's path is so singular and so free that he allowed himself
many things while walking upon it – he even made a cosmogram for the cover page
of the book about Princess Diana and designed the national coat of arms … Still, he
never even nearly fell for conformism; Pogačnik looks at everything from some other
perspective, which is not caught in the logic of the existing; although he occasionally
participated in seemingly mainstream projects, he never betrayed he basic principle
to embark upon those things that are in certain cultures ignored and do not follow
the enacted pattern of thinking. In fact, Pogačnik constantly follows that particular
openness to the cosmic that had led his hand already while Looking at Marija.

And this openness is well guarded by his conception of the »third art«, as proclaimed
in a special manifesto. If the »first art« (classical art) is, according to Pogačnik, the
»art of serving a given culture and its ruling civilizational and religious patterns«, and
the »second art« (modern art) is the »art dealing with its own essence and follows its
own purpose, founded in it itself«, the »third art« is defined as follows: »Third art does
not exist as yet and at the same time exists since art has existed. Third art is not self-
sufficient. Installed within the many possible spheres of the resident or non-resident,
it must not lose itself as art. Third art is interested in destiny of life on Earth and in
space.«9

9 Marko Pogačnik, »Manifest For Third Art«, in the catalogue: Marko Pogačnik, The Art of Life – the Life of Art (see Footnote 2), p. 22.

8 Marko Pogačnik

If reading carefully, we shall discover something that may indeed seem a paradox,
but is actually deeply consistent: when art is self-sufficient, it is already lost as art.
Installed within the many possible spheres of the resident and non-resident is implicit
for the reason that art finds itself as art (with the very fact that it stepped out, with
its actions, from the institutionally protected sphere of art, OHO gave back to art its
straightforwardness; as Pogačnik nicely wrote when the repetition of OHO-an actions
were carried out by the group Irwin, he set up in 1969 the installation entitled Water-
Air-Statically on the Sava River »in order to enable art to enter into its straightforward-
ness« 10) – but as soon it would be reduced to only this position it would lose itself
once more, as it would exchange the absolute for the relative and would, for this
very reason, fall into self-sufficiency. The straightforwardness of art, whose specific
temporality that interconnects the still-not-existing and antiquity, which has always-
been-here, is in its very specific intermediate state beyond opposition between the
existing and non-existing – this art »is and is not« at the very same time, due to which
it is becoming that particular space of magic functioning, which is formed by creative
imagination, about which so much has been so beautifully written by Henri Corbin,
apart from Ibn' Arabi. Pogačnik's »third art« thus simultaneously corresponds with
Kosovel's »third half of the world«, recognized by Kosovel »in our creation«; here,
»our« cannot refer only to humaneness. (With his conceptualisation »flowers of life«
in the formation of medial spaces, Pogačnik attempted to formulate a universal for-
mal matrix of creation, which has transformative consequences for what we compre-
hend as reality.) In his Manifesto for Third Art, Pogačnik is very clear concerning this
magic power:
»7.1 With the tool of imagination, art is capable of co-creating the new multidimen-
sional space of planet Earth.
7.2 Art can develop the language of communication with beings of other species, with
which modern civilization isn't capable of establishing conversation.
7.3 Art can become o form of schooling of modern human in the comprehension of
invisible and the other world's dimensions of space and beings residing in it«.11

By not reducing art to itself, Pogačnik liberated its elementary forces as well: space
and line in his works regain their magic power. Reistic schooling in strict concreteness
purified his line down to that particular purity, owing to which Alain Badiou speaks of
pure drawing as material visibility of the invisible, where there is nothing to do with
»to be or not to be«, but with »to be and not to be«. At the same time, Pogačnik bestows
on drawing a completely new role; not only that his very drawing is also an initial ele-
ment of sculpture; Pogačnik literally makes sculptures with his drawings. And this is
possible due to the ultimate awareness that line is space already – this intermediate
space, which is opened by the magical »is and is not«. The carved lines of cosmo-
grams on his stones are taking place simultaneously at the physical level and another
level, which is envisaged for the invisible world; the carved lines are thus always
already inseparable from the uncatchable changeable subtle images made by light.

10 Zdenka Badovinac, »How we work? A conceptual production as an aesthetic gesture in some Yugoslav conceptual and postconceptual art
groups«; in the catalogue: Marko Pogačnik, The Art of Life – the Life of Art (see Footnote 2), p. 201.
11 Marko Pogačnik, »Manifest For Third Art«, in the catalogue: Marko Pogačnik, The Art of Life – the Life of Art (see Footnote 2), p. 24.

3.
OHO members retrospectively gave different statements about their movement,
which underline its different aspects, and continued with their subsequent work the
OHO tradition in different direction. Pogačnik brought the movement, as a search for
a new language, certainly to the most far-reaching consequences. The language that
was not to be just a communication between people, but would enable conversation
with other beings as well.

This highly tallies with what Jure Detela (who visited Pogačnik in the seventieth at
Šempas and composed a poem about it) wrote with obvious thought of OHO in his
mind about the »avant-gardes of the sixties« in the unpublished text »A Legend About
Slovenian Beauty«, stating that artists were »striving to produce new languages that
would be able to listen and yearningly answer even the languages of water currents,
winds and stars«.12

Detela dedicated all of his work with verbal language to the search for such a lan-
guage, which would sustain the presence of beings that do not speak human lan-
guages, in such a manner that people would open up to their languages – and at the
same time give these beings in their own languages signals about their presence in
the human world. Detela saw a possibility for the introduction of communication in
the stepping up of the conscience of strangeness and in distances. He emphasized
the irreducible diversity of languages that cannot be reduced to a common instance.
He also rejected the idea of a higher linking instance, e. g. Nature, which would
substantiate the existence of individual beings. He was no looking for a universal
language, but attempted to give the language for which he wrote that it was equally
foreign to the outer and inner worlds in his own language such conceptual rigor that
would endure universalist conscience.

Contrary to Detela, Pogačnik has been proceeding since at least the 1980s from the
entities such as is the notion of the Earth's conscience, which is personified by the
mythological Gaia. His quest, however, is primarily aimed at discovering a linking
universal language. He is discovering it at the visual level, although in such a manner
that he is open to the invisible; all Pogačnik's visualizations are made in such a way
as to establish communication with the invisible. Pogačnik comprehends his cosmo-
grams above all in the context of discovering this universal language; in it, cosmo-
grams are the »living letters«13 . However, we are in no way dealing with an attempt at
rigid formalisation; formal cleanseness is necessary for a precise following of those
unspeakable impulses, which are brought forth by creative moment: »Universal lan-
guage surpasses the anthropocentric limitations of modern languages, as it enables
communication with other beings of the Earth's universe as well, even though they
have no knowledge of perception at the material level. Universal language is an open
system developing on the basis of creative moment and in the firmament of arche-
typal (causal) level of habitation. This is where its relatedness with contemporary art
is substantiated.«14

12 Unpublished manuscript in Detela's legacy; National and University Library, Ljubljana, 14/2009.
13 Joachim Prenzel. op. cit. (see Footnote 8), p. 169.
14 Marko Pogačnik, »Back to Art – Forward to Art; in the catalogue: Marko Pogačnik, The Art of Life – the Life of Art (see Footnote 2), p. 67.

10 Marko Pogačnik

When reading how Pogačnik interpreted his open system in his book The Language
of Cosmograms, written in German, we search in vain for something we could learn in
the way of mastering things once and for all in the sense of a kind of encryption; what
we have to learn is entering the state in which everything is suddenly revealed as lan-
guage – not only cosmograms but ritual and spontaneous motions and body language
as well, eventually all the forms manifesting themselves as signatura rerum. Learning
the language of cosmograms cannot be learning of (printed) forms but learning how
to enter the state of that particular openness of the eternal moment, in which this lan-
guage transpires in its own rising – this language can be read only by being created
with imagination in the state that surpasses dualism of the subject and object.

Detela wrote the quoted text in the mid-1980s in the context of the criticism of institu-
tionalism. Openness to the languages of beings that are not human was comprehend-
ed by him as a contrast to the institutional stipulation of what art is. At the same time
he wrote, in one of his late poems, about the »ruin of conceptualism« as of epochal
debt of his generation. In today's contemporary art conceptualism is revived in the
form of neoconceptualism, although this very neoconceptualism paradoxically even
mitigated the reductivist identification of art with art form, recognized by Detela as
blocking.

This is why we even more so admire the far-sightedness of Pogačnik's standpoint that
OHO as a group should abolish itself in the name of following its own ideals in the
very moment when he was threatened with being tagged with the function in the in-
ternational capitalist art system – which could be seen, from other perspective, as the
potential beginning of a brilliant international career. (Which in a deeper sense in no
way spared this movement, of course; today, OHO is one of the rare art phenomena
from Slovenia, acknowledged in the global context with a crucial importance.)

According to Pogačnik's words, several intellectuals who enthused over OHO con-
sidered the Šempas Family true betrayal. At first glance, the Šempas Family seemed
a total redirection, given that its members dedicated much more time to the demand-
ing food production and other strategies based on development of circular economy
than to art. (Along this, they tackled even such work as was the restoration of the old
pilgrim Church of the Virgin Mary Coronation above the village of Vitovlje; the com-
mune members made the equipment of the church from parts of altars blown up dur-
ing World War II.) The Šempas Family, however, should in no way be comprehended
as a simple redirection from art to the art of everyday life; this apparent redirection
was implicit in order for the art, which was depreciated by its identification with the
institution, to regain its true power. The volition materialized by this international
commune was marked by Pogačnik during my visit of Šempas with the following
words: »Art as at the beginning of the world.«

Again that fumbly quest in the trust of light impulses as in »Looking at Marija«, except
that this time everything was taking place at the collective level and at the level of di-
rect work with soil. The people who had no idea about agriculture found themselves
in the country – and their attempts were fumbly, at times even comical. During the
night they were drumming, asking the intelligence Nature to cooperate with them. In
Šempas, Pogačnik even trained as a blacksmith; he was forging waste iron. He still
keeps his own smithy. All of this was materialized in a practical way, but also had its

mythical dimension; in his smithy I was reminded of Elijah. Together with learning
agriculture, esoteric schooling was taking place; here, Pogačnik established conver-
sations with Pan and elementary beings.

For practical reasons, the basics of acupuncture Earth healing were also developed
in Šempas, which subsequently became the basis for Pogačnik's system of lithopunc-
ture. At least as key personality as Pogačnik was all this time his wife Marika, a sculp-
tor herself, who still plays a significant role in the origin of Pogačnik's works; the
majority of cosmograms are carved into lithopunctural stones by Marika herself.

The Šempas Family, which should not be confused with hippie communes of those
times, was consciously set up as a centre that was to create a new look at nature and
life and, even more than that, as a an embryo of new civilization – as an attempt at
establishing a micromodel of new civilization, that was to spring up from this model.
Civilization in which different levels of life, art and spiritualness would awarely co-exist.

In the moment when it turned out – at the institutional presentation in the context of
»new age« in Florence, where the Šempas Family was presented together find Find-
horn and Auroville – that the model could be transformed into a goal that functions
as a kind of oasis in the middle of consumer civilization, Pogačnik suspended the
commune's activities – although it's true that this suspension was already signalled
with the fact that the commune was losing its purpose and that practical needs, too,
began to dictate a different way of life. Pogačnik says: »It turned out that the model
could not replace direct functioning. I became aware that the thing should be deeper
rooted, earthed and linked with life.«

It is interesting that this phase was initially followed by the period, during which
Pogačnik publicly worked exclusively as a sculptor; in the 1979–1986 period, he cre-
ated twelve WW II memorials; the first one was erected at Vrtovin. (They were made in
the context of orders placed at that time with him, when the partisan movement was
part of the state ideology – yet this connectivity to partisanship can be meaningful in
some totally other, even conflicting context; partisan art as art, linked to the process of
social transformation had, in itself, the factor that can be correlated with avant-garde
volition, and this was the reason why partisan art is placed in the new setting-up of the
permanent collection in Ljubljana Modern Gallery between historic avant-garde and
OHO; this is why it's worth mentioning herewith yet another non-random correlation:
that OHO-an books were printed manually with a miniature partisan printing machine,
made during World War II by Marika's father; in his partisan jacket, Marko Pogačnik
stood at the exhibition, at which he publicly displayed himself, as he was not allowed
to exhibit his works …) These sculptures are made of disused architectural links, and
thus they symbolically indicate the principle from which Pogačnik still proceeds as
far as his lithopuncture stones are concerned – committedly he takes parts of stone
blocks, that were discarded in the quarry, by which he illustrates the gospel thought
about the stone, which was discarded by bricklayers, but became a corner stone. Still,
as far partisan monuments are concerned, Pogačnik had already studied certain prin-
ciples, which he eventually actualized in the system of lithopuncture.

12 Marko Pogačnik

The system of lithopuncture and Earth healing, linked with the power of cosmograms
with which Pogačnik has respun almost the entire planet, thus condenses the cogni-
tions from all periods of his preliminary work. Even cosmograms cannot be com-
prehended isolatedly, and the elements of universal language are like triggers that
enable us to recognize the universal language everywhere – as something that has
always been here, but is at the same time something that still needs to be established
in the way that surpasses the entire duality between receptivity and creativity, given
that universal language denotes precisely that every reception in its area is already
a creation.

It is interesting how Pogačnik applied the methods formulated by him during the
years of his withdrawal from urban life also on the urban space, in which he recog-
nizes the same elementary powers as in nature. Pogačnik wrote three very attractive
books about cities, one about Ljubljana and two about Venice. His view recognized
cosmograms of the universal language even in the fingers of Francesco Robba’s an-
gel or in the composition of Stojan Batič’s sculpture … From the second book about
Venice, let me mention Pogačnik’s description of Baldassare Longhena’s architecture
of Santa Maria de Salute; this record demonstrates how Pogačnik’s view can discover
even in the existing building, which is viewed by the majority of people as a tourist
attraction, a dramatic novelty of the elementary eruption – in his view, the Baroque
church becomes volcanic eruption – and when it appears in front of us once more
in material form, he transforms it: inscribed in it is, for all times, what the following
Pogačnik’s words tell us: »The architectural form of the Basilica della Salute works on
humans like a volcanic eruption locked in stone. A sample of volcanic eruption is per-
haps the best parable for the Basilica's dynamic character. Imagine that the building,
designed in three stages, rose from the sea under the pressure of the immense power
of internal eruption. First of all, the eruption from the sea depths pushed out two oc-
tagonal storeys, placed one upon the other. Its to the extreme tense sphere, however,
was unable to withstand the pressure of invisible explosion. It burst on the apex and
pushed out through the opening a high and narrow superdome. But the superdome
was not strong enough either to mitigate the pressure of the explosive powers in direc-
tion towards the sky. And through the apex of the superdome a giant then broke out as
well, the sculpture of the copper-plated Virgin Mary. After the eruption of the basilica's
dynamic powers reached its peak in the form of Mary's sculpture, it began to flow
down towards the ground like lava during volcanic eruption. Imagine it sliding along
the stone curve, then cooling at its foundation and enveloping into huge stone volutes.
In the process, the sparks of descending powers disperse through the building and are
petrified in the shape of innumerable sculptures, embellishing its facade.«15

15 Marko Pogačnik, The Secret of Venice. Vital energy dimensions of the water city, ZTT ESt, Trieste, 2008, pp. 112, 114.

4.
The essential ingredient of Pogačnik's work is elucidation of the potentials of a con-
crete space, healed and made aware by this work. At the exhibition in Kranj in 2018,
special emphasis was given to genius loci once more; in one of the rooms of the
Prešeren Award Winners' Gallery, Pogačnik set up an installation composed of stones
and glass as a renaissance model of the ruined St. Martin's Church on the former islet
of the Sava River on the fringe of the town.

This was the site of the city pre-parish; during archaeological excavations prior to the
construction of road, remains of old Christian basilica were found. It stood there till
the Baroque period, when abandoned soon after a new church of the same saint was
built at Stražišče.

The next stage will be setting up of stones in the place where the basilica once stood.
Marika and Marko Pogačnik take me to see this place, which is now a degraded area,
a crossroad with disused industrial buildings and truck parking spot. But once upon
a time, this was a sacred place. When looking at it, one would not even think about,
but with his installation Marko Pogačnik intends to raise awareness that this indeed is
a holy place. By doing so and carrying out an almost archaeological work, he does
something else: he awakens our consciousness that every place can in fact be a holy
place. (This is why it is not inconsistent that Pogačnik set his lithopuncture even in
the Ljubljana BTC City – a shopping centre – even though this may seem so.)

With its archaeological dimension, this project reminds us of yet another essential
segment of Pogačnik's »prehistory«; in his youth, he most dearly and seriously wished
to become an archaeologist. Between the ages of 10 and 15, he gathered an impres-
sive collection of finds, which he then transformed, in 1969, into an art work entitled
»The Vessel of Time«. At the retrospective exhibition in the Ljubljana Modern Gallery,
the artefacts from the »vessel« were arranged beside one another, but taking of arte-
facts from it was actually conceived as a ritual that reinstates its timescale.

Here let us underline something very essential indeed: the avant-garde volition to
which Pogačnik was committed from the OHO period onwards, is not affirmation of
the new against the old, but just the opposite, a break with that particular compre-
hension of time that places the new against the old. Pogačnik attempts to achieve
that point of consciousness, in which the past, the future and the present coexist at
the same time – as a significant inspiration, he mentions Eliot's Four Quartets to me.
That new, brought by Pogačnik, is not new in the opposition to the old within a given
structure of time, but a new structuration of time as such – or, to put it better, a new
consciousness about it. He wrote: »Space and time are not are not just logical nor just
synergistic phenomena. The sacral dimension of space as of non-space and time as
non-time is an inalienable part of their wholeness.«16

16 Page. 24. Compare the statement of the OHO manifesto: »Where there is space, there is no space«. Reprinted in the catalogue:
OHO, retrospective; see Footnote, 13.

14 Marko Pogačnik

Pogačnik also very closely monitors his dreams. He does not interpret them in the
manner of psychoanalysis, but tries to find in them prophetic messages about trans-
formations on the planet inhabited by us. On the basis of tracing the course of events
in his dreams, Pogačnik has been detecting, since 1998, that our planet has been
changing its consciousness. He had his book of drawings from these dreams in the
form of comics, accompanied by comments, published in German with the title The
Earth's Quantum Leap; a version of these drawings with Slovenian inscriptions is to
be displayed at the exhibition in Kranj as well. (These drawings function very strong-
ly. After studying Pogačnik's book, I had some incredibly intense dreams about nar-
whal – how on earth a little being that turned out to be an Arctic narwhal could have
found itself in my proximity – and what should I do now for this little being to survive
in this impossible place? Particularly heightened in this book is the consciousness
about spatial and temporal structure: »Scientific prognoses are based on ordinary
spatial and temporal structure. At this level, the catastrophe of the Earth's destruction
can probably no longer be averted. My experience with the geomantic work taught
me, however, that Earth is a multidimensional being, which is capable of changes not
only on material level, but other more subtle levels of existence as well. I've learned
that if do not succeed in quick curing of the state of our planet at the material level,
there is a possibility for doing so at some other level of reality, which has been known
to us through geomantic experiences. To be more precise: this possibility would be
brought to effect through interaction between material levels and the levels of the so-
called subtle matter«2
In short: inside the spatial-temporal structure, to which science has reduced the con-
sciousness about the living in the last two centuries, it actually looks that nothing
but catastrophe is in store; even more so: this structure itself, if it remains limited to
itself, is catastrophic; the very thing that seems impossible within this temporal-spa-
tial structure should be changed, i.e. the temporal-spatial structure itself. Pogačnik's
elucidation of multidimensionality is correlated with Hölderlinian claim that »where
the danger is, also grows the saving power«.

17 Marko Pogačnik, Quantensprung der Erde, AT Verlag, Baden and München, 2010, p. 9.
(Translation from the quotation from German by M. K.)

Iztok Geister

The Apparent History of »OHO«

A certain art phenomenon cannot be seen such as presenting itself to us, if we see it
merely as a result of social events. Indeed, it sounds somewhat scholarly if we know
how to emplace it into the context of concurrent historical course of events. Still,
one should also think of the possibility that these social events are just accompany-
ing circumstances that do not allude to the essence of things, but are only a shadow
that elapses with the fugacity of photographic exposure. The same can be said of
sociological explanations concerning the art phenomenon OHO in the 1960s, as seen
by Miško Šuvaković in his non-negligible book entitle »Hidden Histories of the Group
OHO« (Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., Ljubljana 2009)1. Non-negligible simply for the fact that
to my knowledge this is hitherto the only work issued in book form that systematically
analyses the art movement of that particular time.2

Šuvaković announces his intention »to problematize and show the character of the
neo-avant-garde excessive and experimental work by members of the OHO group in
the second half of the 1960s« with the following words: »We shall test and exhibit those
performative and textual practices, with the aid of which the order of fictitious socialist
autonomy of art, stable post-revolutionary ethics and normative politics was problema-
tized, provoked and destroyed in cold war conditions and socialist modernism.« In
the forefront of sociological interest are sooner or later behavioural patterns, which
concern transgression and subversion, sexuality and politics. On this occasion, at the
retrospective exhibition of Marko Pogačnik in Kranj, birthplace of the OHO-an doc-
trine and reissue of our joint publication OHO, let me explain my dissent to this kind
of sociological interpretations of the events half a century ago without any scientific
aids, but simply from my own experience.

The gist of the OHO-an approach was a search for a different view of the world as
spread in the 1960s in Slovenia by the Western-oriented intellectual ideas with trans-
lations and original texts, published in the journal Perspektive (Perspectives). The
philosophical interpretation of the consumer society emerging in those years prom-
ised no bright perspective for the young generation of that time. Above us hung, like
the Sword of Damocles, the cognition of man's alienation in the materialized society.
Marko Pogačnik and I were looking for a way to reconcile ourselves to all these in-

1 The book came into my hands after the public debate entitled OHO after OHO in the Modern Gallery in 2014. At that time I wrote the
article entitled The Apparent History of OHO for the Delo daily, but the editor of its Culture Page refused to publish it to the effect that it
referred to the book that had not been dealt with and published in the Delo daily. I wished to publish the article within the topic of OHO
after OHO with the purpose to prevent a deviation from the OHO-an gist that was already well established at that time. Specifically, the
article elucidates the basic elements of the OHO movement, and I am convinced that it is still topical and relevant if not inevitable for the
understanding the original OHO-an doctrine. Slightly modified I am having it published for the first time in this book.
2 The group and its movement, says Šuvaković, went through a number of phases of artistic and post-artistic creation, research and living:
»They began to function in the early 1960s, in cross-sections of influences and atmospheres of the neo-avant-garde, particularly neo-dada,
flux, critical popart, happening and concrete poetry.« He recognizes three periods. In the first half of the 1960s: »They have established the
doctrine of reism and implemented it in a concrete or topological poetry, happening, work on objects and on interventional ambients.« In
the second half of the 1960s: »The OHO group went through a series of phenomena associated with processual art: antiform art, arte
povera, land art, interventions in nature, body-art, and ambiental performance art. And finally: »The end of OHO group is linked to its
transition from the phase of art work to the phase of living in a commune in nature.« In fact, Šuvaković speaks about two phenomena:
the OHO group and the OHO-Catalogue movement, which is of course superfluous, given that the publication Catalogue OHO Group,
spread among their sympathizers, was making merely guest appearances on the pages of the magazine Problemi (Problems). Here let me
add that additional different implementations of the OHO-an concept are recognizable in the so-called third phase, not only those from the
Šempas Family (every OHO member was looking for and found his or her own ways: Marko Pogačnik with his Earth healing, Milenko
Matanović with installations in the urban environment, while I personally have been realizing this idea in my relation with nature).

16 Marko Pogačnik

creasingly multiplying consumer items. It was only when we were able to side with
these objects and promised ourselves to save them, in our art mission, from the curse
of usefulness, we finally realized that we were on the path of liberation. To the best of
our conviction this was not only salvation of things in the objects but salvation of man
in the consumer as well. From this aspect this was no kind of nihilism, as understood
by declared humanists, but genuine humanism.

A significant role in the recognition of things in an object is played, according to the
OHO-an conviction, by its name which, however, is not identical to the thing itself.
Most significant for the OHO-an view of the world is to recognize things such as they
are, as naked things dressed only in their object names. And it was in this very regard
that the packaged and labelled merchant goods turned out to be a non-exhaustive
source of artistic inspiration, given that the packaging was becoming increasingly rec-
ognizable and, at the same time, a decisive component part of communication with
market-cultivated things. We dressed the pages in our enlightened publication of po-
etry and drawings, conceived by Marko in the spirit of solving the problem of squaring
the circle, in the cover with inscription OHO. Let UHO (ear) listen to words, and let
OKO (eye) look at the drawings published in the collection of poems and illustrations,
which invites a reader with exclamation of surprise. Šuvaković does not present this
publication, which is fundamental for the perception of OHO-an spirit, in his book,
but only mentions it vaguely. The publishing of this work in 1966 was given support
in the student magazine Tribuna (Tribune) with the text and drawing of a shoe, which
interprets the OHO-an views, at a later date called »The OHO Manifest«, which is now
also a component part of the recently reprinted original collection.

According to the OHO-an conviction, there was of course no fear that the world in
which man was supposed to descend from his anthropocentric pedestal (for which
he would appropriate all things of this world) would crash into chaos. This is taken
care off by special differentiation, diferentia specifica, which arranges all things both in
nature and reproduced world according to their mutual differences within the frame-
work of equality. This is why variation of art products in the form of series was so
characteristic of the original OHO.

When Šuvaković speaks of reism as of »philosophical, artistic and critical platform of
the humanist conception of the world«, he notes that the »presentations of the mani-
festation of the world are made with a radical and reductivistically structural return to
the objects themselves«. In the spirit of philosophical phenomenological reduction-
ism he refers to the »identity of visual and spatial manifestation with conceptual and
terminological determination of an object« as to reistic tautology, which indeed seems
agreeable but certainly not well-thought out enough. Here he cites Taras Kermavner
who introduced the concept of reism (res, Latin = thing) into the Slovenian way of
thinking, but is not acquainted with my and Marko's opposition to Kermavner's simpli-
fied shrinking of a thing to bare existence. The gist of OHO-an doctrine did not lie in
the existence itself, expressed with auxiliary word is, but in adverbial construction
how is, i.e. in the inwardly enriched existence. After the elimination of »superstruc-

tures«, as referred to by Šuvaković, or of anthropocentric junk, as purposefulness and
usefulness of objects was referred to by the OHO-ists, a thing begins to live a full life,
while the artist's mission is to make this possible. Here we are not dealing only with
»expressive, metaphoric, symbolic and theoretical« superstructures but with much
more than that, with our attitude towards used objects, their liberation from the yoke
of anthropocentrism and alteration of this attitude into a relationship on equal footing.
By returning subjectivity to things we got rid of not only consumer but also historic
burden of nominalization both in everyday life and in art. For this very reason we,
the OHO-an poets (I. G. Plamen, Matjaž Hanžek, and others), were so passionately
degrading the well-established metaphors and were so madly in love with liberating
figurative senses.

In spite of the bitter political experience with UDBA (former Secret Police) we, the
OHO members, did not allow ourselves to be provoked. Milenko Matanović, for ex-
ample, saw in the people who followed his every step, more or less guardian angels,
although he did not know them, of course. Our opposition to the war in Vietnam, too,
was understood as opting against the view of the world that makes war possible and
not as a political engagement. The deepest protest undoubtedly remains Pogačnik's
drawing of a human figure with the inscription Death to the Apple, subtitled Protest
Against Protesting. Something similar is my text for the pop song The Song That Does
Not Differ Between War And Peace. The music for it was written by Naško Križnar, who
also sang it together with Milenko Matanović. The OHO-an approach to the war in Vi-
etnam is explicitly elucidated also by the cannons of David Nez, published in Tribuna,
drawn by him to look so gentle and beautiful that they are silenced forever.

And how was the so-called sexual revolution, so topical of that time, supposed to influ-
ence the OHO art? Certainly not in the context of rebellion against bourgeois society,
even less so against Slovenian Catholicism, as hinted by Šuvaković in his book, but to-
tally in accordance with the general OHO-an intention of unstripping things overload-
ed with anthropocentric attributes. The drawings of naked or in underwear dressed
female or male bodies with the accompanying texts in the comics by Marko Pogačnik
and Benjamin Luks (one of my pseudonyms in those times) enabled, seen in their
so to speak endless variability, enjoyment in the beauty of the incidental world. As
if a contemporary person, enriched with OHO-an experience, would admire, utterly
unvoluptuously but just cognitively excited, the variability of pictures on pornography
web pages.

The OHO group and its sympathizers broke up decades ago. The OHO movement
died out, but still left a recognizable trace in both Slovenian figurative and literary art.
The OHO doctrine, however, has not only survived as a creative method but is, as a
modus vivendi, cognitively useful also in everyday life, although thanks to the con-
sumer society to a certain extent. Every useful thing is able to exist as a free thing, too,
the same as every cultured plant or domesticated animal is able to exist as a wild plant
or animal as well. The original OHO-an doctrine always enables such anthropocentric
approach. This is, in short, how OHO works after OHO!

18 Marko Pogačnik



20 Marko Pogačnik

PROJTEHCTOSUGWHTOS RKS

DOCUMENTS

Geopuncture circle on the location of the Šempas Commune (1971–1979), reconstructed in 2010, Karst stone, photo by Bojan Brecelj

22 Marko Pogačnik



Gea Culture Humanity is married to Gea, the Earth soul. We are embedded
in her stream of manifested life. In a sense we share the same bed
A manifesto with her. But we are not conscious of this sacred relationship, we
do not acknowledge this intimate connection, we do not express or
cultivate our love for and with her. Might not this be the reason
behind or cause of the multiple natural catastrophes and climate
changes we refer to as Earth Changes, and the related political,
economic, and social upheavals and crises we face on daily basis?
The geomantic knowledge that could help us understand how
intimately the body of the human being is related to the body of
the Earth is nearly lost within our culture. However, bit-by-bit we
are regaining experience of the vital energy systems that permeate
not only the human body but also the organism of the Earth’s
landscapes. Even more, we are becoming aware that the intel-
ligence of nature is one and the same intelligence that enables
human beings to think, to express emotion and to create within
the conditions of the materialized world.
Even more important is the common destiny that we share with
Gea, given the reality that our respective evolutions are inter-
twined. We can understand that Gea can (and will) change and
evolve, given the same freedom that human beings have as co-
creators upon the planet. One cannot not expect that humans
would remain the same spiritual beings after receiving the gift to
incarnate upon the Earth, and experiencing themselves as living
beings grounded in matter.

24 Marko Pogačnik

It is obvious that the deep relationship and connection that ex- 1. Who is Gaia, or Gea?
ists between Gea and human beings carries a fateful dimension
that cannot be “managed” solely by formal measures based upon First, we must ask ourselves who is Gaia (or Gea), the being of our
rational concepts, for example current ecological and economic Planet, in relationship to our updated knowledge and experience:
approaches to address global warming. We need to create a whole
spectrum of tools and approaches, including the development of l Gaia represents the noosphere, the sphere of consciousness
all aspects of our consciousness, so that we can renew the relation- of the planet Earth. This sphere of consciousness permeates
ship between humanity and Gea and relate to the essence of the all beings of the life organism of the Earth, be it landscapes,
Earth soul. Over the last decades we have been witnessing the fol- animals, elemental beings, mountains, human beings, oceans,
lowing steps being made on a global level towards a new culture or drops of water …. Gaia embodies the life furthering princi-
tuned to the essence of the Earth. ple of our planet.
l According to the ancient Greek tradition, Gaia is ac-
1) A new ecological consciousness and movement represents knowledged as a Goddess in order to make clear that she
the first basic step, signalling the will of humanity to change represents not only a consciousness distributed among all be-
its attitude towards the Earth planet. ings of life, but also a cosmic being as the guiding agent be-
2) The next step involves diverse efforts to create an awareness hind the life giving force. This is a precondition that makes
of the multidimensional nature of the Earth and her creation, spiritual contact and communication between human be-
including human beings as part of Gea’s cosmos. Out of these ings and Gaia possible.
efforts the art and experimental science of geomancy is devel- l Gaia as the ensouling principle of the Earth can appear in
oping as a form of holistic ecology. The goal of geomancy is to different forms related to a given cultural background or im-
provide our modern culture with methods of understanding the age of the world – it could be a mythical, shamanic, religious,
flow of life forces, and with methods of perceiving the hitherto geomantic or scientific world image.
less known dimensions of existence. l The feminine aspect of Gaia is complemented with a
3) The present ecological and economic crisis confronting our masculine aspect that can be called the spirit of the Earth.
civilization demands a third step, to move further ahead on The masculine aspect focuses and concentrates upon the en-
this path and create a kind of partner culture upon the planet. visioned spiritual role of the Earth planet, upholding and
We need to rediscover and cultivate the love-based dimensions maintaining its identity.
connecting human beings and Gea - and to manifest them in
everyday life. We need to create a new kind of culture upon
the Earth that will enable the further development of the hu-
man race as well as that of the Earth, including all its beings
and dimensions. Let us call this already evolving future culture
Gea Culture.
In order to develop this Gea Culture we first need to transform
our dogmatic and rationally based concepts about who the Earth
is and who we are as human beings – and to change our cultural
norms and practices accordingly.

On the left page: The Inner and the Outer Universe, drawing, 2010

2. Community of all beings

It is not possible to live in peace with the Earth as long as we
relate to and manage other beings of the Earth as inferior, as
inanimate or without consciousness.

l The various manifested forms of life - plants, animals, and
minerals, including their elemental consciousness - are not des-
tined to be our slaves, to be manipulated or destroyed as if they
have no intrinsic value or life or consciousness. These beings
represent different archetypes of life that are an integral part of
the evolving life and consciousness of the Earth.
l All these beings represent creative potentials through which
Gaia intends to communicate and collaborate with us and
with our global culture.
l Instead of economic, political and social institutions and
conventions that function only among humans, we are faced
with the challenge of creating, supporting and nurturing new
attitudes and practices to embrace an enlarged family of beings,
and of providing each member of the emerging geaculture with
a respected and protected place within the global community.

3. Self-knowledge

It is not possible to develop a new and mutually fulfilling partner-
ship between human culture and the Earth if we human beings
do not understand and become who we truly are in relationship
to our core essence.

l The path to self-knowledge is the first step – exploring and
experiencing who we are as human beings, as a nexus of dif-
ferent worlds and extensions of life, as an intrinsic part of an
evolving and multidimensional planetary consciousness.
l Learning to hold and maintain one’s inner peace, centered-
ness and grounding is the second goal.
l We should not hesitate taking on a third endeavour - de-
veloping an ethically based personal practice to guide us in
meeting the daily challenges of our global world in transition.

26 Marko Pogačnik

4. The autonomous spiritual path l Children must be empowered to distinguish what is true and what
is not true, and be able to discriminate and navigate a world where
It is not possible to develop a new and fulfilling partnership be- powers of illusion separate human beings from their true essence.
tween human culture and the Earth if there is no willingness to l A primary goal of the education system should be to help
transform traditional religious conceptions that deny the divine human beings discover and know their purpose and their crea-
essence of the Earth and of Gea’s creation. tive place within the enlarged planetary family, so that in the
course of their lives they can contribute and share in the evolu-
l The division between heaven and earth, between the realm tion of Gea, of the Earth Cosmos.
of spirit and the realm of material life, is becoming unbearable.
Long ago the Earth ceased to be an immature child of a patriar- 6. Abundance of life
chal ideated God. The Earth, Gea, is an autonomous cosmos,
complete in itself, including its own spiritual dimensions. With- The Earth is a beloved planet of extraordinary fertility and vital
in the microcosm of the human being, we contain and reflect abundance. Today we see a great part of humanity in poverty,
the essence and consciousness of Gea, of the Earth – given that diminished, starving. The resources of the Earth are being man-
we are simultaneously beings of the Earth and cosmic beings. aged wastefully, destructively. To address and change this tragic
Then at the next level of existence the Earth cosmos in turn situation we must transform the principles upon which our global
represents a holographic unit of the larger universe. economy functions.
l The human being has the maturity and capacity to make
a responsible and free decision about how to connect with the l As human beings, as a global culture, we need to gather the
divine essence of the universe, as well as how to reconnect with courage and wisdom to open ourselves to different levels of the
one’s core essence. multidimensional Earth. These dimensions represent the inex-
l We can also undertake the next step and find ways to relate haustible reserves of life force treasured by Gea. To undertake this
to the sacredness of the Earth and all of Gea’s beings, spiritu- task we must overcome the rationally-based denial and prejudices
ally as well as practically. The will to communicate and con- regarding the so-called subtle dimensions of reality. Let us support
nect, to open one’s heart and mind, and to share one’s presence efforts to establish a new scientific paradigm that honours the
with other beings, is the basis of this sacred path. pluri-dimensionality of nature, the Earth and human beings.
l The search towards inexhaustible “free energy” has meaning
5. Education and is life-supporting only if coupled with the transformation
of consciousness and a collective decision of humanity to hold
As part of this evolution it is essential that we engage creatively to high ethical standards related to the Earth and its beings,
in transforming our existing systems of education. visible and invisible.
l PWe need to restore the cycle of exchange between human
l We must protect and nurture the natural sensibility of the beings and the worlds of the Earth and nature. As a culture
child in relationship to all of the different dimensions and lev- we take from the Earth what we think we need, we consume
els of existence. The development of rational capabilities can these resources, and discard or destroy what is left. This is
complement this sensibility. Human beings whose sensitivity not a cycle of exchange but a one-way path that leads to the
towards different facets of life has been encouraged and sup- spiritual impoverishment of human beings and the plunder-
ported can naturally become loving partners of the Earth and ing and destruction of the Earth.
co-creative inhabitants of the Earth cosmos. l To restore the cycle we must first ask ourselves what we can
l Next, the education system can help young people recognize give to the Earth and its beings. We humans carry within
that they are pluri-dimensional beings playing and creating ourselves spiritual and creative potentials that can open new
within an environment that is equally rich on different dimen- prospectives and possibilities for the enfoldment of the Earth
sions of existence. and all life, thus opening and enriching the cycle of life, and
creating a flow and manifestation of abundance.

7. The art of geomancy Together with its beings visible and invisible, Gea, the Earth
soul has offered human beings the wonderful opportunity to live
The Earth is a conscious planet with its own destiny within the and breathe within the world of physical matter and to enjoy the
universe. Gea, the Earth soul, is not capable of sustaining and beauty and the creative potentials of the incarnated world. To an
preserving life if her focuses of life force and of elemental con- extent we have transformed her hospitality into valuable experi-
sciousness, occurring in many landscapes and locations through- ences and creative deeds; at the same time we have also exploited
out the planet, are not free to breathe and function according to her without regard to consequences and without regard to other
her design. Indeed, our civilization’s ignorance of these aspects of beings of life.
the life of Gea has impaired and blocked the proper functioning
and vitality of many of these places. The art and science of geo- The time to decide which of these two paths we will take into the
mancy is being developed so that human culture can gain insights future has arrived. The only path that makes sense is the path
into the crucial importance of the vital-energy organism of Gea, of reconnection with the essence of life and embracing a loving
the elemental consciousness of the Earth, and its sacred dimen- partnership with Gea, the Mother of all Life. This path involves
sions to the life of the planet. This newly discovered approach and a challenging transformation of consciousness of all life on Earth
knowledge is of little use if not put into practice. as we know it as Gea continues to evolve into the future.

l To take part in the enfolding Gea-culture we must develop Marko Pogačnik 2008-2013
and practice our sensibility and perception of vital-energetic
dimensions, of consciousness, and the soul essence of nature, Edited by Leslie Luchonok
the Earth and its beings.
l The results of geomantic work and perception regarding a
given place and landscape should be respected and incorporated
into the built environment, into city, town and landscape plan-
ning and design, and into the innumerable activities that char-
acterize our modern culture, especially in regard to the vital-
energetic functions of the landscape and its many dimensions.
l We must develop the political, social and economic means
to protect those places upon the Earth that are of decisive
and critical importance to the healthy life and vitality of the
planet and its beings. As traditional societies have done over
millennia, we can and should develop ritual forms and ob-
servances through which the sacredness of these places and
the Earth can be recognized and celebrated. Gea, the Earth
essence, is evolving and creating a new consciousness – we
humans can support and participate in this consciousness and
thereby help avoid the destructive break down of life systems
upon the planet.

28 Marko Pogačnik



Geopuncture circle »The Solar Plexus of Europe« at Jarun in Zagreb, Papuk granite, and cosmograms in bronze,
in partnership with the International LifeNet Group, 2005, photo by Bojan Brecelj

30 Marko Pogačnik



The Earth's (Gaia's) creative hand is identical Seven Foundations of the
to the human hand and the five evolutions, New Ethics

which are developing with its aid, from the book The seven foundations of the new ethics are coded in the Revela-
The Universe of the Human Body, tion of Saint John called Apocalypse in the seven letters that Jesus
Lindisfarne, USA, 2017) the Christ sent to the seven early Christian communities in Asia
Minor: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadel-
32 Marko Pogačnik phia and Laodicea.

Ephesus: Love!
Follow the voice of the heart. In each situation, no matter how
difficult be sure to embody the quality and the power of the
primeval love.

Smyrna: No fear!
Do not get fear in front of anything that in a certain moment
your personal or collective destiny might manifest upon your path.
Preserve the inner peace no matter of the given circumstances.

Pergamon: Change yourself!
Be ready to follow the constant stream of changes. Be attentive
not to oversee if some of the many dimensions of yourself or of
your creativity is calling for change.

Thyatira: Be truthful!
Check if in the given moment you do not hide some aspect of
truth from yourself or from the others. Listen again and again to
the sound of your heart and examine your mental paths in order
not to become a victim of self-delusion.

Sardis: Be whole!
You should again and again become aware of your multilayer
whole. May your being be embraced by the feeling of wholeness.
Be at any moment present in your core.

Philadelphia: Be true to yourself!
Do not forget who you are and which are the ideals that you
gave a wow to already before your incarnation. Remember your
spiritual purpose again and again.

Laodicea: Decide!
Each situation is offering different possibilities. Decide for one or
another. The only thing that one should not afflict upon oneself in
the epoch of the grand changes is to be indecisive.

Translated gradually from the coded language of the Apocalypse by Marko
Pogačnik between the years 1997 and 2017

Nine »Commandements« 2
of the Goddess The red Goddess of the limitless abundance knows
three phases:
When I was preparing my second book concerning the theme of
the Goddess, The Daughter of Gaia, upon a sacred hill of the 1. The holistic face of the red Goddess of the abundance of
Island Srakane in the Adriatic, the Goddess revealed to me her life states: Protect the freedom of your being! Listen to the
nine “commandments”. I understand them as an alternative to impulses of your heart. Be attentive to perceive the sound of
the ten commandments of the masculine God that are an expres- your inner voice!
sion of the stiffness and narrowness of the patriarchal era. 2. The creative face of the red Goddess of the abundance of life
When Goddess appears as the Daughter of Gaia, different to states: Get to know the gift of your body! Your body is a common
the God principle, she represents the cyclic principle. She appears expression of all beings of the Earthly universe! Your body is a
in three phases that together constitute a rounded up cycle. The house of joy and happiness!
cycle starts with the spring (white) Goddess of the all embracing 3. The red Goddess of the abundance of life in her black phase
whole, continues with the red Goddess of the limitless abundance of transmutation states: Ask for what you need! Allow yourself
of life in the summer and concludes with the black Goddess of to be endowed by the richness of life! Share the gifts so that also
transmutation that governs the transition from the death of the others my enjoy them!
late autumn to the rebirth of the spring.
Yet each phase of the Goddess knows within its own phase also 3
the same three faces, the white, the red and the black. This is how The black Goddess of transmutation
I arrived to the number nine (3 x 3). The width and the depth of knows three phases:
the Goddess in her phases are limitless, this is why in the below
text each of the three faces of the three Goddesses states three 1. The holistic face of the black Goddess of transmutation
“commandments” (3x3x3). states: Let us celebrate and honor! Wherever you look, behold
the breath of paradise and the divine presence in numerous
1 transformations! Bow low and give thanks!
The white Goddess of the all embracing whole knows 2. The creative face of the black Goddess of transmutation
three phases: states: Burry your corpses! Renounce the old patterns of beha-
vior, let them go! Do not hesitate to transmute your heaped
1. The holistic face of the all embracing white Goddess states: up troubles!
No feelings of guilt! Know that your being is born in the sign 3. The Goddess of transmutation in her black phase of tran-
of perfection! Cultivate your trust regarding the justice of life! smutation states: Silence in the front of the inexpressible! Re-
2. The creative face of the all embracing white Goddess states: spect what transcends the human mind! Pure presence!
Restore your emotional sensitivity! Capacity to perceive the
whole width of creation is your birthright! Open the whole Marko Pogačnik, Srakane and Šempas, 2000-2017
spectrum of your senses, sensuous and metaphysical!
3. The all embracing white Goddess states in her black phase
of transmutation: Follow the cyclical nature of your being! Be
whole! Be ready for an unexpected call for change!

Geopuncture circle dedicated to the elemental heart of Europe and to the role of Maribor in its entirety, in partnership with the VITAAA
Art Group, Pohorje granite and Cividale limestone, 2017, photo by Bojan Brecelj

34 Marko Pogačnik



The Gaia Touch Exercises 1

Body exercises dedicated to deepening relationship This Gaia Touch exercise is designed to experience the animal
between human beings and the life of the Earth within oneself and to support the animal kingdom in an effort to
retain the network of life on the planet alive.
Gaia Touch exercises were inspired by elementary and other
beings of different sacred places of the Earth. They offer them to l Stand upright with the feet positioned in a different way as
usual. The heels are to be as far apart as possible, with the big
fellow human beings to help us to attune better to the multidi- toes as well as knees touching together. This is the key to that
mensional nature of our home planet and its beings, belonging particular archetypal (causal) level, where the animal essence
to different levels of reality. The exercises represent a combina- pulsates in the human body.
l In this position of the legs and knees lean far forward to
tion of body movements and imaginations, a kind of Yoga imitate the horizontal posture of the animal body. Stretch the
dedicated to cooperation with Gaia and her consciousness. hands forward to make them look like front animal legs. Stay
I started to perceive and formulate the Gaia Touch exercises in this position for a few moments.
one by one after the year 1998 when the Earth transformation l Then move into the upright position in order to consciously
process started to reveal itself. By Earth transformation I do reintegrate the animal essence in your causal body. The feet
not mean the shadow side only identified as climate changes. are still positioned with the heels apart, while the knees no
According to my perception it is a process through which new longer touch each other.
conditions of life are emerging upon the planet and a new more l Finally change the position of the feet to normal and feel yo-
subtle space and time structure. I believe that the Mother of urself as a human being facing the beauty of the manifested life.
Life decided to set these changes into motion to prevent the vital l Repeat the exercise three times and then linger for a few
capacities of the Earth to be destroyed. To be able to continue moments in silence to enable the information of the exercise to
enjoying the beauty and creative challenges of this planet we be imprinted within your body and consciousness.
have to adapt to changes – not just spiritually but also bodily.
The purpose of the Gaia Touch exercises is to stimulate personal
development in order to be able to attune to the new emerging

reality individually as well as collectively.
Gaia Touch exercises are a form of cosmograms, which means a
form of the universal language which can be perceived not just

by human but also by other beings of the Earth and the uni-
verse. Their authentic power is generated by the consciousness
and beings of those sacred places that inspired them – they are
usually mentioned in the commentaries to single exercises. The
exercises work also in the opposite direction. By performing a
Gaia Touch exercise one supports the given place and its beings
in their striving to reveal the true identity of the place and to

support its unique service to life.
Here are published some newer exercises. The rest can be found
in my book “Universe of the Human Body” (Lindisfarne, Great

Barrington, USA, 2017) or “Universum des menschlichen
Körpers” (AT Verlag, Aarau, 2016)
Marko Pogačnik, August 2018

36 Marko Pogačnik

2 l Then stretch your hands widely, with your palms open to en-
able the creative powers to flow freely into your environment as
The purpose of this Gaia Touch exercise is to restore contact with an incentive for creative circulation of nature and the society.
your inner dragon. Dragons are the source of life strength, elemen- l The purpose of the ensuing sequence of the exercise is to con-
tal love and wisdom. The exercise is a gift of the basilisk – a bird nect with the cosmic dragon, which embodies the primeval pow-
dragon – which I met in Basle, Switzerland. ers of the universe.
l Now join your hands immediately above your head (which is
l Stretch your hands behind your back and wave them for a now aligned again) and reach with them twice as high – as much
while. Thus you achieve resonance with primeval powers of the as you can. At that height wiggle your fingers as if beckoning the
Earth's core called dragons. Finally cross your hands over the presence of the cosmic dragon.
coccyx. l Then transmit its touch first to the throat and then to the
l Then slide your hands tightly upwards along the body, until coccyx.
reaching the throat. The hands are now obliquely rounded in l Then spread your hands out behind your back to be back
front of your throat. The middle fingers touch each other, the at the beginning again. Repeat the exercise three times.
palms are turned obliquely downwards. l After repeating the exercise three times, remain motionless for
l When the hands are stretched upwards, tilt your head as far a while with your eyes shut and feel what is happening in your
back as possible to release the throat chakra. inner world.
l While bending your head back and your hands are forming
a circle in front of your throat, become aware that the prime-
val powers from the Earth's core are now transforming into
creative powers. Symbolically, they are called »the creative
powers of the word«.

3 4

The purpose of the Gaia Touch exercise is to experience »the third The purpose of the Gaia Touch exercise is to tune with fairly
world«, i.e. the world where causal backgrounds of the living ex- worlds. It is a gift of Pieve di Soligo, the place north of Venice,
ist. I call it the archetypal world. Here, the first world can be where fairy worlds are present in their entire integrity.
comprehended as the area of embodiment, the second world as the
flow of life, while in the third world the causal (archetypal) back- l Spread your hands in greeting the fairy worlds.
grounds of everything living oscillate. This exercise was shown to l Then transfer the palm of your left hand, with arch-like move,
me by the Goddess of Novo mesto, Slovenia. on to the other side by placing it on the right palm. While doing
so, lean on to the right side as much as possible.
l Place one hand on to the other at the heart's height, with the l Now shift, with arch-like move, your left hand back to
fingers of each of them pointing in different directions. the left side as if opening the space above you. In the end
l Then twist one hand around the other in such a way you are again standing with your hands spread out.
that the palms are in a constant touch with each other. l Then you transfer, with arch-like move, your right hand to the
l Twist one around the other twice in one direction, until the left side one by placing the right palm on to the left palm.
hands cross each other in such a manner that there is no way l Now the underground dimensions of the fairly world have to
forward. be touched. This is done by transferring the joined left and right
l Then carry on twice in the opposite direction, until you reach hands with the aid of the lower arch (at knees' height) on to
the starting position. Repeat the exercise with short breaks in your right side.
between. l After you transfer, with arch-like move, the right hand back to
l Then close your eyes and feel the properties of »the third world«. the right side and stand there with open hands, you are back at
l During the exercise allow the hands to move freely in the the beginning of the exercise. Repeat it a few times in a row and
space in front of the body, as demanded by the movements of then feel it with your eyes closed.
both palms.

38 Marko Pogačnik

5

During this Gaia Touch exercise we shall get to know our
heart sphere as the seat of integral consciousness, which in-
cludes both the female and the male aspects of existence. The
exercise is a gift of two cities, the Swiss Zurich (female aspect)
and Slovenian Celje (male aspect). The exercise is to begin
with the female aspect by drawing the mandorla with both
hands around our body. (Mandorla is the figure made by two
interlocking circles.)

l Begin at the back over the coccyx to mark the mandorla's lower
point. This point is in resonance with the soul of the Universe
usually called Sophia – the Wisdom of Eternity. The universal
wisdom permeates the whole body. The face is turned downwards.
l Then draw with your hands both mandorla's arches and join
them above the head in front of the body in such a way that the
mandorla lies obliquely and thus links the back part of the body
with its front part. The face is now turned upwards. Now you
are coupled with the values of Gaia, the Mother of Life, whose
impulse permeates the entire body.
l Then lower the hands to the level of your heart; the fingers
are to remain locked. In this way, a rounded space is formed in
front of the area of the heart, in which both values of the heart
consciousness, the universal and the earthly, are linked.
l Then open the hands to share the created value with the
environment and the world. This gesture is, at the same time,
introduction to the male aspect of heart consciousness.
l Begin by placing your left hand over the chest, while your right
hand is to remain in the same place.
l Then both hands are open again.
l Then place your right hand over the chest, with your left hand
staying in the same place.
l Then both hands are open again.
l Thus we reached the beginning of the exercise once more: lock
your hands over the coccyx to mark the mandorla's bottom point …
Repeat the exercise three times, then close your eyes and stay mo-
tionless for a few moments, thus enabling the created value to be
imprinted in the memory of both the body and the consciousness.

Installation »The Descent of Peace on Earth« in the Ceremonial Hall of the Art Gallery Maribor, in partnership with
Marika Pogačnik, plexiglas, cords, cosmograms made of felt, 2013, photo by Bojan Brecelj

40 Marko Pogačnik

Installation »The Descent of Peace on Earth« in the Ceremonial Hall of the Art Gallery Maribor, in partnership with
Marika Pogačnik, plexiglas, cords, cosmograms made of felt, 2013, photo by Bojan Brecelj

Geopuncture circle »The Hologram of Europe« at the junction of Dunajska and Tivoli Streets in Ljubljana,
in partnership with the VITAAA Art Group and guests from Austria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Italy and Germany,
Karst stone, 2008, photo by Bojan Brecelj
Below right:
The Elemental Heart of Europe between Plitvice and Grossglockner,
Pohorje and the Venice Lagoon, 2017

42 Marko Pogačnik



44 Marko Pogačnik

On right:
Balkans as the belly of Europe in
relationship to the backbone of Europe
pulsating between Crete and Iceland,
2017

Above left:
Marika carving Marko's cosmogram
dedicated to Slovenia for the Hologram
of Europe, Ljubljana, Karst stone, 2008,
photo by Bojan Brecelj

Below:
Geopuncture circle »The Hologram
of Europe«, Ljubljana, in partnership
with the VITAAA Art Group and guests
from Austria, Czech Republic, Croatia,
Italy and Germany, Karst stone,
2008, photo by Bojan Brecelj

Above:
Cosmogram in geopuncture circle »The Primeval Pattern of Life«,
dedicated to Gaia and two sisterly evolutions, the fairy (Sidhe) and the human,

Hagenberg near Linz, Untersberg marble, 2016,
photo by Barbara Buttinger-Foerster

Above right:
Geopuncture circle »The Primeval Pattern of Life«,
in partnership with the LifeNet International Group,

Hagenberg near Linz, Untersberg marble, 2016,
photo by Barbara Buttinger-Foerster

Below right:
Geopuncture circle »Letters to Gaia, the Creatoress of the Earth's Universe«,

in partnership with the LifeNet International Group,
Pečnov, Czech Republic, sandstone, 2017,
photo by Annette Frederking

46 Marko Pogačnik



On the right page:
Geopuncture circle »The Point of Peace «, Ljubljana, BTC City,
in partnership with the VITAAA Art Group, Karst stone, 2009,

photo by Bojan Brecelj
Below:

Lithopuncture stone of the project »The Land of Abundance between the Krka and Sava Rivers«,
in partnership with the VITAAA Art Group, the area of Trebnje,
Mirna and Šentrupert Municipalities, Karst stone, 2009,
photo by Bojan Brecelj

48 Marko Pogačnik