TREE OF LIFE

Trees have vivid trunks. The human body is a vivid trunk. Both are able to tell stories about growth and rest, relatedness and solitude, being a whole as well as a bundle of multiple intricacies. You can climb a tree as you can climb consciousness, experiencing different layers of perception. For example you can be deeply rooted in the earthly, manifest plane, to a fluid kind of relating like branches reaches out to their ever changing surrounding, up to yet non manifested, creative imaginary or even spiritual zones like treetops touching the sky. In different cultures all over the world, the tree as the “Tree of Life” is a symbol for the different layers of micro- and macrocosmic inner and outer realities including the human body, soul and mind as a portal to experience the thresholds of an all embracing vivid interconnectivity.

The exhibition cycle TREE OF LIFE wants to address and reactivate this collective archetype in order to create, share and celebrate experimental contact zones of the arts, nature, body, soul and mind in a cross cultural field. Starting the project a 7 x 3 m canvas is turned into a carpet providing an abstract diagram also known as the 10 Sephiroth as a painted, two-dimensional map, whose circles and pathways are about to be explored in multiple and moredimensional ways.

For the first presentation at WestGermany, Berlin, the TREE OF LIFE carpet will be initiated with a 4 day installation and gathering including painting, sound and body performance, guided imagery and workshops, all focusing on the lowest circle of the tree, the rooting sphere of Malkuth. As this circle is dedicated to the sensual, earthly plane of existence as well as the vivid body of nature itself, we are happy to have Maynard Needham as our first speaker on the carpet, sharing with us the wisdom of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians. Also the Mother Earth Post Office will be installed in WestGermany for the first time and will deliver the visitors’ greetings and wishes to the nature body of the city.

TREE OF LIFE is founded by

Rikke Aamann and Lina Launhardt.

Opening Performance

Thursday, October 8th, 2015, 8:30 p.m. sharp

Rikke Aamann, Lina Launhardt, Marlen and Hartmut Schröder

TREE OF LIFE Children Workshop

Friday, October 9th, 3 – 4 p.m.

Rikke Aamann, Lina Launhardt, Maynard Needham

Drop Session:

MOTHER EARTH, FATHER SKY, WINDS OF CHANGE

Saturday, October 10th, 4 – 6 p.m.

Workshop by Maynard Needham

TREE OF LIFE Holistic warm-up & Guided Imagery

Sunday, October 11th, 12  – 1:30 p.m.

Lina Launhardt

Closing Circle

Sunday, October 11th, 4:30 p.m.

with Maynard Needham & the artists