MARKO POGAČNIK

UNESCO Artist for Peace

My name is Marko and I was born in 1944 in Slovenia where I live with my wife Marika in a stone house close to the village of Šempas and in partnership with the family of my daughter Ana, her husband Thomas and their daughters Klara and Eva.

I awoke to myself in 1962 under the pressure of the false communist praxis in the former Yugoslavia when I was 18. This is the year of my first art exhibition, exhibiting the so-called “ready-made” objects and publishing first poems and drawings. Severe conflict with the political establishment of the time that followed made me aware that art inherits the capacity to change, to transform and to transmute those conditions in life that do not pulsate in resonance with the universal patterns of love and truth.

During the following few years, in collaboration with my wife Marika and the colleagues from OHO movement (1965-1971) and “Šempas community” (1971-1979), the basic paradigm was formed that underlies my work. I call it “Art of Life – Life of Art”:

1

Beings and phenomena of the world are autonomous and not dependent from the human control. The anthropocentric approach to life and to the fellow beings of nature is outdated according to cosmic cycles that move the universe. Instead a platform of coexistence and cooperation with all beings of life needs to be developed as basis of a new culture. I call it “geoculture” – a culture tuned to the essence of our home planet, its consciousness, and sacred core called Gaia.

2

Rational scientific paradigm has during the last two centuries imposed upon humanity a pattern of ignorance towards those beings and dimensions of life that do not know physical appearance and yet are inevitable for life processes to run and to evolve. My effort as an artist and a human being is to get intimate experience of those invisible dimensions and beings, and share the experience and knowledge about the invisible worlds of Earth and Universe with my fellow human beings to change that extremely dangerous pattern that ignores the sources of life itself.

3

Human beings are responsible for the aggressive attitude developed against nature, Gaia and fellow beings including conflicts within the human family. Realising it I have developed methods of what I call “Earth Healing” – to distinguish it from healing human problems. These methods are based upon the tools developed in my art practice combined with the knowledge of the alternative medicine. Mostly I use a method of Earth acupuncture that I call “lithopuncture” and forms of group work with sound and imagination.

4

To make the Earth Healing methods effective four preconditions had to be met:

• It needed to develop a non-anthropocentric language that can be understood also by other forms of consciousness then human – i.e. to be able to communicate with the beings of places and different dimensions of the Earth. I call it “language of cosmograms”.
• It needed to be developed a holistic form of science concerning the nature and the essence of the Earth, its subtle dimensions and beings, visible as well as invisible. I call this science “geomancy”.
• It needed to be recognized that the work done for the good of life can not be my property. Since the very beginning of my work in the early 1960s, I made effort to create in groups. For this purpose, I do teaching in different countries to enable interested persons to take part in the Earth Healing work, and I do create workshops in which each person interested is invited to participate.
• The Earth needed to be recognized as the master of evolution, as Gaia, an all-embracing consciousness, and the sacred centre of the multidimensional and autonomous “Earthly Universe”. The duality between earthly and spiritual realms has to be transcended. What Cosmos is, exists also within the Earthly Universe, and what exists within the Earthly Universe, exists also within each single human being.

We live and create together with my wife Marika since 50 years, have three daughters and six grandchildren. We adore beauties and creative capacities of the life embodied.

Marko Pogačnik was born 1944 in Kranj, Slovenia, graduated as sculptor on the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana 1967. With his family he lives in Šempas, Slovenia.
Adress: Marko Pogačnik, Šempas 160, Si-5261 Šempas, Slovenia
Email: marko.pogacnik1@siol.net

• From 1965 to 1971 he worked as a member of OHO group in the fields of conceptual art and land-art. Exhibitions include Information Show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York 1970, Aktionsraum, Munich, 1970, and Global Conceptualism Show 1950-80, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 1999
• In 1971 he founded together with his family and friends, a rural and artistic community, the “Sempas Family” at Sempas, Slovenia. This existed up to 1979. Exhibitions by the Family include Trigon 1977 in Graz and the Venice Biennalle of 1978.
• Since 1979 he is engaged in geomantic and Earth healing work. In the mid 80-s he has developed a method of Earth healing similar to acupuncture, by using stone pillars with carved cosmograms, positioned on acupuncture points of the given landscape. He calles it “lithopuncture”.
• Lithopuncture works include: Lithopuncture of two castle parks in Germany, Tuernich (1986-89) and Cappenberg (1988-92),
• Lithopuncture of the territory on both sides of the border between North Ireland and Republics of Ireland, Orchard Gallery, Derry (1991-92)
• Lithopuncture of the urban ambiences of Villach (1995), Klagenfurt, (1998), Bad Radkersburg (2001) and Nova Gorica (2001-02), St,Veit a.d.Glann (2004)
• “Alpenstern”, a crossalpic lithopuncture project with lithopuncture stones in Italy (Merano), Austria (Villach), Slovenia (Maribor) and Germany (Chiemsee) (1997).
• Lithopuncture of Circuito das Aguas, Minas Gerais, Brasil (1998)
• Seeland lithopuncture network, Switzerland (1998-2002)
• Aachen lithopuncture network, Ludwig Forum Aachen, (1999)
• Lithopuncture project on both sides of the border between Austria and Slovenia in Carinthia, (1999-2002), etc.
• Lithopuncture of the urban environment of Quito, Ecuador (2003)
• Lithopuncture Prague (2005-2006), Lithopuncture Bad Pyrmont, Germany (2006), and Bad Pirawarth (2012)
• Litopuncture od the Regional hospilal’s territory in Klagenfurt, Austria (2005-2006)
• Lithopuncture Hawkwood College, Stroud, Great Britain (2008)
• Lithopuncture of Norton Commons, Louiseville, Kentucky, USA, 2010

After 2005 he dedicates much of his work to creating Geopuncture Circles, a world wide lithopuncture project to enhance communication with the Earth consciousness that he crates together with his collaborators from given countries. Geopuncture Circles stand already in Portugal, Croatia, in Czech Republics, on Canarian Islands, in Austria, Slovenia, and USA.

His books in English: Nature Spirits and Elemental Beings (1996) Healing the Heart of the Earth (1998) Christ Power and the Earth Goddess (1999) Earth Changes, Human Destiny (2000) The Daughter of Gaia (2001), Turned Upside Down (2004), Touching the Breath of Gaia (2005), Sacred Geography (2007), Gaia’s Quantum Leap (2011)

He teaches geomancy on the School for Geomancy “Hagia Chora” in Germany and France, runs courses on holistic ecology, geomancy and personal development in many countries worldwide, and provides counseling on the issues of urban development and landscape design.
He is president of the VITAAA Association for the Coexistence between Human beings, Nature and Environment in Ljubljana and president of Cosmogea Association, Osoppo, Italy.

His main themes are: multidimensionality of the landscape and urban ambience, communication with different facets of nature, the rediscovery of the feminine principle, the present Earth changes and human transformation.

In 2013, he started to teach GaiaTouch exercises that were shown to him during the last decade by beings of different places and landscapes as Yoga dedicated to closer contact to our home planet.

In 2014, he started with a line of Peace Workshops entitled “Renewing the Peace Matrix”

In 1991, Marko Pogačnik has designed the official coat of arms and the flag of the newly constituted Republics of Slovenia.

Marko is a visiting teacher at Columbia University, New York, Teacher’s College, Spirit, Mind and Body Institute.

In 2016, he was appointed UNESCO Artist for Peace.

Marko is a member of TRANS-4-M Global Wisdom Council.

Marko Pogačnik photo galeries by Bojan Brecelj, view & DOWNLOAD

Marko Pogačnik image tracks, movies and sound tracks by Bojan Brecelj on Vimeo