As of September 2022, my third mandate as UNESCO Artist for Peace and UNO Goodwill Ambassador ended.
UNO’s current policy does not allow more than three mandates.
I will continue with the work listed below and with the Peace work, even if not supported by UNO.
Dear Ms. Marie-Ange Theobald!
Thank you for giving me my third UNESCO Artist for Peace mandate 2020 – 2022!
First, I wish to assure you that my heart beats with United Nations and UNESCO vision. As an artist working in the field of Earth healing, I treasure the idea of humanity connected in our common efforts to sustain the Earth as a peaceful and nurturing home not just for human society but also for all living beings upon the planet.
During the initial meeting, after the former UNESCO Director-General Ms Irina Bokova awarded me the first Artist for Peace mandate in 2016, and in the presence of the Ambassador of Slovenia in Paris I stated that I am ready to work on building bridges between science and art. The present director of MAB and Geoparks programs was thrilled saying that never it has happened that an Artist for Peace would be interested in collaboration with the scientific side of UNESCO.
I explained that my inspiration to choose this aspect of work is the following. Art (also culture in general) and science represent two equal formative sources in human society like two halves of the brain. But in the present condition science is much stronger representing the guiding lines along which our modern civilization develops. My interest is to work towards equilibrium between art and science regarding the influence on humankind.
While science follows the path of logic and rationality, art is based upon qualities of intuition, inspiration, and the inner voice of the heart. Because of these tools, art is able to perceive some ways leading through conditions of threat and uncertainty in the present age of pandemic and climate changes that otherwise would not be recognized. So I try to develop art to the point that it could cooperate with science to solve problems that humanity is facing now and will obviously face them in the future also.
I wish to ensure you that I am working ceaselessly in this direction. First of all, as stated in the Plan also, I am developing meditative and body exercises that help human beings to reconnect with our home planet and with their own essence. I teach them directly in the landscape if this is possible, otherwise with the help of books and electronic media.
I work on developing a new understanding of the current Earth changing processes showing how humanity could cooperate with the Earth consciousness – called “noosphere” by the French scientist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin – finding new, never before realized possibilities to make peace with the Earth and its elements.
Thank you for your support for my work while I promise to do my best to support the aims of UNESCO and UNO in the challenges to restore and keep alive peace among nations and initiate a new era of peace between humanity and the Earth – even if the conditions we live in are not the best.
Marko Pogačnik, UNESCO Artist for Peace
TO RENEW THE MATRIX OF PEACE
A line of workshops by Marko Pogačnik UNESCO Artist for Peace (marko.pogacnik1@siol.net)
Inspiration
Facing the escalation of wars all around us and perceiving the one-sided decisions of politicians that support the escalation of economic injustice or even fuel warfare we should without hesitation work on transforming the twisted patterns that cause conflicts among people and deny the right of all beings of the Earth, visible and invisible to live in peace.
There is no hope for a lasting peace on our home planet without renewing the archetypes of peace with the Earth, among its living beings, and peace among peoples and nations. Let us work creatively on renewing the peace matrix pulsating in the memory of the Earth!
The key for establishing peace and the capability to renew the peace matrix is present within each one of us. The question is how to activate it.
Comprising two days work, the Workshop on Renewing the Peace Matrix purpose is to give voice to new approaches to the theme of peace and to generate the needed impulses of change using the Gaia Touch body exercises and relevant meditations and rituals.
The thirteen points of the Workshop and the archetype of the Sleeping Beauty
The concept of the Peace Workshop is based upon the brothers Grimm fairytale of the Sleeping Beauty, which tells us something essential about the present epoch of change. The story goes that when the Princess was born, only the twelve white fairies were invited to the feast, but not the black thirteenth fairy.
The 13th fairy stands for the cyclic principle which the modern masculine oriented civilisation ignores thus leading humanity towards self-destruction. Through the cultures succeeding the Neolithic age the cyclic principle of the Goddess was step by step replaced by the patriarchal idea of the permanent growth leading finally to the ecological and cultural deterioration of the present epoch.
In the context of the Peace Workshop the 13 fairies of the tale represent different aspects of Gaia-Consciousness. They are high beings of Gaia co-responsible for evolution of what can be called the Earthly Cosmos. In the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale through their gifts to the Princess they address 13 potential qualities of the human being inscribed into our matrix.
One after another they approach the new born humanity (the Princess) and present to the human being their gifts. At this point the dramatics of the modern age starts to reveal. After eleven of the fairies had presented their light-filled gifts, the black fairy unexpectedly burst on the scene and predicted the death of the Princess.
Luckily the twelfth fairy did not yet present her gift to the Princess. Stepping forward all she could do was to change the sentence of death to a hundred years of sleep.
The symbol of the hundred year sleep can be interpreted as the condition of the modern humanity being attached to the restrictive (one-dimensional) realm of rational consciousness – an effect of the five millennia durating patriarchal epoch of our evolution. In consequence, humanity has developed a civilisation which has lost the connection to Gaia’s multidimensional creation and to its own matrix. This, in turn, has conjured up the death threat which can be seen today in an increasing obsession with war and through ecological devastation of the planet. The twelfth fairy, who completes the cycle of the thirteen fairies, stands for the trusting confidence that the healing moment of awakening is at hand.
On the subject of the incoming new age of the planetary evolution see my book “Quantum Leap of the Earth”, Lindisfarne, Great Barrington, USA www.steinerbooks.org
The 13 creative potentials within the human being related to their distorted manifestation in the present civilisation.
(The 13 gifts bestowed upon the human being are translated from the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.)
1
The gift to the human being to be a carrier of peace in the world…
distorted by massive appearance of fear among peoples of the Earth.
2
The gift to the human race to be a race of truthful beings…
distorted by the false concept of the unavoidable antagonism between good and bad.
3
The gift to the human being to be a source of compassion…
distorted by leading merciless wars.
4
The gift to the human being to be caretaker of Gaia’s garden, sharing this role with plants, animals, minerals and elemental beings…
distorted by genetic manipulation of plants, geo-engineering, cruelty towards animals and ignoring the evolution of the elemental beings.
5
The gift to the human being to be a temple of the dragon powers – the primeval wisdom and creative powers of Gaia…
distorted by misusing the atomic power of Gaia.
6
The gift to the human being to be an agent of balance between the feminine (Yin) and masculine (Yang) principles…
distorted by the patriarchal civilisation dominated by the masculine will.
7
The gift to the human being to be a link between different parallel worlds of the Earthly Cosmos…
distorted by ignoring the worlds of our human and fairy ancestors.
8
The gift to the human being to be an embodied sanctuary of Divinity…
distorted by the monotheistic religions that know only the male God in heavens.
9
The gift to the human being to be a keeper of Gaia’s elemental heart and a source of the powerful love…
distorted by the “atheistic religions” like the nazi-fascism, despotic communism and the folly of the modern consumerism.
10
The gift to the human being to become an autonomous being responsible for one’s decisions…
distorted by the ego-centrism of the modern human psychic condition.
11
The gift to the human being to be able to understand and co-create the path of the cosmic evolution and with it the present moment of the planetary transformation…
distorted by the demonic forces within the human psyche cradling the fear of knowing the truth.
12
The gift to the human being to be an agent of transmutation and change in tune with the black aspect of Gaia…
distorted by suppressing, ignoring, and hiding the real causes for the escalating warfare and natural disasters.
13
The gift to the human being to become a co-creator of the Earthly Cosmos together with Gaia and her beings…
distorted by humanity building an anthropocentric separated world broken away from the wholeness of the Earthly Cosmos.
Gaia Touch Exercises and Rituals
One of the essential tools for the renewal of the Peace Matrix is a set of Gaia Touch-Exercises. They were transmitted to me over the last eighteen years by elementals and other beings in various sacred locations across the planet. They enable us humans to establish a better contact with Gaia consciousness, so that we would be able to tune in to the multidimensional nature of our home planet and its beings. Gaia-Touch presents a set of body exercises combined with corresponding imaginations as a possibility to cooperate with Gaia and her creative processes. On this basis it becomes possible to reach those dimensions of causal reality in which the Peace Matrix is coded, and to affect her renewal and re-attuning.
A broader selection of the Gaia-Touch Exercises appears in my book “Universe of the Human Body«, Lindisfarne, Great Barrington, USA www.steinerbooks.org
Creating a Culture of Peace
Peace is not a commodity that can just be enjoyed. Peace is a creative challenge. Without each individual human being nourishing peace within him/herself – and that also goes for the community to which he/she belongs – peace in the world is a fragile affair and of short duration. The Culture of Peace can only arise and then be maintained on the basis of a conscious and sensible way of dealing with one’s own life path and in cooperation with all other beings of the Earthly Cosmos. Peace, like a delicate plant, has to be consistently cultivated and nurtured.
Started in 2014, till now the Peace Workshop was done together with groups between 20 to 180 people in Munich, London, Berlin, Paris, Linz, and on several sacred places like Mt. Saint Odile in France, Jerusalem in Israel, Externsteine in Germany, and Tara in Ireland.
Šempas, December 2015 – October 2017, Marko Pogačnik
Peace Workshop was published in English/German booklet by Neue Erde Verlag www.neue-erde.de
THE BURREN, IRELAND WORKSHOP
Marko Pogačnik, UNESCO Artist for Peace
A REPORT
The Burren Workshop is part of my UNESCO plan for 2016. In this context the purpose of the workshop was to show how it is possible to perceive and understand a landscape as an expression of the Earth consciousness. (Burren represents one of UNESCO Geoparks.)
The Burren workshop was executed in three complementary parts.
- Exploration of the Burren landscape May 18-20 and May 23 was done together with 11 collaborators from the Slovenian Association for Coexistence between Human Beings, Nature and Environment from Ljubljana and in collaboration of Jackie Queally from Burren.
- Public talk in the Town Hall of Corofin, Burren on May 20th.
- Public workshop May 21-22 with 32 participants from Ireland and some other parts of Europe.
Following places have been explored regarding different aspects of Gaia (Earth) creative consciousness:
Laugh Avalla Farm and its holy well in the Burren Geopark area – the theme was Gaia consciousness as capable of transforming patterns of Earthly creation into living organisms.
Dysart O’Dea (St. Tola) as a place where the spectrum of possibilities is coded in the memory of the Earth that the Gaia consciousness can offer to human and other beings.
Ballinastaig Fort/fairy ring as an example of a place where Gaia consciousness creates patterns for development of different possible elemental and human cultures.
Kilmacduagh round tower and monastery was recognized as a place through which the consciousness of the Earth works on constant renewal of the vital capacities of the planet.
Rath Church Hill as an example of a place through which Gaia consciousness constantly creates the multidimensional world structure.
Molock mountain and lake as a place where the matrix of the Earth’s creation is stored.
The idea is to present the results of the Burren workshop to the Geopark conference in England in September 2016.
Šempas, Slovenia, May 27 2016, Marko Pogačnik
Designation ceremony of Marko Pogačnik as a UNESCO Artist for Peace
When, local time: Friday, 5 February 2016 – 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Where: France, Paris
Type of Event: Special event
Contact: f.pashayev@unesco.org
The Director-General of UNESCO, Ms Irina Bokova will designate the famous Slovenian sculptor Mr Marko Pogačnik as a UNESCO Artist for Peace. This title will be bestowed upon Mr Pogačnik in recognition of his commitment to improving relationships between people and their environments, based on the concept of protection, education and sustainable development, to increase people’s ability to efficiently use Earth, its resources and landscapes.
Marko Pogačnik was born on 11 August 1944 in Kranj, Slovenia. He is an artist and author.
Pogačnik studied at the Academy of Arts in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, where he graduated in 1967. He was a co-founder of the neo-avantgarde artistic movement OHO, members of which were also Tomaž Šalamun and Slavoj Žižek. From the 1980s, he embraced a holistic vision of art. He claims to have developed a method of earth healing similar to acupuncture by using pillars and positioning them on so called ‘lithopuncture’ points of the landscape.
In 1991, he designed the official coat of arms of the newly constituted Republic of Slovenia. In the year 2006, he joined the Movement for Justice and Development led by Janez Drnovšek, the President of Slovenia at the time.
He lives and works in the village of Šempas in the lower Vipava Valley. In the last decade, the town of Nova Gorica, in which municipal territory he resides, has commissioned a number of public monuments from Pogačnik, most notably the monument to the 1000 years of the first mention of Gorica and Solkan, which stands in the town’s central public square.
Since 2008, a group of his monuments and birch trees, titled the Hologram of Europe, stands at the crossroad of Tivoli Street and Slovene Street.
In 1991, Marko Pogačnik received the Prešeren Fund Award for his work. In 2008, he received the Jakopič Award, the central Slovenian fine arts award. He was nominated two times for the Right Livelihood Award.
Plan of Action
Mr Marko Pogačnik
UNESCO Artist for Peace
(2016-2018)
The Director-General of UNESCO, Ms Irina Bokova, has decided to designate the famous Slovenian artist, Mr Marko Pogačnik as a UNESCO Artist for Peace for a two-year period (2016-2018). In this new capacity, Mr Pogačnik will support UNESCO’s work in the field of UNESCO Global Geoparks1 as well as the Man and Biosphere Programme (MAB)2.
The following projects and activities are identifies, in consultation with Mr Marko Pogačnik, for his involvement and/or support in his capacity as a UNESCO Artist for Peace:
In the field of UNESCO Global Geoparks:
- The Burren project
The purpose of this project, initiated by Mr Marko Pogačnik, is to develop ways on how to complement scientific approach to a landscape with the intuitive, holistic and pluridimensional approach developed by Mr Pogačnik. In the framework of this project, Mr Pogačnik also intends to determine how can art and science co-exist to deepen the human knowledge about the nature of life and the nature of earth?
Mr Marko Pogačnik is convinced that because of the increasing ecological threat life upon the Earth is endangered and consequently we need to search for new ways of co-existence and communication with the living organism of the Earth, its beings and landscapes. This approach, proposed by Mr Pogačnik, is called “geocultural”. According to this approach, the Earth, called Gaia, and its biosphere cooperate with the human culture. The message of “geoculture” means also that us, as human beings, are ready to build a culture of peace that is in tune with the essence of the Earth and its living environments.
Developing ways to perceive and understand the Earth and its diverse landscapes as an aspect of consciousness is the base of Mr Pogačnik’s worldwide work. This includes also developing ways of communication between the Gaia consciousness and human culture.
Mr Marko Pogačnik expressed his wish to organize The Burren project in Ireland, which includes one of UNESCO’s Global Geoparks (The Burren & Cliffs of Moher). The duration of this project is foreseen for 5 days and will be composed of public workshop and lecture. The possible dates for this project are:
- 16-22 May 2016
- 6-12 June 2016
- 18-24 July 2016
The Programme of UNESCO Honorary and Goodwill Ambassadors as well as Mr Patrick J. Mc Keever, Chief of Section on Earth Sciences and Geo-Hazards Risk Reduction, Natural Sciences Sector, will serve as focal points for this project.
- The 2016 UNESCO Global Geopark Conference
The 7th International Conference on Global Geoparks 2016 is scheduled to take place from 27 to 30 September next in Torquay, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Being held in Great Britain for the first time, this Conference will welcome delegates concerned with the UNESCO Global Geoparks agenda from all over the world. The UNESCO Global Geoparks conference will also provide an international platform to support efforts to conserve Earth’s heritage while sustaining local communities and promoting science education.
Mr Marko Pogačnik could organize, in his capacity as a UNESCO Artist for Peace, a special workshop in the framework of the 2016 Global Geopark Conference.
The Programme of UNESCO Honorary and Goodwill Ambassadors as well as Mr Patrick J. Mc Keever, Chief of Section on Earth Sciences and Geo-Hazards Risk Reduction, Natural Sciences Sector, will serve as focal points for this event.
In the field of Man and Biosphere Programme (MAB):
- 4th World Congress of Biosphere Reserves
The 4th World Congress of Biosphere Reserves will be held in Lima, Peru from 14 to 18 March 2016. During this session, the future of the MAB programme will be discussed in light of the MAB Strategy (2015-2025) adopted by the 38th session of UNESCO General Conference, the Lima Action plan and Lima Declaration to be adopted by the 28th session of the MAB-ICC scheduled to take place on 19 and 20 March 2016 in Lima.
Mr Marko Pogačnik could participate, in his capacity as a UNESCO Artist for Peace, in a side event on transboundary biosphere reserves in the framework of the 4WCBR. During this event, Mr Pogačnik could also deliver a keynote speech and make a presentation on how Art can contribute to promote Peace in transboundary sites.
The Programme of UNESCO Honorary and Goodwill Ambassadors as well as Ms Noeline Raondry Rakotoarisoa, Chief of Section on MAB Networking: Biosphere Reserves and Capacity Building, Natural Sciences Sector, will serve as focal points for this event.
_______________
During his various speeches and/or public statements, Mr Marko Pogačnik is invited to announce his support to Organization’s work in his capacity as a UNESCO Artist for Peace and use his talent and his status to raise public awareness on the activities mentioned above as well as other activities to be mutually agreed.
In line with the United Nations Guidelines for the designation of Messengers of Peace, Goodwill Ambassadors, Champions and Advocates, UNESCO encourages self-financing by Mr Marko Pogačnik of all travel related expenses.