l’Invention du Monde. Tour by Delphine Bedel

As part of the Life in the Woods project, Marres Projects and TAAK invited three artists to design a walk centred on the landscape in all its manifestations. Frank Koolen, Delphine Bedel and Ruchama Noorda each created their own interpretation of this commission. The results can be explored during weekends in October. Read more..

l’Invention du Monde is the title of Delphine Bedel’s bus tour. The marlstone quarries below South Limburg conceals 300 kilometres of underground passages that even cross national borders. It is remarkable that there are some places where a systematic ‘Weltanschauung’ (philosophy of life) has taken on material form. Robert Garcet (artist, philosopher, paleontologist and geologist) used his collections in his self-built artistic tower above the Eben-Emael caves to explain his personal theory of how linking various philosophical and theological ideas could lead to world peace. He could not suspect that at the same time the NATO headquarters and command centre was being built in absolute secrecy in the limestone hills around Kanne, only a few kilometres away. Also nearby, in the Caves of Kanne, a group of Jesuit scholars and theological students worked on a peculiar, encyclopaedic subterranean complex. This site houses replicas of structures from ancient cultures, ranging from the Assyrians to the Alhambra, to advance our understanding of people and the world.

Talks 

During the tour several speakers will comment on the relation between the locations and the landscape.

On October 19: Marco Pasi, Associate Professor in the History of Hermetic philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He has written extensively on the history of modern Western esotericism, especially in relation to magic, art, and politics. He is the author of Aleister Crowley e la tentazione della politica (1999), translated into several languages. He has edited Peintures inconnues d’Aleister Crowley: La collection de Palerme (2008), and co-edited Kabbalah and Modernity: Interpretations, Transformations, Adaptations (2010). Please note: Marco Pasi will only be there on 19 October.

On October 26: Christa Stevens, she teaches at the Amsterdam University College at the Leiden University. She publishes in the field of French literature, cultural studies, philosophy and Western esotericism. At the moment she works an a study about Robert Garcet.