By Jessica Ullevålseter
The time is always correct to build bridges. Bridges represent notime; that which lies between. However, we avoid representation and seek embodiment. We seek to embody the bridge and weave separation towards the One.
I am an artist and my ziraat praxis is to create artistic rituals by the river. In Norwegian the word for artist is billedkunstner- a creator of images. As an artist, I understand ziraat not only silenced, or simply inwards, but a co-creative architecture that challenges the image of separation, like the ecosystem.
My ziraat work is towards water, a specific frequency that has personally led me to God and ecology. Water helped me to root here, in this unanimated west, she helped me to flow, to pray, to listen and belong. I want to give back to her.
I want to provide an image of water and human standing together in equality and in mutual dialogue, free of stigma. I want to give her laws of equality.
But I am an artist, not a politician. I am a spiritual seeker, not a lawyer.
My art work strives to be modest, not pretentious, banal, not conceptual, slow and sustainable- so it does not spin off into a pseudo world of imaginaries, but opens to this world: this creation, these people.
I live in Oslo, Norway.
Os.lo means “the light place where the river meets the sea”. Our work is to create awareness and dialogue with the beyond-human, understand why life settled here and connect with the essence of the place. This essence offers a deeper and more stable identity - opposed to the fleeting consumerism, fashion or even nationalism prone to change. The essence of the place is a shared essence: when we discover the spirit of the water, we recognize this spirit within us.
It is not only spiritual. Responsibility means the ability to respond, and if you are able, energized, in love - you respond.
In the beginning, the work with water was only intimate and spiritual- within me.
After many years abroad, I had to start ice bathing to climatize to this harsh place. It became prayer, meditation. Humans did not offer any warmth, as their essence is moved by glaciers, darkness and northern light, - they are not very extroverted. I don't think it is a personal experience though, that lack of belonging a western person may feel (wherever the omnipotent west has fallen).
As the Spanish kings conquered America, the whole of Europe was conquered by inquisition. The common people, unaware of gold and remote places, were hunted down because of their sinful, intimate relationship with nature. Hundreds of thousands of women were burned in a massive genocide, an impact ignored by history. The same invented law that allowed the Vatican to conquer “any land that was not christian”- was used on pagan europe. We removed ourselves from our nature.
This trauma is completely muted and disassociated, deeply embedded within the western essence. Europeans are so scared to reconnect to our mother earth. She was so humiliated , that even her own children rejected her, after centuries of killings.
To show up in nature and express prayer or gratefulness is very, very taboo: ridiculated and humiliated.
Religion means to reconnect that which is broken. My ziraat praxis, my religion, is to reconnect human and nature. Especially in myself.
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