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RTA-RITU - An Exhibition on Cosmic Order and Cycle of Seasons

MORAL ORDER... 

WOLINDS OF VIOLENCE by Himmat Shah, Brass, 1976

THE HOLLOW MEN

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filed with straw. Alas

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us - if at all - not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death’s dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

T.S. Eliot.

An artist's visualisation of the fragmented man

  FRAGMENTED MAN

Urban humanity is mercilessly divorced from the intimate everyday contact with the earth and its natural cycles and the cosmocentric modes of thought which underlie the traditional worldview. Today, the average person is no longer conscious of the equinoxes and solstices, or of the phases of the moon so important to the natural cycles of life.

Our indifference to relate to the reality of the seasons, the spontaneous flow of natural energies and our dependence on the soil has led to the erroneous belief that the human race is a master of nature. Under the impact of industrial, scientific and technological revolutions few can perceive that a new worldview has been created. The superiority and dominance of man over nature lies at the heart of our psychic fragmentation. Contemporary industrial culture is often characterised as split-at-the root, fragmented, confusing, complex and disorderly. Modern man pays dearly for the individuality he so cherishes. The cost of unbounded freedom is paid by facing the most important transitions of life quite alone. Birth and death are reduced to merely a secular affair.

The most traumatic and anxiety provoking transitions - divorce, retirement, emptyness, angst, old-age, regularly occur uncelebrated. We no longer live in the sphere of the sacred, yet paradoxically we experience the same anxiety at life’s crisis points.

A mask and

not a mask

We have no face

only the space

behind the mask

            Robin Skeleton

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