Treasure hunt cultural game Illustrations by Antonis Papantoniou, gameimager.com
Tinkering with the Riddler's 'dark' fragments in the primordial landscapes of Samothrace
"Although the map was fake, the treasure was true" Odysseas Papantoniou (6 years old)
To be and not to be, this is the question
“In the same rivers we enter and we do not enter, we are we are not” (Heraclitus, fg.49a)
The Game of the Hidden Treasure, on the Island of the Winds, is based on a deck of cards illustrated with the sites of the island to be discovered, while tuned to Heraclitus' antinomic fragments, that exert an immediate impact on our internal structure, that transcends common understanding. “What I understood is outstanding and what I did not understand is outstanding as well “ commented Socrates on the Riddler's centauric fragments, that throw us out of our conceptual bed and lead to 'awakening'.The object is perceived as a visible expression of the universal, waving us in the unified hyperspace that embraces the 'unexamined' sleepers' private space, while we look for the treasure; the PAI 'Lapis Exilis', hidden in the flanks of the Moon, as Mount Saos is called and in the depths of our soul.
The Game of the Hidden Treasure, on the Island of the Winds, is based on a deck of cards illustrated with the sites of the island to be discovered, while tuned to Heraclitus' antinomic fragments, that exert an immediate impact on our internal structure, that transcends common understanding. “What I understood is outstanding and what I did not understand is outstanding as well “ commented Socrates on the Riddler's centauric fragments, that throw us out of our conceptual bed and lead to 'awakening'.The object is perceived as a visible expression of the universal, waving us in the unified hyperspace that embraces the 'unexamined' sleepers' private space, while we look for the treasure; the PAI 'Lapis Exilis', hidden in the flanks of the Moon, as Mount Saos is called and in the depths of our soul.
The Walkers discover the sites on the map, through social intercourse with the locals and “listening to nature”(112), they install themselves in the complex of signs of "true nature which likes to hide”(123), feeling the 'evarestissis'; the pleasure of “God that transmutes like fire, which when mingled with incenses, is named according to the perfume of each” (67). On their way to the infinite limits of their soul (45), they discover maddening fragments of the Cabirian mosaic related to Sacred Conjunction and “Fire with which everything is exchanged” (90). Sensitive information is blinking in the mythological/ linguistic spectrum of the Island of the Gods, where, “Mortals/ Immortals, Immortal/ Mortals interchange, one living the death of the other and the other dying the life of the one”(62)
The Riddler's centauric fragments “do not conceal, nor do they reveal; they mean (simainei)” (93). We can approach their disconnected structure in an ambivalent way; “agchivasiin “(122), moving like a crab, in all directions, simultaneously, around the antinomic nucleus that keeps us stretched in the high frequencies of the mind; of 'agchinoea' (Water nymph Agchinoe is Cabiro's mother..).
The Riddler's centauric fragments “do not conceal, nor do they reveal; they mean (simainei)” (93). We can approach their disconnected structure in an ambivalent way; “agchivasiin “(122), moving like a crab, in all directions, simultaneously, around the antinomic nucleus that keeps us stretched in the high frequencies of the mind; of 'agchinoea' (Water nymph Agchinoe is Cabiro's mother..).
The insisting paradox, through its internal friction of opposites, produces presence (parondopoiissis) and leads to transfiguration. We wake up, Deus condescende, in the light of the 'Second Sun', 'the sun of those who undergo paideia' (134).
Tinkering with the foundation blocks of western philosophy, the Walkers confect their own path, “each, growing according to his missing” (126b), while 'looking for himself '(101) opening themselves up to the universal pleasure of Wisdom “that rules everything through everything”(41), “that is apart from everything “(108).
"Listen to the logos not to me” (50) advices the Dark one.
Tinkering with the foundation blocks of western philosophy, the Walkers confect their own path, “each, growing according to his missing” (126b), while 'looking for himself '(101) opening themselves up to the universal pleasure of Wisdom “that rules everything through everything”(41), “that is apart from everything “(108).
"Listen to the logos not to me” (50) advices the Dark one.
For Heraclites, primordial substance, part of which is the world, is spirit and matter, at the same time; his antinomic thinking is in line with the contemporary quantomechanical view of the world.
In this stochastic project of self/ environmental ecology, we open the challenge for the emergence of a prismatic, ontological approach to our world; a perceptual shift from an egocentric to a logocentric mode of existence.
The PAI Lapis Exilis,'“which is resting in its changes“(84a), will remain on the island, in the hope that it will attract, in its morphic fields of resonance, future generations, challenging them to investigate, anew, that ever-promiscuous/ ever- virgin landscape, where “the sun is new everyday” (6), where “you cannot step in the same river twice”, actually, not even once; “we are we are not”!! (49a).
The PAI Lapis Exilis,'“which is resting in its changes“(84a), will remain on the island, in the hope that it will attract, in its morphic fields of resonance, future generations, challenging them to investigate, anew, that ever-promiscuous/ ever- virgin landscape, where “the sun is new everyday” (6), where “you cannot step in the same river twice”, actually, not even once; “we are we are not”!! (49a).
To be/ not to be. Aye this is the question in a culture, with transhuman reach, where the profane is obvious (profanes in Greek means obvious), where 'God lives in the fireplace', where “the way up /down is one and the same” (60)
Our map “grows out of itself “(115); a dispersive structure continuously enriched by the participants' real life experiences, “increasing the world's enigma with their light” ( Blaga), or, with their darkness..
The landmarks of the game were dictated by the legend-freighted affective description of the residents and illustrated on the deck of cards PAI 2011, by gameimager Antonis Papantoniou; an experimental artistic landmark of our irresistible urge, in this critical transition age, to strip of and refill our world with meaning; vertically connected to our primordial principle (ΠAI), we carve our exit to the future.
The landmarks of the game were dictated by the legend-freighted affective description of the residents and illustrated on the deck of cards PAI 2011, by gameimager Antonis Papantoniou; an experimental artistic landmark of our irresistible urge, in this critical transition age, to strip of and refill our world with meaning; vertically connected to our primordial principle (ΠAI), we carve our exit to the future.
Bibliography:
-K. Axelos, Heraclite et la Philosophie, Les Editions de Minuit, 1962.
-L. Blaga, Trilogie de la Connaissance, Librairie du Savoir, Paris,1992
-C.Jung, C. Kerenyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, Princeton Univ. Press,1969
-P. Kasda, PAI (Les Sept Dormants, coed. Lucian Blaga University press,1997)
The realization of the itinerary is undertaken by the local cultural association IDEA, under the auspices of the local municipality.