tranzit.sk/

October 14, 2023, 2.00 pm, tranzit
Karloveská zátoka, meeting point: Mark Twain bar
Event will be held in Czech.

Registration for the River Ceremony: lydia.pribisova@kunsthallebratislava.sk, ivana.tranzit@gmail.com



River Ceremony
The shady banks of the fertile floodplain are overgrown with a wild beds of nettles. The powerful river drives them out every year with new washed-up nutrients, so that in the spring they rise again as an army and with their quick leaves make the approach of intruders difficult. Nettles protect this rare place, where with a pebble bank - right next to the asphalt cycle path - they can still stop time, where in the summer songs are heard, fires are burning and wading through the blind arm of the Danube. People were not so conflicted about any of the plants. A tedious, unpleasant weed, a weed, and at the same time such a rare magical medicinal plant. In many European folk cultures, it was believed that this devilish vegetable can not be burned by frost or struck by lightning, that it has an incredible power to ward off evil. The nettle connected the world of the living and the dead and grew most often in places abandoned by people and next to fences - at the border of domestic space and foreign, dangerous territory. Today, we have almost lost the ancient knowledge and skills about it.

In autumn, the border between life and nature's slumber, a river ceremony will take place, an experience in which we will symbolically revive the ancient stories of the floodplain. Because places need to be taken care of not only physically, but also by carrying out ritual actions aimed at their spirit. Only in this way can the powers of dreams contained in them live on.