LuDD! Topografia della Luce
Riccardo Arena
2021
A metaphysical poem divided into 21 chapters inspired by a series of researches performed among Iran, Armenia, and Ethiopia.
Built through the interlace of biographies, scientific theories, mythologies and experiences, the story tells the creation and collapse of a Carpet warped with a sound-light yarn, originated by the sacrifice of a Primordial Taurus forced to gallop inside a particle accelerator in whose texture geometry, architecture and mirages of consciousness come to life. The carpet is a ritual cartography crossed by a solitary figure who, following a guiding river, embarks on a dissolutive journey between psyche and landscape in search of the voice that first sang the infinite creative act operating within the limits of space, time and metamorphosis of forms.
The narration is built by a chain of intuitions that came into view during the travels led the investigations: I followed a fil rouge that brought me to discover and explore a manifold of stories, places, and characters: the philosophy of light in the works of Persian mystics: Shoreward, Attar, Saadi and Gialal ad Din Rumi - the man in love with the atom. I came to discover Dasht-e Lut, the hottest desert in the world, formed by numberless geomorphological structures that resemble the last vestiges of a sand empire in dissolution; the Girih pattern in medieval Islamic architecture that enabled the creation of the most complex periodic tasselation which in turn constructed almost perfect and quasi-crystalline Penrose patterns, five centuries before their discovery in the West; the Hormoz Islands in Persian Gulf, considered a “geologist’s paradise”, the place where the enigmatic Zaar tribe dwells; the profound influence of Zoroaster and the simulacre of perennial fire in the origins of monotheistic cultures; the carpet weaving ritual linked to the destiny of men among the nomadic desert populations; the lunar utopia of Alexander the Great’s conquest; the petrified knowledge that shapes the monastery complex of Sanahin and Haghpat in Armenia; the ruins of Ani, where Gurdjieff claimed to have found an ancient teaching upon which he built his theories and brought him to Ethiopia in search of Sarmoung Brotherhood; the intriguing story of the Nile’s source identified by James Bruce in the Tana Lake in the late IX century; the Tigray monasteries, carved into rock as an architectural geodes, whose priests keep the Tabot, the relics of the Ark of the Covenant.
Riccardo Arena | LuDD! Topografia della Luce
Editors | Riccardo Arena, Katia Anguelova, Andrea Wiarda
Printed by | Ediprima, Piacenza
Edition | 350 c
First Edition | 2019, self-published
Second Edition | 2021
Published by Kunstverein Publishing, Milano & Boîte Editions, Lissone
www.kunstverein.it
ISBN: 978-88-32125-04-7
©2021 Riccardo Arena; Kunstverein Publishing, Milano; Boîte Editions, Lissone.
All rights reseved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
With thanks to: Galleria Milano, Fondazione Shapdiz, Museo MA*GA, Maria Grazia Cantoni,
Nina zu Fürstenberg, Nicola Pellegrini, Francesco Voltolina.
Kunstverein Publishing would like to thank Fondazione Shapdiz & Nicola Pellegrini for supporting this project in making it possible
Interested? write to: info@kunstverein.it
