Krystiania is a project, which aim it is to research and work in the crossroads between the existential challenges of postmodern culture, and the individual experience of an eternal spiritual Mystery.

This might be perceived as a surrealistic meeting between dream and lucidity, meaning and meaninglessness.

As educated and intellectual beings, we have an experience of living in a world that seems to be stripped of any inherent meaning. This does not mean that our existence is meaningless, but we realize that it is the individual, and only the individual, that gives it meaning. We have come to this world, with no given agenda, no single purpose and no specific aim for our worldly achievements. What is meaningful gives purpose for no others then those who evaluate these meanings, to the extent of their ability, and from within the boundaries of their cultural framework.

Our world is thus an empty physical and mental creation, existing from time immemorial, evolving in accordance to the laws of nature without any specific determination on its journey towards infinity.

It is in these surroundings that man is born, grows up, gets educated, works, has children, gets old and dies. And we furnish these steps with meaning and purpose.

Meaning, as created in culture and communities, works like a strongly addictive drug that we have taken on a regular basis, even from the time that we learn how to learn. The matter that decides if this is a harmful or merely a medicine for mental health is decided by our ability to take part in the world without letting it take part in us. This ability or the lack of it, is rendering us eider nobility of the spirit, or anxious addicts in the gutter of our personal neurotic and uptight world.

Through rational integration, auto piloting of internal processes and rigid normalization, the creative potential, the ability to broaden ones perspectives and the possibility to release ourselves from our mental and spirituals chains, seems to wittier away.

This is leaving us a life that is nothing but a replica in a cultural matrix for a semi-manufactured living. The only task left to fulfill, at birth, is to follow the recipe that come with our half-lived life; to fulfill the will of the spirit of the society one lives in.

The rules of routine are to be upheld in the name and glory of Safety, Conscience and the Holy Self-indulgence.

Krystiania wants to break some cracks in this reckless imbecile harmony, and let some ancient and fresh trespassers onto the scene; concepts that once again might ensnare the self-satisfied routine-ridden mind out on the slippery ice of surrealism, mysticism and spiritual crookedness; the route to inner fulfillment.

These faculties intend to rob people from their protected everyday feign reality, thus giving space to the Spirit of the Mystery of Man through the drama of the soul; and a true adventure.

Krystiania is a literary, artistic and dramaturgic project.

Man, with its human experiences of being a living creature, with a deep yearning for a personal experience of freedom, redemption and fulfillment; this is the concern of Krystianism, this is what we intend to facilitate through our works.

The postmodern impulses of the project, gives voice to our existential devaluation of the world’s inherent meaning. The neo-traditionalism of Krystiania is also connected to the spirit of postmodernism, and gives shapes to our esthetic impressions.

The traditions have the pragmatic purpose we give them, and as an esthetic vehicle for the mystery of man, it has proven quit useful.

Experiences and teachings need an outer shape, and through carefully chosen traditional structures, krystianism works within the sub-paradigm we call Rational-romanticism. And this flavor is to be found in our art, drama or written word.

The Krystiania project might allegorically be seen as a traditional ship, secretly storing the mystery of man, traveling the postmodern sea, under whatever color seem fit, hunting for fortified mental structures that are armed with resignation, triviality and attachment.

 

Rune Ødegaard and Joachim Svela

December 2009