hermetyca

Hermetyca is a reference to the Greek god Hermes, known in Egypt as Toth, and close to the Hindu Krishna. Hermes stands for manifold forces unfolding any transition, and transaction. God of languages, of merchants, of numbers, of games, of thieves, of travellers, of medicine. Complex and enigmatic life's figure, Hermes is the question mark leading one to move, to cross lines, to live within limits. One of this force's symbols is the Snake: elusive, always moving so that one cannot grab it, nonetheless capable of the finest deceits thanks to its seeming immobility.  Hermetyca tries to live the snaky boundaries of the West, to its South, to its East, in a mutually enriching way, channeling this diversity into an harmonious life-experience. It problematises the extreme symbolism of geographic borders,  putting forward with photographies, images, and stories what may overcome them: friendship, hospitality, solidarity.  

Hermetyca comes into the world after years of knitting philosophy, history and travelling. Being close to people and habits — from Turkey to Iran, from Syria to Oman and Morocco —, making friends and living with them, exploring connections between early Greek philosophers, as Heraclitus, and their Zoroastrian-influenced surroundings, reflecting about the immediate and long-standing consequences of wars, conflicts and imperialisms, all that, together with a constant exercise of increasing self-awareness, led to feel, somewhere deep down, links between European Mediterraneans, and that part of the globe to their South/East. It's obvious, after all. But there are times where rethinking the obvious may result not banal.

Where from, if at all? Where to go, if at all? Who? These old questions drove and drive hearths, pens, and lenses. Within Hermetyca, be it photography, writing, research, or film-making, the game is to uncoil the motley spindle of stories and histories, of collective memories, of habits and customs, of joys and tragedies, from the Mediterranean, till the extreme East. Which ironically enough (or not?) does indeed coincide, almost as its unsettling mirror, with the extreme West. The Taoist says that wisdom annihilates the distinction between me and the other. Do Hermetyca aims the ambitions of definitive formulas?  Or would it be humbly happy with some friendship?