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Worldings
Complementarities
Play-Ground
Life(s) of Webs
Live(s) on Air
Tomás Saraceno in collaboration: Web(s) of Life
Entangled Air
Oceans of Air
Silent Autumn
Drift: A cosmic web of thermodynamic rhythms
Aerocene: Free the Air. “Orbit-s” For a Post-Fossil Fuel Era
Cloud Cities: du sol au soleil
Particular Matter(s)
Cloud Cities Barcelona
Matter(s) for Conversation and Action
Inter + Play 2
From Arachnophobia to Arachnophilia
we do not all breathe the same air
Ha Chi Ki
AnarcoAracnoAnacroArcano
Nggamdu.org
Lignes de possibles: Arachnophilia with Tomás Saraceno at the Festival La Manufacture d’idées
Du sol au soleil
Webs of Life
Museo Aero Solar: for an Aerocene era
Movement
How to hear the universe in a spider/web: A live concert for/by invertebrate rights
Interspecies Conversations
Avec qui venez-vous? Vinciane Despret in conversation with Tomás Saraceno
Prototype of Maratus volans (peacock spider), Web of Life (2020) | for a real Augmented Reality
Radio Galena
The Art of Noticing – Louisiana Channel Interviews Tomás Saraceno
Free the Air: Aerocene – Tomás Saraceno holds keynote speech at Herald Design Forum
Up Close: Tomás Saraceno in conversation with Harriet A. Washington
Songs for the Air
Moving Atmospheres
Event Horizon
Aria
Fly with Aerocene Pacha
Invertebrate Rights for “Down to Earth”
Tomás Saraceno
Spider/Web Pavilion 7
Arachnomancy Cards
Acqua Alta: en Clave de Sol
On the Disappearance of Clouds
Tomás Saraceno. Aria at Cinema Odeon
Sundial for Spatial Echoes
2-Dimensional Webs Archive/Maps and Traces
More-than-humans
Tomás Saraceno at the Venice Biennale 2019
Arachnophilia Community Meeting with MIT Professor Markus J Buehler
Beyond the Cradle 2019: Space and the Arts
Engadin Art Talks: Grace and Gravity
Tomás Saraceno
How to entangle the universe in a spider/web?
Printed Matter(s)
Webs of At-tent(s)ion
Art Basel Miami – Albedo | Hans Ulrich Obrist in conversation with Tomás Saraceno
ON AIR
Aerographies
The Politics of Solar Rhythms: Cosmic Levitation
Living at the bottom of the ocean of air
Sounding the Air
“ON AIR live with…”
Spider/Web Oracle Readings Program
Algo-r(h)i(y)thms
Passages of Time
Particular Matter(s) Jam Session
Solar Rhythms
ALBEDO
A Thermodynamic Imaginary
How to Entangle the Universe in a Spider Web
Hybrid Webs
Gravitational Waves
Silent Autumn
Entangled Orbits
Our Interplanetary Bodies
Aerosolar Journeys
Stillness in Motion — Cloud Cities
163,000 Light Years
Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud Cities and Solar Balloon Travel – Interview with The Creators Project
Cosmic Jive: The Spider Sessions
Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions
Solar Bell
In Orbit
Ring Bell — Solar Orchestra and the Wind Structures
Moving Beyond Materiality – MIT Visiting Artist Tomás Saraceno
On the Roof: Cloud City
On Space Time Foam
Cloud Cities
14 Billions (Working Title)
Galaxies Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web
Observatory, Air-Port-City
Poetic Cosmos of the Breath
Flying Garden/Air-Port-City
Life(s) of Webs
Amongst Maya Peoples, the spider/web represents the placenta of Ix Chel, the Maya goddess of childbirth and patron saint of weavers, and for whom the spider creates the thread of life from within itself. For the ancient civilisation of the Nazca, the spider was imaged in their geoglyphs–engraved directly onto the ground of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru–as schematic-geometric figures that span a length of nearly 50 meters. In Peru, a special class of pre-Inca Chavín diviners (known as pacchacatic) once consulted the spider as deity and oracle, divining their future based upon its falling movements. In late pre-Hispanic times, and still today in regions of modern highland Peru, spiders are observed to predict rainfall and other other climate events.
During the origins of the Qixi festival in China, a celebration derived from the myth of cloud-weaving goddess Zhinü, it was customary on the ‘Seventh Night’ for young girls who practiced needlework to observe house spiders of the court (xizi), storing them until dawn in hopes to reveal their fortune. If the spider had spun a tightly-woven web, it was a positive omen and read as a reflection of the young woman’s skills. If the web was sparse or unbuilt, the opposite was true.
In Christianity, we encounter the tale of Saint Felix di Nola who, upon being persecuted due to his preaching, slipped through a narrow gap in a nearby ruinous house in order to conceal himself. Once inside, by God’s command, spiders spun a protective web across the opening, tricking his persecutors into believing no one could have traversed the space, who then continued on their path. The spider-as-trickster appears myriad: in North America for the Cheyenne Peoples as Veeho, for the Lakota as Iktómi; in West Africa as Kwaku Anansi—a rogue, arachnid folk hero whose cunning, unpredictable and liminal figure mediates between the gods of the sky and earth-bound humans.
Tarantism, a phenomenon originally believed to be caused by a bite from the Lycosa tarantula or Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, is a form of ‘hysterical’ behavior—and accompanying dancing mania—originating in Southern Italy. The tarantella dance, a series of folk dances with roots in Calabria (Sonu a ballu), Campania (tammurriata) and Puglia (pizzica), evolved as a speculative therapy—a type of musical exorcism—for the ‘victims’ of such spider bites: it is said that such convulsion-invoking rhythms, performed publicly, often for days on end, were used to revive and heal those who had succumbed to the spider’s venom.
In North America, the Hopi and Navajo Peoples count on their Mujer Araña as both a powerful spirit and ally, whose magical agency of the Earth would teach them to weave; for other Californian tribes, she is an avenging spirit that punishes evil. In Greek mythology, the figure of Arachne is entangled within a ‘web of resistance’ with goddess Athena, revealing another tale of mediation: of two women who use embroidery as a performative textuality, confronting and defending the social order.
Mediation across lines of species and language continues today: the historic ŋgam dù spider divination, as practiced by the Mambila People in the borderlands of Cameroon and Nigeria, brings its diviners and consultees into acute relation, awareness and sensitivity to a spider’s oracular capacities. During a consultation, a set of binary questions is presented to a ground-dwelling spider. Cards placed at the entrance to its burrow, made from stiff plant leaves and featuring cut-out shapes (ŋgèe) with specific symbolic meanings, are rearranged by the spider whose response is then interpreted by the diviner.
In 2023, in the Chiesa Madonna del Carmine – Palazzo Lanfranchi in Matera, a Catholic confessional box is found, in which spider/webs emerge in the place of the priest, with the intention to share their ancestral wisdom. It’s a call to humanity, one to listen closely to: “we have lived on Earth for more than 380 million years, while most of you humans, merely 200 thousand years… we invertebrates represent 95% of all animals on planet Earth, yet we are threatened by extinction, something that would endanger all lives on earth. We ask you to care for the rights of our webs of life. Weaving together ways of living, with lifestyles that do not affect climates, for more just, eco-social inter- intra-species societies for all?
Give in to arachnophilia.
Every contribution matters. These are times to act and to be part of something larger, and infinitely smaller, than yourself.