Jan van Eyck Academie alumni Domenico Mangano & Marieke van Rooy have been thinking and experimenting with manna – a local harsh from the ash tree in Sicily. Using manna as a glaze, they aim to revive ancient knowledges and ways of relating to land and earth bodies.
In this Future Materials Encounter, they present their upcoming project. Drawing from de Kleine Aarde, a Dutch ecological experiment from the 70s, The Club of Rome and their publication ‘Limits to Growth’ (1972), and the alchemical approaches of Jacob van Maerlant’s nature encyclopedy from 1270, Marieke and Domenico experiment with organic glaze techniques, ancient wood, and anagama kilns to explore the return of alchemy and the spiritual in times of ecological depletion.