Reflection on the first week
I would like to propose a series of developments and reflections from some notes, conversations and experiences on the first week of Erasmus IP 2013, Berlin, “Composition: Poetics and Procedure in Individual Performance”. I want to advance, without much assuredness, that the notes that came from Mika Luotto`s intervention, will serve here to present some general lines of thoughts as well as some suspensions and “jumps to the emptiness”. I also would like to add in this small introduction, the consideration of error and language misunderstandings as direct participants of the theme and poetry of this meeting.
First Note: “the work in art is brought to presence only to bring to presence something else, something more. This something else it is not somewhere else, it is precisely there.”(Mika Luotto). This something else, it is not a transcendent, something beyond, but something that it is implicated in the same place where is brought to existence, in the perception and the historicity that it carries. It is what proposes a shift into the space and brings other significances, meanings to it.
A work of art conceived in this terms creates meaning and space, creates meaning creating space, creating space creates meaning or co-creates meanings within the space, interrupting some formal opacity and making itself present within the space. In this direction and crossing notes, an artistic creation is “a transformative practice of thinking” (Heidegger) and transforms in a way that “the work of art is working itself it`s being in this place and it opens the re-codification of relations in this same place” (Mika Luotto). So the work of art produces place and it is not only inside its on shape. It has lost its classic objectual character and it can be considered - and perceived - as presence, as a presence that makes itself present and by doing it takes place, co-creates place and re-arranges the network of possibilities that are already there: transforms. At this point and taking into consideration the approximation of the concept of presence as presented before, we can recognize the insufficiency on the understanding of a work of art in terms of subject-object lines of relation. In this speciality of presence that is opened to us, in this “taking place” - to take place - of the work of art, we can observe how to re-organize the language, the perception and the historical concepts that forms art and give meaning to it.
Second Note: What if we questioned ourselves what is this “creating place of presence” that becomes itself present? Or how this presence that creates place work? Maybe we won`t have an answer and this maybe could be an interesting starting point.
Mika Luotto suggests that we begin “broking the concepts that forms art to open crevasses on the concepts through we normally think”; Walter Benjamin proposes that “the work of art must be presented as relations”; maybe João Fiadeiro and Fernanda Eugenio (Re.al, Lisbon) are thinking in a similar direction when they understand artistic research as “relations of relations”.
Third Note: Continuing this small list of clues, the words that Sergej Pristas left us before leaving Berlin back to Croatia, telling us about the manners that composition can be thinked, can help us to approach this questions i am bringing in this notes. 1) Composing: put something together 2) Posing (as Benjamin suggests): things are posing together. 3) Compossibility (Leibniz): things have the possibility together, they can be possible together, making each-other possible or un-compossible.
Here i make an interruption to remember myself that we are thinking the work of art as something that always exceeds itself, but at the same time, this exceeding itself happens right there where it takes place, on the place - “takes place taking its on place” (Miika Luoto). And what is this place? Where is it? How is it? Why is it? When is it?
If we come back some lines before and read again the enumeration made by Sergej thinking the act of composing, we could say that we have, as a matter of fact, a worked perception on recognizing places where things can be putted together (1) and maybe also places where things pose together(2) but the compossibility relation, that things are possible together or not (3), and this must include the place as possibility, presents to us a commitment with a more complex equation when considering perception as much as when considering the creation of meaning for the (dis)associative concepts which we think ourselves, which we think the encounter and which we think the world.
At this point we have to come back to what Miika brought to us under discussion: the concepts of labor, work and action, as understood by Hannah Arendt, to create a connection between the word “action” and “compossibility”. Hannah Arendt elaborates the concept of action as “ the only activity that is properly human, unique capacity of initiate something new (...) it allow us to show ourselves in public space, in one to one encounter(…)”. So in which way this properly human activity that allows us to show ourselves to public, on a one by one meeting, relates itself with compossibility? Through Hannah Arendt contribution we can include in the composition of things as possible or not possible (contingents) the concept of “exposition” as action of exposing, as action of showing off. And to this exposition of the relations that define the encounter the next is the passage of the composition to the compossibility: the action of exposing oneself, that happens on the encounter of showing oneself making this self present, may be possible or not. Here we have an action of composition though - perceived - as exposition, an exposition taught in relation with presence, in relation to what is made present and a present that is compossible, that can or cannot be. In the action of making oneself present, something always is exceeded.
Forth note: Giorgio Agamben suggests that an exposition of relations of to be or not to be - what he exemplifies on the Duchamp`s urinal - produces a double structure of production that suspends itself on a limb between to be (what its already being) and not to be ( what it is already) and in this nothing what appears, it is not the existence, but the inexistence. There, what is made present is the most alienate form of the presence, where nothing comes to present itself more than a delicate limit that acquires shape of privation. Thereby when nothing is a fact, only space is (happens).
Could we say that the compossibility, understood as making things possible or impossible together, suggests us after all space? Could this maybe be a reference to the stop of the history train that Benjamin was claiming as the only possible for politics? To stop the history, to stop the positive sequence of composition of power, deactivating it with its compossible reverse and open spaces between the “ yes it is” and “it is not” could be a hypothesis...
Ibon Salvador,
with the colaboration of Luciana Chieregati.
October 27th, 2013.
I would like to propose a series of developments and reflections from some notes, conversations and experiences on the first week of Erasmus IP 2013, Berlin, “Composition: Poetics and Procedure in Individual Performance”. I want to advance, without much assuredness, that the notes that came from Mika Luotto`s intervention, will serve here to present some general lines of thoughts as well as some suspensions and “jumps to the emptiness”. I also would like to add in this small introduction, the consideration of error and language misunderstandings as direct participants of the theme and poetry of this meeting.
First Note: “the work in art is brought to presence only to bring to presence something else, something more. This something else it is not somewhere else, it is precisely there.”(Mika Luotto). This something else, it is not a transcendent, something beyond, but something that it is implicated in the same place where is brought to existence, in the perception and the historicity that it carries. It is what proposes a shift into the space and brings other significances, meanings to it.
A work of art conceived in this terms creates meaning and space, creates meaning creating space, creating space creates meaning or co-creates meanings within the space, interrupting some formal opacity and making itself present within the space. In this direction and crossing notes, an artistic creation is “a transformative practice of thinking” (Heidegger) and transforms in a way that “the work of art is working itself it`s being in this place and it opens the re-codification of relations in this same place” (Mika Luotto). So the work of art produces place and it is not only inside its on shape. It has lost its classic objectual character and it can be considered - and perceived - as presence, as a presence that makes itself present and by doing it takes place, co-creates place and re-arranges the network of possibilities that are already there: transforms. At this point and taking into consideration the approximation of the concept of presence as presented before, we can recognize the insufficiency on the understanding of a work of art in terms of subject-object lines of relation. In this speciality of presence that is opened to us, in this “taking place” - to take place - of the work of art, we can observe how to re-organize the language, the perception and the historical concepts that forms art and give meaning to it.
Second Note: What if we questioned ourselves what is this “creating place of presence” that becomes itself present? Or how this presence that creates place work? Maybe we won`t have an answer and this maybe could be an interesting starting point.
Mika Luotto suggests that we begin “broking the concepts that forms art to open crevasses on the concepts through we normally think”; Walter Benjamin proposes that “the work of art must be presented as relations”; maybe João Fiadeiro and Fernanda Eugenio (Re.al, Lisbon) are thinking in a similar direction when they understand artistic research as “relations of relations”.
Third Note: Continuing this small list of clues, the words that Sergej Pristas left us before leaving Berlin back to Croatia, telling us about the manners that composition can be thinked, can help us to approach this questions i am bringing in this notes. 1) Composing: put something together 2) Posing (as Benjamin suggests): things are posing together. 3) Compossibility (Leibniz): things have the possibility together, they can be possible together, making each-other possible or un-compossible.
Here i make an interruption to remember myself that we are thinking the work of art as something that always exceeds itself, but at the same time, this exceeding itself happens right there where it takes place, on the place - “takes place taking its on place” (Miika Luoto). And what is this place? Where is it? How is it? Why is it? When is it?
If we come back some lines before and read again the enumeration made by Sergej thinking the act of composing, we could say that we have, as a matter of fact, a worked perception on recognizing places where things can be putted together (1) and maybe also places where things pose together(2) but the compossibility relation, that things are possible together or not (3), and this must include the place as possibility, presents to us a commitment with a more complex equation when considering perception as much as when considering the creation of meaning for the (dis)associative concepts which we think ourselves, which we think the encounter and which we think the world.
At this point we have to come back to what Miika brought to us under discussion: the concepts of labor, work and action, as understood by Hannah Arendt, to create a connection between the word “action” and “compossibility”. Hannah Arendt elaborates the concept of action as “ the only activity that is properly human, unique capacity of initiate something new (...) it allow us to show ourselves in public space, in one to one encounter(…)”. So in which way this properly human activity that allows us to show ourselves to public, on a one by one meeting, relates itself with compossibility? Through Hannah Arendt contribution we can include in the composition of things as possible or not possible (contingents) the concept of “exposition” as action of exposing, as action of showing off. And to this exposition of the relations that define the encounter the next is the passage of the composition to the compossibility: the action of exposing oneself, that happens on the encounter of showing oneself making this self present, may be possible or not. Here we have an action of composition though - perceived - as exposition, an exposition taught in relation with presence, in relation to what is made present and a present that is compossible, that can or cannot be. In the action of making oneself present, something always is exceeded.
Forth note: Giorgio Agamben suggests that an exposition of relations of to be or not to be - what he exemplifies on the Duchamp`s urinal - produces a double structure of production that suspends itself on a limb between to be (what its already being) and not to be ( what it is already) and in this nothing what appears, it is not the existence, but the inexistence. There, what is made present is the most alienate form of the presence, where nothing comes to present itself more than a delicate limit that acquires shape of privation. Thereby when nothing is a fact, only space is (happens).
Could we say that the compossibility, understood as making things possible or impossible together, suggests us after all space? Could this maybe be a reference to the stop of the history train that Benjamin was claiming as the only possible for politics? To stop the history, to stop the positive sequence of composition of power, deactivating it with its compossible reverse and open spaces between the “ yes it is” and “it is not” could be a hypothesis...
Ibon Salvador,
with the colaboration of Luciana Chieregati.
October 27th, 2013.