It and I / installation / 1999 / CIX Gallery / Skopje

It and I

Completed on 1999
Category Other (projects, sкetches, videos, photos, documentary)

to the surface the creative doubt, which has constantly been trying to establish concrete concepts and truths, and re-examines the sensory cognition [dubito ut intelligam] in a Cartesian manner, believing that the visual perceptions are an illusion.

The concept of the spatial Metal drawings (2001)[Independent exhibition in Aero art gallery, 12.12 – 22.12.2001.] dyes the gap in a contour that does not close, as an occupied space by the silhouettes of the shapes, or as an inscribed variation of the potential or what that potential might become. These spatial ‘phonemes’ represent a temporal and memorized record of dynamism or of energy that is left in the comprehension of infinity or in its own intentional incompleteness. Defined as a fissure through time and space, the artist in these statements outlines and distinguishes subjectively objective idealistic rhythms of an endless debate. The 17th century theory of cognition, introduced by the philosopher and liberal John Locke, identifies ‘primary and secondary qualities’. The primary ones are those that cannot be separated from the body and are listed as: firmness, shape, movement or stillness, and number, and the secondary ones are: colors, sounds, and scents which exist only for the subject that perceives them.[Bertrand Russell, “Chapter XIII: Locke’s Theory of Knowledge,” in History of Western Philosophy (Belgrade, Podgorica: Nova knjiga plus, 2015), 515.] The primary qualities in the spatial drawings would be the supposed movement and the actual stillness as opposites in a unity.

Once again, instead of a unity, we can probably imagine the separation between the body and the spirit. Furthermore, Locke’s discussion opens up to empiricism by rejecting the metaphysical views. He divides the assumptions about the source of ideas into ‘sensory’ and ‘perceptual’, which are led by the spiritual cognition that he claims to be an ‘inner sense’.

His hypothesis is based on the viewpoint that cognition cannot precede experience. According to the philosophical unfolding of the process of naming the substance, Locke’s assumptions are narrowed down to the conclusion that ‘things’ may possess ‘real essence’ which consists of their ‘physical composition’. Yet, the essence is mainly unknown and “it is not essence in a scholastic sense.” The real essence possessed by these two separate essences (symbolically – soul and body) is unknown in the perceptual context, but it is verbalized, just as the essence that Locke speaks of is ‘verbal’ and consists exclusively of the definition of a general term.

The question whether the essence of a body consists only of the space it covers, or whether the body is space plus mass, is a debate over terminology through which the body can be defined in any way. In essence, language facts are different complex ideas to which different names are given.[Russell, Locke’s Theory of Knowledge, 519.] These two supposed figures observe themselves, or perhaps they both belong to a single conjecture of the spirit which in all its thoughts and reasoning has nothing else but its own ideas, which it observes itself, as Locke would suggest. The spirit itself cannot create a single simple idea, because such things affect the spirit in a completely natural way. According to the Locke’s assumptions, the ideas about substances must be composed of simple ideas whose existence is detected in nature. Hence, cognition is led by intuition and the reason which observes the agreement or disagreement of two parts, or by the sensory recognition as perception of the individual things.[Ibid., 520.]

George Berkeley denied the existence of matter and the external physical world, which can only exist because we observe it.[Bertrand Russell, “Chapter XVI: Berkeley,” in History of Western Philosophy (Belgrade, Podgorica: Nova knjiga plus, 2015), 549.] One of the key Berkeley’s hypotheses is that the ‘event’ deduces to a ‘percept’ that we know of without conclusions, while the ‘spirit’ is understood as the ‘structure of the event’ when the substance is rejected.[Russell, Chapter XVI: Berkeley, 556-9.] There is no doubt that the relationship generated during the perceptual act of these two ‘presences’ is also a kind of an event itself. The founder of German idealism, Immanuel Kant, advocated the philosophical view that ‘spirit’ is the opposite of ‘matter’, and he eventually came to a conclusion that there is only spirit in the end. According to Kant, space and time are forms of perception similar to the dualistic composition of these two abstract opposites. According to Kant, there are two types of spaces, a subjective one – recognized for experience, and an objective one – the one in which conclusions are drawn.[Bertrand Russell, “Chapter XX: Kant”, History of Western Philosophy (Belgrade, Podgorica: Nova knjiga plus, 2015), 599-606.]