Fragment from the installation Singularity 49
Completed on | 2010 |
Category | Installation |
The idea for the Singularity 49 project (2013) represents articulation of symbolic, metaphorical, and referential relations between the multitude, which is a unit and wholeness, and its constituents, units and individuals. Through this relict assemblage, Maznevski creates a formative, autogeneric and variable poetic structure, whose heraldic signs, the bones, cleansed from their own ontological origin and transformed by a minimal aesthetic intervention, reflect the concept of temporal or territorial non-belonging. The basic feature of this conceptual metaphysical approach is the permanence of the binding energy or the persistence to unite in a formal wholeness which is inapt and diachronic in nature. This project arises as a result of an internal dialogue stretched between the idealistic and ideological views of the artist, who once again considers the concept of “geramatrix”, the ancestral connections between the idea and matter, the beginning, and the ontogeny of protoforms.
The special elements, which are called a “string of whizzers” by the artist, are a personification of anthropoid prototypes, characters and figures, among which gender differentiation is gradually being distinguished or recognized. The created structures in Series I, Series II and Series III demonstrate a balance of the position of the separate units, an internal order and harmony of the structure, and are based on the need for collectivism, mutualism and cooperation in the idea of attachment. All in all, the elements constitute a “complete wholeness of reality.”[Duуan Nedeljkovikj, History of Philosophy (Skopje Lectures) (Skopje: Makedonska kniga, 1984), 47.] This formal expression provides information about the transhistorical interpretation and identification thanks to the multitude of subjective entrances into the conceptual and meaningful relation that creates wholeness which thus becomes a synonym for social order itself.
Eastern philosophy is largely based on the fundamental Confucian principle on social order, referred to as ‘li’. This principle rests on the sky, is directed towards the earth, joins the service of spirits, and extends to the rituals and ceremonies; ‘Li’ is a synonym for ‘civilization’. The historiography of Confucianism suggests that the human being is a product of the forces of heaven and earth, the only principle of ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, an embodiment of spirits and essence.[Dimitrije Tasic Confucius (Belgrade: Belgrade Graphic Design Office, 1984), 129-33.] What is considered to be the most important or the most essential feature of the Eastern ideology is the awareness of the unity and the mutual connection of all things, objects and events, and the experience and the acceptance of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness.[Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: Exploration of the Parallels between Contemporary Physics and Eastern Mysticism (Skopje: Tabernacle, 1999), 155.]
In parallel with Confucianism, whose genealogy is dated back to about 5,000 BCE, a philosophical esoteric and religious system develops, called Taoism, which postulates that the most important or essential feature of the Eastern ideology is the “awareness of unity” and the “interconnectedness” of all things, objects and events, as an experience and acceptance of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of “one basic oneness”.[Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: Exploration of the Parallels of Contemporary Physics and Eastern Mysticism, 155.]
The formative potential of the units in the one, but also their uniqueness, individuality or independence, which are metaphorically expressed in the Singularity 49 concept, also approaches the ancient philosophy, according to which dynamic structures form stable formations out of which the matter is created, giving it its solid aspect. The ancient philosopher Empedocles, who postulates the critique of cognition, identifies the four roots of the world and the two cosmic forces. Empedocles wrote that “first, there was the multitude, and then it became one”. But the essence of cognition is based on the question: what does the multitude consist of? According to these claims, the interference of the earth elements creates the whole universe. The interference is the only reason for the genesis and the existence of all the beings.[Nedeljkovic, History of Philosophy, 45-47.] Plato’s idealism is based on the principle that ideas are eternal and constant essences. They are the source and cause of everything, proto-images, paradigms of things. They are even more perfect than the individual material things, which are copies, derivatives, reflections, and flashes of ideas. On top of that, Hegel’s absolute idealism indicates that “the idea is the essence of the world.”
Hegel’s comprehension of the reality of the specific freedom is based on the process of harmonizing two tendencies or two needs of individuals. The individual with their special interests is found in the civil society. Thanks to reason, the individual must overcome their own idiosyncrasy which can only be achieved in the sphere of the universal interest. The universality occurs only when the individual is satisfied. The universality cannot occur when there is comparison and simultaneous existence of subjective will and personal interest.[Jean Touchard, History of Political Ideas: 2 from the 18th Century to the Present (Skopje: Ars Lamina, 2011), 500-1.] The Dutch philosopher and humanist Huig de Groot believed that the human being needed a society, but such that was created for individuals. According to Groot, the community is natural and affective, while the society is formed when it is governed by a rational association of divergent elements.[Juraj Kolakovic, History of Modern Political Theories (from the 15th century to 1848), Book I (second, edited edition) (Čakovec: Zrinski, 1976), 79.]
The more modern philosophy represented by the German sociologist Georg Simmel points out that every human society has its own form and content, and that the basic premise of any society is the interaction among individuals.[Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Kurt H. Wolff (Illinois: The Free Press, 1950), 40.] What connects and unites these special entities are: instinct, interests, purpose, inclination, mental state or movement, i.e. everything that they contain and have in them to achieve or mediate an effect on others, or a reciprocal effect on themselves defined as a “content of sociation.”[Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 41.] The content itself, or the motivators that encourage the merger, is not social, but becomes social only when it appears as a factor for the transformation of the simple aggregation of isolated entities in specific forms of existence for one another, or as a subordination to the concept – interaction. The formal arrangement according to which the persons, the human beings and individuals grow together into units, wholes or unions, is, in fact, the basis of the society.[Ibid., 41.] Some of the units in the Singularity 49 series are evidently more dominant and more pronounced group leaders. The serial multiplicities sometimes are uniform, resembling militant formations ready to seize their own freedom. The Marxist critic and materialist, Herbert Marcuse, believed that the human needs are always historical needs, and that they are answered by the individuals themselves, whose answer will only be free if it is not imposed or caught.[Herbert Marcuse, “True Needs and False Needs,” in History of Philosophy: with Selected Texts of Philosophers, Boris Kalin (Zagreb, School Book 1978), 194.]
A free society, according to Marcuse, cannot be characterized by the traditional notions of economic, political, or intellectual freedom, not because such freedoms have become meaningless, but because they are too important to be reduced to traditional forms.[Herbert Marcuse, “One-man dimension” in History of Philosophy: with Selected Texts of Philosophers, Boris Kalin (Zagreb, Školska Book 1978), 383.]
Utopian humanism, advocated by Ernst Bloch, suggests that the realm of freedom of the human history is always at its beginning.[Ernst Bloch, “Historical and Natural Time: The Concept of Progress,” in History of Philosophy: with Selected Texts of Philosophers, Boris Kalin (Zagreb, School Book 1978), 387.] The intellectual freedom, emanating from the proposition Singularity 49, as a restoration of the individual thought, indicates a utopian attitude towards the patterns of absorption in the mass communication systems, which are a permutation of the outdated forms of struggle for existence.