Stimuli / The Sun
Completed on | 2015 |
Dimensions | 40 x 60 cm |
Category | Wall Object |
Polyphony in the poetics of simplicity
“Art would not be art if it did not give an opportunity to every person to personally experience it … But most importantly it is not … a certain knowledge, or education, but it is a spiritual level. In other words, it is acceptance; it is not so much understanding, as much as it is acceptance. If you accept, then you understand! There will come a moment when you will understand!” – Andrei Tarkovsky
The quote by the Russian film director Tarkovsky, first and foremost, speaks about the free individual perception of the subject, about the acceptance, i.e. the understanding of art, which in fact refers to the establishment of communication and interaction among the author, the viewer and the work of art. Such open suggestion made by Tarkovsky to the recipients, in a certain manner, is related to the reception theory, but also to the poetics of the open work (Opera aperta) promoted by Umberto Eco in the second half of the last century. In Eco’s theory, the reader, the viewer, or the listener is allowed to make a free interpretation of the contemporary and structurally finished works of art. Yet, although the works are closed, by their nature they are open and subject to countless different interpretations, or more precisely “(…) a work of art, a form completed and closed in its perfectly measured perfection is also open with the possibility of being interpreted in a thousand different ways … ”.[Umberto Eko, The Open Work (Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1965), 34.] Emphasizing the reader, the viewer, or the interpreter, i.e. the interpretation of the work of art, later Eco would expound this thesis in the context of the theory of semiotics.
In his book The Limits of Interpretation (1990), he reiterates and concludes that, after all, the interpretation has its limits which are imprinted in the text or the work itself. The hermeneutic approach is not a self-sufficient process, but it is the result of the overall human experience. Eco’s idea about the Model reader, i.e. the ‘desired reader’ emerges from this experience. The Model reader is embedded in the work itself, so that each work has a minimum of two levels of reading according to him. One is a semantic level, and the other is an aesthetic level where the reader or the interpreter considers not only the structure, but the philosophical context of the work of art as well. Later in the text, we will return to Eco’s theory of open work and try to use various aspects to analyze the works by Maznevski in his latest project.
In the field of our artist’s polysemous creative game, the inner dynamism survives above all, in which one can recognize the process of rhythmic repetition and of crossing different memorized self-referential events that had transcended from children’s games and toys into creative and aesthetic games.
But, one step at a time. First, the unusual title of the project. Like the previous puzzling and almost la- conic titles of Maznevski’s projects (The end, A se esse, Medium, It and I, Bio-Geo-Theo) so is the last one: hermetic, cryptic, and reduced to a sign.
Isolated from the visual context, the title of the current project is As it is. It itself does not even refer to anything specific. We do not know the meaning, we do not know what it is – it is ‘as it is’. The dilem- ma about the secretive and seductive ‘hidden truth’ remains to intrigue us grammatically, and to provoke us. The lapidary statement in the simple sentence has no noun, no active action, i.e. a verb, and no context. It is only a complex conjunction complemented by the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ in the third person singular. Hence, the self-examination directs us to the trail of some completely undefined and unfinished remnant of a language game. It is perhaps a lucidly considered, tendentiously and opaquely written sentence taken out of context, which should stimulate the curiosity of the recipient to shed light on the enigma of the language game. Curious and seduced by the uncertain search and trail of the puzzling game, we only consider and project the remnants of the color of the phonological accent, the intonation of the possible imperative of the artist, but also our conclusion about an unfinished action that is left behind on purpose.
But despite its mystery, it can be understood that, after all, the title itself is not closed, but open, because it indicates addition, completion, further explanation, and also a call for different interpretation. Hence, our confusion and dilemma about the indicated assumptions about Maznevski’s game lead us to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language game,[“Wittgenstein found that the task of philosophy is to discover the origin and structure of the confusion in the language, because ambiguities in language are a sure sign that there are philosophical problems. Confusion in the language is a symptom of philosophical problems, so by eliminating the ambiguities in the language we reach a state in which philosophical problems did not find their solution, but disappeared as problems. Philosophy should free us from the problems we have with our language, which are happening when we use one language game consciously or unconsciously in analogy with another, or when we do not know enough about its rules. The language cannot be properly used it if its rules are not known, just as no game can be played without following its rules.”Jelena Berberovi foreword to: Philosophical Investigatons.] who marked with it his total experience of the world. The ideas in his Philosophical Investigations are reflected in some aspects present in Maznevski’s work, and they are “those aspects of the thing that are most important to us, which are hidden in simplicity and in everyday life. (We cannot notice it – because it is always in front of our eyes). The man does not see the true basis of his research at all; unless he has already seen it. And it means that what we have seen once, and it has been the most striking and the strongest, we no longer perceive it.”[Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Belgrade: Nolit, 1980), 40-41, paragraph 129.]
Hence, it can be inferred that even in Maznevski’s works the most obvious things are hidden in simplicity and in the reduction, which does not only dominate in the title, but in the works as well, and which tend to articulate the monumental through the minimal, or to reach the maximum through the minimum. On one occasion, the author himself states that his intention is to grasp the invisible, the elusive or the cosmic. The meaning of the words in the title still evokes some associations no matter how enigmatic they sound. They can be perceived as a continuation of certain images which in the initial perception in our mental sphere are not adequately articulated and compatible with the images of the artist’s objectively existing project.
However, stepping aside from the written title, with the primary panoramic observation of the project, we are still simultaneously and versatilely disabled to see the objects in their entirety i.e. to have a panoptic view (Husserl). All objects and all things have a visible and an invisible side, and they have their light and their shadow, which means that there is always something which remains hidden, and that remains unrevealed. What can be registered at first glance is the dialogical reduction in the language and the whole picture that pulsates in one rhythm in the field of naming and the field of creating the works. Although with the mutual isolation of language from the picture “a difference is created between what is expressed and what is shown …”,[Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 40, paragraph 126.] and that difference in Maznevski’s work is manifested as a reversible, fluid and compensating element. With the synergy of the game between the linguistic expression and the visual representation, Maznevski very lucidly turns the language game into an aesthetic one, as he does in the other projects as well.
The phenomenon of the game
Prior to bringing the major focus into what Maznevski’s project reveals to us, emphasis will be put on different philosophical, aesthetic, anthropological and other contemplations on the phenomenon of the game. A more intensive treatment of the complex phenomenon of the interpretation of the game, and the player, homo ludens, will prevail at the end of the XIX and XX century. In philosophy, aesthetics and anthropology, the game is interpreted as unavoidable for the human survival. As an empirical, collective, dynamic and interactive system, it is reasoned and expanded by different thinkers throughout the history of ideas, from antiquity to the present day. The game as a non-differentiated general term has a very extensive meaning, and as a term it is used in almost all spheres of human existence. Yet, its wide range of use is not the subject of our interest. We focus our attention on the aesthetic creative act, and some general archaic board games that have remained relevant to this day are to be mentioned very briefly.
Archaeological science has discovered much equipment for games at different locations around the world, which are mainly located where the Eastern civilizations are. Despite the ritual, ceremonial, magic or religious games, the profane board games had their own rules and were not only fun, but also imaginative and educational. The historical games (especially the game “Go”), many of which are digitized today, are undoubtedly the foundation of the modern video games in our digital age[The oldest known board game dates back to the Early Bronze Age (5,000 BC). In one of the graves in Başur Höyük in southeastern Turkey, 49 carved pebbles in different shapes and colors (green, red, blue, black and white) were found. Similar fragments have been found in Syria and Iraq, and from there other games have spread to Egypt, where the oldest board game (divided into fields) called the Senet was found. The game dates from 3 500-3 100 BC, and was painted on a fresco in a tomb: https: //www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/old- est-known-gami ng-tokens-dug-bronze-age-turkish-graves-6c10920354. In Iraq, the royal game of Ur was found in the tomb of Ur, as well as in the tomb of Tutankhamun. Its rules were recently deciphered by an English curator of the British Museum, Irving Finkel. It is considered to be the longest played game in the world; https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/oldest-known-gaming-tok. There are many other ancient games that came from India: Pachisi and Chaupar; hopscotch from Persia, backgammon was even played 5000 years ago in Egypt and the Roman Empire, and is still played today; Mehen comes from Egypt; Patoli from Mexico – it was played by the Aztecs, etc.] that is applied in the field of artificial intelligence as well.[An ancient Chinese wise man 3,000 years ago while playing the complex game Go could hardly have imagined that the input/output system for creating and preparing numerical conditions, will be the foundation of technology and artificial intelligence. It is considered the most complex mind game in the world. The AlphaGo computer program (designed by DeepMind which was acquired by Google) that focuses on the development of artificial intelligence, this year beat one of the world’s best players of Go. More at: https://deepmind.com/ research/case-studies/alphago-the-story-so-far. The videogames designers conclude that the computers did not create the games but that the games created the computers: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344874181_Videoigre_i_filozofija_igre.]
But let us see what a game is from a philosophical and aesthetic point of view and how it is defined. This issue has no concrete answer, or one definition. In fact, there is one that we paraphrase, and which seems to be the most adequate. Wittgenstein left it to us as a legacy in his Philosophical Investigations, in which he states that the game does not have one definition, but a series of definitions that are family relat- ed. This family kinship is proven best by the interpretations in different sciences and scientific disciplines. Sources suggest that the first philosopher to mention games and toys was Heraclitus. In the enigmatic aphorisms in his Fragments, the only thing he writes about is ‘children’s toys’ (fragment 70), when in fact, he thinks about human beliefs. He says the following about the game: “The human life (lifespan) – it is a child at play; the stones are put on a board here and there: a children’s kingdom!”[Heraklit, Fragments (Belgrade: Grafos, 1985), 51. The quotation is from the fragment VIII-52, according to Miroslav Markovic’s translation which is different from the other translations in which the same fragment is translated: “time, a child playing with a pebble; kingdom of the child.”] When we play and connect the two fragments, we probably fall into the trap of Heraclitus’s language game. Nevertheless, we continue. We assume that the philosopher refers to the human ideas, which are toys of the gods, when talking about children’s toys and stacking pebbles. This puzzle can be understood, among other things, as a metaphor for the game of opinions in the realm of thinkers. There are different interpretations of this fragment by philosophers. For example, some suggest that it is about the universal structure of the world, about the birth and collapse of the cosmos as a flow of all things, or about the understanding of the game as a symbol of the world of ideas. Plato suggests that the world is not a pointless game, a dance of the cre- ation and disappearance of the transient, but a clever cosmic order.
Although the ancient thinkers, Plato and Aristotle, deal with the problem of the game gradually, it has to be mentioned that Plato, unlike Aristotle, thought that man should spend his whole life playing a game, and therefore, philosophy for him was a “hard game that has to be played to the end” (Parm.137b). By sharply differentiating the game from the creative act, Aristotle trivializes it and reduces it to a recreational activity – it is rest after hard physical labor.
In the eighteenth century, the game became relevant to the German classical idealism and romanticism. In Critique of the Power of Judgment, Immanuel Kant suggests that the importance of the game plays the important role for the overall aesthetic conception. For him, the meaning of the game is binary, like a game between the imagination and reason, but it is also a free game which is the foundation of artistic activity. Despite the utilitarianism of the unpleasant work, the game itself is pleasant, followed by joy and pleasure. The transcendental determination of the judgment of taste, which is subjective, should be universal according to him.[More in: Ivan Dzeparoski, The Aesthetics of the Game (Skopje: Kultura, 2003), 60.] In this sense, the game becomes a free powerful unity of fantasy and reason. Free play is harmonization of the senses and abstract combinatorics, which is why it is both real and unreal truth of the world and its illusion. At the same time, it is located in a specific time and space, but also outside of them.
For the romantic Friedrich Schiller, the very idea of humanity is a manifestation of the urge to play. In his Letters on aesthetic education,[Friedrich Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man (Zagreb: Scarabeus, 2003), 43. Schiller considers that an aesthetic state is possible, which implies the aesthetic education of man. He distinguish two instincts: an instinct for matter and an instinct for form, i.e. for art. He compares instincts with the senses and reason. In order for a man to develop, he needs to harmonize his instincts. The third is the urge to play which unites the two. In the game the man is in zero state, i.e. in a state of freedom for aesthetic creation.] the urge for play, for freedom, and above all, for beauty, is the essence of the human being, because for him “the human being is a human being only when they play,” and only through the game they can build the architecture of the beauty of the aesthetic game. “The game and the beauty not only correspond ontologically and in value, but the game itself … is interpreted as a superior spiritual instance.”[Sreten Petrovic, in: Traditional Aesthetic Culture: Game (Nis: Center for Scientific Research SANU and the University of Nishu, 2011), 23.] The shaping and production of the aesthetic object and the participation in the game undoubtedly imply the freedom and open-mindedness of the artist.
With the game, he transcends the existing reality into a new aesthetically ethical reality. Yet, if we take Schiller into consideration, we can conclude that beauty is the highest standard and the highest value in comparison to all manifestations of the game which leads further to the idea that the game itself is still the supreme category that transcends beauty.
In the book Homo ludens by the Dutch culturologist Johan Huizinga, we read that in the game “(…) something is suggested that goes beyond the immediate urge to confirm life and that in … action brings meaning. Every game means something … the game is given its essence – the spirit … in the very essence of the game, there is always an element of unreality reflected.”[Johan Huizingа, Homo Ludens: A study of the play element in culture (Zagreb: Naprijed, 1992), 9.] The game, according to him, is necessary to beautify life and it has its own space, its own order and rules.
From a philosophical-anthropological point of view, Eugen Fink suggests that without the game, which permeates all spheres of human action, and without the power of imagination, which is an essential category of the game, the human existence would be left without any spiritual creation. It is possible to experience happiness in the game in the process of creation, because all possibilities are open, such as the illusion of freedom that is experienced in the act of creation of the work of art. The game world is not separated from the real world. Although it has its own space and its own time, its performance is interwoven with the reality of the space and time. “If the world of play manifests itself as the world of art, then play and art are closely correlated. Hence, the game is an important root of the overall art which is open to numerous possibilities. Created in the real world, the work of art builds the imaginary world with real props and shapes the world of the unreal created in the real world.”[Milan Uzelac, The game as a philosophical problem, Lectures at the Sports Academy in Belgrade, 2003, 13.]
For Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics the game, first and foremost, is an ideal realm that is au- tonomous and devoid of limitations and especially of the influence and the dictates of society, because it (the game) is, above all, self-representing. Its subject is not the player, but its very being which is manifested through the player. Its impulses are free because “we find the game even where the subject is absent, it has its essence, in other words, it is the Being itself, and not a player’s subject.”[Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1978), 132.]
Gadamer especially emphasizes the Being of the game, because the game is independent from the consciousness of those who play or simulate that they play. According to Gadamer, the game is a sort of existence of the work of art or the world that is built during the game. For the spectator it is open and closed at the same time, but in order to be complete, players and spectators are necessary. “The purpose of the game is to shape its movement, and therefore, it manifests itself as self-presentation; it presents in itself what it is, because the real essence of the game, and of the work of art as well, is in the presentation;
The abolition of this reality, the process of bringing to light what is constantly slipping away, remains hidden; thus the game is objectified, it becomes a being, it becomes art …,”[Ibid, 138.] and the movement of the game, as well as of everything that moves in nature, must take the form of the movement itself, while its repetition is understood as an internal component of the movement of the game. Gadamer’s work of art is also a symbol “in which many meanings inherent in the experience of art are hidden – which is at the same time an experience of the world … The symbolic … enables the meaning to be present.”[Ivan Dzeparoski, “Gadamer for Beauty and the Arts”, in Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Rele- vance of the Beautiful (Skopje: Magor, 2005), 14.] Gadamer considers the interpretation of the symbol as something that is presented, not something that is represented, so that the work of art is a presenting entity that establishes communication with the spectator or the audience. For him, “the festivity and the holiday, which are ritually repeated, are closest to the essence of true art”, because the holiday suggests unity and it is a representation of unity itself in its perfect form. The holiday is always for everyone, just as true art is – art for everyone – and just as the experience of the work of art is akin to the repetitive experience of celebration and solemnity. In addition to the receptive and communicative function of the work of art, Gadamer does not forget the metaphysical essence through which the self-revelation of truth is celebrated[Ibid, 15.] in the work of art.
The notion of the game is introduced again in a postmodernist discourse, because it discusses the cultural and the anthropological content of the game and the analogy of the game with art. It is considered to be absolute, because it reflexively revolves around itself. The course that the postmodern reception relies on begins with Friedrich Nietzsche, to Martin Heidegger, Gadamer and Fink, and therefore, the newer interpretations indicate that the postmodern is essentially determined by the historical notion of the game. The game in the arts today is associated with a variety of historical styles and experimental procedures, which create a mix of accumulating textual, visual and auditory fragments.
That patchwork does not denote a new original being of art, but only the sum of the historical tributaries that are channeled into the dense sfumato image of the new time through hybridization. The ludic approach becomes dominant in the postmodern, especially for the French philosophers who stir the philosophy and establish an unconventional way of thinking that influences the succeeding thinkers and interpreters. Yet, it seems to us that Jacques Derrida is the most exposed philosopher player who introduces the deconstruction procedure of questioning and interpreting a work of art from different perspectives.
The deconstruction elaborates the procedures of the mimesis, i.e. the mimesis of the mimesis, that manifests through a quotation, collage and montage procedure in various current and historical plural configurations of linguistic and symbolic forms in art and culture. Derrida reveals the contradictions that require deciphering by playing a different game whenever the same work is interpreted by breaking it down to pieces. This master of the language game makes the words themselves become a game in the process of their deconstruction and redefinition of the words. As a result, the word never remains fixed but open, as is the case when the letter e is substituted by the letter a in the word différеnce (difference) with différance (separation, delay).
The difference is obvious only in the written word, but it is absent in speech. This game of the game between a letter and speech is a game of the difference between the presence and the absence, which marks the trace of spatial displacement and time delay.
In the game of redefined words that are phonetically almost identical in pronunciation, Derrida distorts their usual use which causes doubt and uncertainty in the comprehension. By disassembling and reassembling the elements, it is impossible to return the work to its original form. The same applies to the repetition of the game that cannot move in the same direction and give the same result. Hence, the game “playfully shifts from the center towards the edge, the margins, towards a passepartout … the game of the trace … enables … the deconstruction twist …
The center can be outside the whole … and in (its) absence … or origin we can only talk about discourse (the processing).”[Ivan Dzeparoski, “Our contemporary game from the past,” in Aesthetics of the Game (Skopje: Kultura, 2003), 31.] But what matters and what Derrida stands for is the structure, the sign and the freeplay. The freeplay is not oriented towards the center and the origin, but it is turned towards the interpretation. He suggests that there are “two interpretations of the interpretation. One seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin which is free from freeplay and from the order of the sign, and lives like an exile with the necessity of interpretation. The other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms freeplay and tries to pass beyond man and humanism, the name man being the name of that being who, throughout the history of metaphysics or of onto-theology—in other words, through the history of all of his history—has dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of the game.”[Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Game in the Humanities,” in Aesthetics of the Game (Skopje: Kultura, 2003), 230.] Despite the game which takes place between the absence and the presence, “if it is to be radically conceived, freeplay must be conceived of before the alternative of presence and absence; being must be conceived of as presence or absence beginning with the possibility of freeplay and not the other way around.”[Ibid, 229-230.]
All the above leads to the conclusion that Derrida anticipated the virtual digital art with deconstruction. A radical understanding of the thawed game marked the liberation from any a priori meanings. The sign is understood as a gap that is open to replenishment, because the digital work is not frozen but open – it is interactive in an interactive context. In the digital art game, the information that every network player or consumer has access to is at stake. The perception has a communicative role in the game, while the communication represents the essence of the digital culture. The digital artist who creates and circulates the concept of the work is no longer a solitary author, but has countless co-authors who constantly replenish, expand and modify the unstable vibrating image of the initial concept, which is the artifact. Therefore, the spectators’ interaction and participation are necessary for the digital work, so that the posterior interpretation of the work remains in the further process of the game. In the context of that dualistic author-audience game, the individual or the singular authorship of the work is redefined, melted and articulated as pluralistic.
However, such a dichotomy in digital art, with an endless game of replenishing is exhausted and reconfigured into something else. Today the world consists of signs, and the work of art is manifested as a document, as a letter, a code or as a drawing documenting the grayness of the banal empty life and world that surrounds us.
According to Zharko Paic, “the essence of technology hides something that is neither natural nor human in its truth… That, which is neither determined nor completed, is a remnant of the monstrous event when the human being is established as an ‘subject’ without a ‘substance’ … contemporary art has developed to a complete dehumanization, and it came to a posthuman state. Now, neither the problem of the aesthetic judgment of the work or the event, nor the construction of the body as an aesthetic object is in the center of attention. Instead, we encounter the question of the transition of the aesthetic to technical in the new area of production of life itself. On the other side of ‘nature’ and the biological conditions of existence is the experience of a pulsating life.”[Zarko Paic, “Technique and soul,” Philosophical research 35, (4/2015) 140: 671.]
Contrary to the progressive technological posthumanist dimension of life, we become increasingly skeptical of the idea of a possible rehumanization of the world.
Today we witness the genetic engineering, i.e. the first genetically modified human beings[It refers to the Chinese twins Lulu and Nana, whose embryos were genetically modified at the molecular level by the scientist He Jiankui. Biotechnology can design a super man, with super powers.] that evoke the feeling of phobia and resistance to technocracy in us.
But the game with “(…) techno-aesthetic engineering does not only produce new forms of being from the ideas of the artificial mind, but that self-production is further aestheticized to the point when one of the newest directions of contemporary art is called scientific experimentation with the emergence of artificial life (A-Life) – postgenomic or transgenic art.” [Paic, “Technique and soul,” 671.]
Consequently, we can conclude that contemporary art no longer arises from art, but from science, i.e. artificial intelligence which, as Paic would say, is characterized by “aesthetic notions of shock, provocation and experimentation, which consequently signify the creative chaos of the time that follows.”[Ibid, 672.]
The game with the ready-made items
In contrast to the previous, current and upcoming rapid changes in the artistic trends and the movements that marked the XX and XXI century, we return once again to the message or testament by Tarkovsky for individual experience and for the subjective aesthetic experience of the world of art. As a horizon of intersubjectivity, the aesthetic experience is in itself subjective, because it is related to a specific entity that experiences and shares its own intimate world with other entities. That experience, as in every artist’s case, is also recognizable in Maznevski. But what is characteristic of this artist is the appropriating and playing with the coready-made objects whose boundaries are shifted, and whose function, morphology and initial utilitarian meaning is changed through different interventions, at the same time being moved into the conceptual field of meanings.
Maznevski imposes new status on the works and establishes them in a new artistic context with the ludic approach through transformation and complete hybridization of the ready-made, as is the case with the monumental works Mozart’s Boat and A se ese, when their sign and meaning is changed. Unlike the listed hybridized works, in the latest Maznevski project there is no change in the morphological structure of the ready-made objects, but he only re-adapts and adapts them to his concept. They are not transformed, but converted into a basic material, which is a constituent element in the whole project. Across the extensive game, Maznevski only redirects the initial function of the accumulated elements, and conceptualizes and contextualizes them into artistic objects. The ready-made items for this artist are, in fact, props for his lucidly thought out and mathematically calculated creative game. The game with the buttons, and especially the game with the marbles, finds its archetype in ancient times. The oldest marbles are discovered in the vicinity of present-day Pakistan around 2600 BC.[The first traces of marbles made of stone were found in present-day Pakistan and North America Indians, then in Mesopotamia, in Egypt. Later they were made of ceramics, and with the development of civilizations, of glass as well. They first appeared in the XIX century in Europe, i.e. in Germany when they were made of glass, and then in the United States where they were mass-produced from ceramics, and since 1903 from glass. In the thirties of the twentieth century, the game has spread to all continents, and became digitized today. More at: https://www.b92.net/zivot/vesti. php?yyyy=2017&mm=01&dd=31&nav_id=1225717 The button games are not old, they are simple and varied, do not require special skills, but have an educational and training effect. They can be used to make various toys and to be used in other group games such as: patchwork, backgammon, Man, don’t get angry!, etc.] This game is played even today in the digital sphere.
What is characteristic of Maznevski’s installations and the painting/object works is not just the accumulation of serially produced objects, but also the concept of their repetition and iteration which are important elements for constituting the poetics of the work of art in postmodern aesthetics. Consequently, Maznevski gradually creates the other from the same i.e. he creates the ‘new accent’ (M. Bakhtin) of the final but open monumental image of the installations in a rhythmic trans-sculpture game with the new arrangement of the miniature ready-made items using the principle of repetition and the process of threading. Yet, according to its arrangement, that image is not frozen, can remain open, fluid, and ready for additional complementing and compositional fluctuations. According to Eco, such an opportunity for infinity gives a new sense to the variation, and the “satisfaction should come from the fact that the series of pos- sible variations is potentially infinite”[Umberto Eco, “Innovation and repetition: between the modern and postmodern aesthetics, “Third program of Radio Skopje, no. 26, 1986: 25.] just like the maneuvering between modernism and postmodernism has the potential to create other variations of the work of art.
The game as a creative act
It is high time we focused more specifically on the context of the project and move on to the practical Maznevski’s game. The primary reception of the game enables us to perceive the global picture which is intertwined with the wall and floor installations and the painting/object works made of hard, soft and illuminating materials.
The whole project contains installations: Golden Octave, Octave 17, Quadrophony and Alulite; and the painting/object works from the series Stimuli, Crossing and Sun. Although the illuminating monumental object Blue Resonance belongs to the project As it is,[All parts of the project were made in the period from 2014 to 2020. The project, although with two different titles, was exhibited in two different facilities and at different times intervals. The object Blue Resonance was exhibited in the salon “Imperial 2”, in KIC on 19.10.2020, while the project As it is was exhibited on 28.10.2020, in the National Gallery of Macedonia, in the Cifte hammam building.] it will be interpreted separately, as it is exhibited in another exhibition space. Different variations and sensations are emanated from all the works of the project. In all of the projects where Maznevski uses ready-made objects, the works are related to the mimesis that is permanently present in the visual and the performing arts (film and theater) regardless of their conceptualization. It is no coincidence that Gadamer agrees and concludes that tradition is right when it suggests that art is always mimesis, which means that it always displays something, and does not indicate conservation but transmission.
Conceptually, in all the works of the project, no matter whether they are created from ready-made items or manually and performed to perfection, we recognize the presence of Kant’s binary that is used by Maznevski, and which is manifested in the freeplay between the imagination and reason, or between reason and imagination. The whole project is two-dimensionally and three-dimensionally shaped composition with reduced morphological structures that are narrowed down to a point, a line, a circle and a sphere. The binary game is between the dominant minimalistic and the discreet baroque, color-dosed optical game of the tautological, superimposed and serial structures of the Golden Octave and Octave 17 hanging installations on the one hand, and the Alulit floor installation, on the other.
Although the hanging installations and the painting/object works of both series are two-dimensional and morphologically differently conceived, they are built upon the same methodological procedure as the floor installations. They do not oppose each other but harmonize, because they are generated by the same matrix that operates with the principle of seriality, repetition and iteration. Moreover, what is essential and what is actively built into the whole project is the mathematical, geometric and optical operation with which Maznevski subtly established the interaction between science and art, pointing to their common roots. The rhythm of such binary and sophisticated interactive maneuvering is, in fact, determined by the strict rules of science, so that the artist’s creative game self-conceives and is reflected as a game between reason and imagination. With this kind of creative operation, Maznevski succeeds in materializing and objectifying his imagination.
With the transparent rationalist approach, which, among other things, is applied in the choice of colors of the buttons and the textile threads, and with the careful analytical calculation and contemplation of the compositional structures, the artist discreetly indicates his knowledge of the phenomenon of perception and optical laws with which he completes the implementation of ideas. The optical game, which is particularly played in the hanging installations, does not only indicate simple vertical threading and superimposed arranging of the buttons, but with their color contrast in the center of the integral compositions, he ‘paints’ the inner elliptical, dark and light bodies. They suggest a double composition repetition, i.e. the repetition takes place at two levels: at the level of the central image in the composition and at the level of its periphery.[Like the integral compositions that are vertically divided symmetrically on a dark and a light side, so are the visible-invisible elliptical shapes. The dark side of the oval shapes is positioned on the light sides, and the light on the dark sides of the integral compositions.] With the mathematical approach, Maznevski achieves various optical and illusionist effects that are emanated and reflected differently in the process of reception. Contrary to the Octave 17, in which the external light is absorbed and a calm optical illusion is created, in the Golden Octave, which is woven from decorative buttons, light is reflect from them as a sharp vibrating light force that spreads diffusely into the exhibition space. The solemn game of light with light, which pulsates in front of the passive reception, is not isolated but it is in alliance with daylight. It changes its intense light rhythm only at the transition from daily to artificial light, which further intensifies and creates the illusion of kinetics.
Maznevski knows that where mathematics is, there is music as well, and that is the reason why the titles of the compositions, which are music terms, such as: octave, quadrophony, or resonance, are not randomly given. The mathematics used by this artist can be perceived as the music of reason, and the music as the mathematics of emotions. Consequently, mathematics reflects the musical energy in the four installations. The synesthesia in our sensitive field, i.e. in the ear of our eye, is not initiated only by their music terminology, but by the frequency of the rhythm of the elements, by the pauses, by the repetition of the sequences and their different tone colors, and the superposed structures which suggest counterpoint and polyphonic blending, competition and maneuvering of the tones. In contrast to the Octave 17, whose coloring tonal scale is rather dimmed, and thus deeper and slower intoned, the Golden Octave, which although has the same color tone as its twin, changes the intensity of the rhythm of the perception, and thus to the overall resonance of the sound that we experience as crescendo, due to the frequency of the reflective power of light.
As a result, the mathematics in Maznevski’s project spontaneously emphasizes the musical game, which, according to its structure and internal dynamics, and the obsession with the repetitive rhythm of the ready-made elements, is experienced analogously to the music of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero written for a ballet.[Bolero is an orchestral music as a ballet, composed in 1928. The ballet movements take place with an unchanging rhythm and tempo, with variations of even and repetitive melody, similar to the repetitions in both installations by Maznevski.]
Although it is self-referential and intact, Maznevski’s entire game can be perceived as open and interactive, because the game involves the perception and memory of the spectators. The time of the artist’s game in the floor installation Alulit coincides and is identified with the time of the games of the spectators, i.e. with some of the toys as props for playing the game.
In the process of creation, besides the importance of the accumulated time, the space positioning and the sizing of the two three-dimensional floor installations, their interaction with the exhibition space is also relevant. Both of the works, which are spherically shaped and placed under the domes of the exhibition space, and which are morphologically and spatially adequately positioned, correspond and complement each other. Across the vertical and reversible flow of light under the dome, their synchronized internal dialogue is reflected in height and depth as a mirror image. In that independent freeplay of the light energy that circulates between the space and the installations, the goal is its movement to be manifested as self-representation.
The density of the texture of the ball manually woven from ‘silver’ threads which characterizes the installation Alulit, virtually manifests the endless movement around its axis in the same rhythm and with the same ‘acoustic’ tempo. Its real radial light is constantly reflected, merges and intersects with the light of the smooth texture of the densely fused colorful glass marble beads, which are scattered at the base of the silver sphere, its shadow. A memory of the joy of the artist’s former game, but also the joy of the spectators of the game is accumulated in that shadow. In the rhythm of that merry circular dance of light, the images and sounds of our memory reactivate, and virtually intersect with the current audiovisual reception. The virtual voices and images may become clearer and more intense when we are at a distance and when we see and hear them from afar with our spiritual eye and ear. In this context, Heidegger reminds us that “(…) in order to hear a bare sound, we have to listen away from things, to divert our ear from them, i.e., listen abstractly.”[Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in D.Pejovic’s anthology New art philosophy 1 (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 1972), 453.]
Despite the stated ‘illuminated auditory’ game, in “Quadrophony” we hear only the noise of the motion in inaction. The sound of light is replaced by the sound of silence, with a different coloring composed in one legato[Legato is a kind of articulation, i.e. a combination of notes of different heights. It is marked with a slur above or below a group of notes. It indicates that the tones should be performed smoothly without interruption, in one breath.] arrangement, which acts simultaneously and is perceived and experienced differently from the previous game. The harmonious combination of the differently sized volumes of the four spherical elements, which are made of soft material[The four elements are made of white, black, orange and gray colors of textile threads, which may symbolically refer to some of the planets.] in a monochromatic color, are also based on the same matrix as well as the previous installation.
This primary structure of the installation reminds us of ancient times, of the primordial creative energy of the human beings, when they did not perceive the world and all the phenomena of movements made in nature exclusively for existential reasons. They had an innate spiritual need, which was the creative drive for self-realization, and therefore they grounded and copied the macrocosmic dimension in the microcosmic sphere through the mimesis. Such mimesis of the ancient artist can be compared to the modern one, because there are neither temporal nor spatial limits in the free creative act of the human being. Therefore, the analogy of the ancient and modern initial concept and context can be completely justified. In this case, Maznevski’s ‘grounded’ floor installation, although manifested differently from the ancient spiritual monuments,[It refers to the oldest circular spiritual center, i.e. a ring-shaped megalithic temple found on the site of Göbekli Tepe located near the city Urfa, Republic of Turkey. The temple is 7000 years older than the Pyramid of Cheops. Other ancient objects from different periods and civilizations are also considered.] is still united by the same vertical, the same inviolable point articulated in the words of Hermes Trismegistos: “As above, so below.”
What our aero-perspective perception registers in the installation is the manifestation of the constant circular motion at inaction, which has neither a beginning nor an end. That movement is invisible, hidden in the inner dynamism of time. As constituent elements of the spheres, the point and the circle play the dominant role, which in the world of symbology marks the center of the sacred space, or the all-encompassing axis of the macro and micro cosmos. Although they are placed on a flat circular pedestal, the spherical elements do not obey only the laws of geometry, but also the energy of the artist’s imaginative cosmic principle. As a consequence, the colorful ‘celestial’ bodies, which are perceived as ‘planets’, can metaphorically refer to their different distances when orbiting in the Solar System despite their proximity. Their bodies do not reflect but absorb light, and suggest the softness and tactility of their sophisticated epidermis. In their external cohesion, Maznevski’s planets simultaneously hide the slow pace of the dynamic sound tinting of the painting of the cosmological game of the world. Just like our artist, the English composer Gustav Holst dedicated his symphonic suite The Planets to all planets in 1916.
Now, that the properties of the installations are stated, we shall very briefly refocus on the point that has similar symbolic properties as the circle. It appears as a basic, static and constituent element in Maznevski’s painting/object works from the series Stimuli and Crossways. In the basis of the soft, varied, and equally arduously woven abstract motifs from colorfully combined threads, Maznevski also uses a rationally calculated mathematical operation similar to the previous installation. He changes only the rhythm of repetition when weaving the two-dimensional painting/object works that occurs in a strict hierarchy in the four directions: the vertical, the horizontal and the two diagonal, which merge into one central point in the composition. In the subtle dense construction and the coloring gradation of the seemingly identically composed motifs in all of the paintings’ compositions from both series, the point has the dominant role, as it has already been pointed out. The difference between the two series is not only in their different color function, but also in the process of emanating different optical sensations. The presence of the optical illusion aspects is dominant in the warm coloring of the paintings from the Stimuli series. These aspects are absent in the monochrome Crossways series. Unlike this series, in the other one, the illusion stimulates the virtual presence of ‘unstable’ space, the perspective, the depth, the speed of the dynamics and the duration of the virtual and the objective time. The radial propagation of the ‘rays’ from inside out and from the outside in vibrate simultaneously and alternately in the eye of the observer.