Smoke, smoke, smoke

In last year's final material about the state of art in Russia, Natalya Serkova identified three trends that she noticed on the domestic art scene. Colta.ru asked her to speak in more detail for each of the three points. The second text is about religious in art, but this is not what you thought about.

In my previous text, I tried to show how the methodology for the production of artistic statement as an event is built - such a statement that is actualized every time during the next attempt to decrypt and reverse its logic. The viewer, who is presented only to the final formulation, has to independently make an effort not only to recognize the connections within the work, but also to include this statement in a certain horizon that existed specifically for this viewer. For both procedures, the observer moves from the end to the beginning, analyzing the elements of separate work to the components, and then, having reached the limit of such a deconstruction available to him, collects them again, already in a new form, with the addition of all that he grabbed during his heated movement. So a work of art, it is also an object/ piece/ stuff , each time it is re -produced with each change in the environment, inside which people (if we stand on the condition of a person) change or (if we do not stand) any other witnesses.

The statement, no matter how we decrypt it, will always contain something else, and this is “something”, in turn, will be free to be located where he will decide to place his next decoder.

A work of art as a statement and as an event always, regardless of a potential witness, contains the possibility and condition of its unfolding. According to the Aristotelian formulation, developed by the philosophy of speculative realism, the whole (object) is always more than the sum of its parts. In our case, this means: formally given in an artistic statement (its constituent points) is always less than the amount of references that, like smoke, is located around the statement and stretches to an arbitrarily long (in potency - infinite) distance, scattering in the space covered by the language. The statement, no matter how we decrypt it, will always contain something else, and this is “something”, in turn, will be free to be located where he will decide to place his next decoder. So, the lamp I look at can easily contain a reference to black holes, and I cannot vouch for the fact that there is no connection between this lamp and the black hole. At the same time, this very lamp at any moment in my opinion or anyone else can move towards the event, and it will move there at the moment when this potentially enforceable connection with the black hole will be revealed at least one native speaker in which this concept of the event exists (or it will exist), and provided that the logic of this connection will have to, moving backwards, will restore it independently.

Any artistic statement today is a speculative game that offers starting data to expand the fan of relations between objects and within them. Its missing straightforward logic seemed to be obscured by the Summary of the Summary from us, and the objects themselves (parts of the statement) seem to spread and melt in its whiteness. Contemporary art is widely represented by these melting, amorphous, collapsing in different directions, subject to all kinds of operations to destroy our own integrity objects that we seemed to be in the PAUSE mode, and as soon as we look away, they will flow further in the direction that was not indicated to us. We are content with a hint of relations between these insignificantly collected structures, unfolding outside the field of our vision and even potential experience, and the thicker and heterogeneous smoke that does not allow us to see the same thing at every new approximation, the sooner this statement is eventful.

The statement-event will take place every new time, and we will experience it again every time.

The event (in the delinquency interpretation of the concepts of Whitehead and Badya) is never repeated, it is always born again, in a new quality, a new form and a new time. It is always given here and is happening right now, and therefore “manuscripts do not burn”: an updated (non -stop renewed) manuscript will always appear before our eyes. Isn’t it indicated by Kierkegaard when three times in different words he rewrites the story of how Abraham leads Isaac to Mount Moria to sacrifice his son? We know how it all ended, but this story will be repeated again and again, holding on to its formal points (Abraham-Isaac-Moria-Moria-Angel-Evan) as for the boundaries outlining the horizon and at the same time-this horizon in every new round is infinitely for and shir; And these will be turns of non -interpretations, but the resumption of this story. So the artistic statement, which is not an event, is only capable of being interpreted, but the statement-event will occur every new time, and we will be re-experienced each time.

At the same time, Kierkegaard shows another point with this: all three retelling of the biblical plot exist simultaneously, and not one of them is preferable. Doubt in the innocent project was manifested precisely during this period, and Kierkegaard with its inherent airiness indicates that relativism in handling concepts, which gradually began to occupy the place of the New Time Universal. Along with this, we are talking not only and not so much about the deuniversization of the biblical project as about the entry of the concept of doubt as a new universal. The only universal reality today is relativism in choosing from the sets of references, and this is what becomes nutritious soil for any speculation. Something can be like that, but with the same probability it can be something completely different, each new time thanks to the fan of references unfolding into infinity. Any reference is given here and now, any connection is horizontal, any point is surrounded by an infinite set of connections, some of which are invisible to the observer. This invisible part, constantly flickering on the periphery of our recognition and often confusing the maps in our attempt to figure out what is happening before our eyes and is indicated above as smoke.

The only universal reality today is relativism in choosing from the sets of references, and this is what becomes nutritious soil for any speculation.

Based on this state of affairs, the philosopher John Caputo, in turn, pointed out that we, more than ever approached the state of the Old Testament world. And this is by no means returning to the Old Testament, namely, a round of approaching the baggage of reflection produced by mankind in 7517 years. God lived in heaven until his death was declared, but Nietzsche himself, who declared war on the universals, put up the troops against himself: since any universal is more impossible, then the death of God seems exactly the same assumption that may take place, or may not take place. Surrounding ourselves with doubt, we lost the vertical standing of the otherworldly: instead, the horizontal ties of the likely experience now contain the possibility of divine. But the presence of God is directly among people, His direct connection and financially manifested influence on household issues just characterize the Old Testament world. This is a world in which the existence of God does not need to scholastic, making logical kunshtuki, because there is no insurmountable border laid between heaven and people. The impossibility of directly looking at God (the exception was only for prophets like Moses) is a very insignificant cost compared to the fact that God is in more than material forms like fire, cloud pillars, direct instructions for action or sending miracles or punishment for very specific actions.

It is completely not obvious who today's Christian prays: based on the logic of Kaputo, the divine moved from heaven directly to the Domestic World, and he had to move instead of, for example, to completely disappear, according to the law “nothing can happen from nothing, and there can be nothing to be destroyed”, as is known since the time of the Empedocles. Religious no longer acts in the form in which we are used to appealing to it, and in the place we are used to referring; The question is what forms this divine adopted, being among us, and which of the divine attributes today can be recognized after all transformations. Having lost the mountain abode, God seemed to be secularized, but what kind of contradiction it would seem, because God is impossible without metaphysics, which makes us rely not on knowledge, but on faith. However, it is precisely for the union of knowledge with faith as a necessary condition for survival in the postsyquular world that he indicates , for example, Habermas, and that the object that we do not have direct access always has “something else”, says speculative realism today.

Speculation is becoming one of the effective tools, and contemporary art is sensitive to this opportunity.

So, God lives among us, and such his inhabitation no longer requires evidence - rather, at the same time, the possibility of its manifestation is revealed. This probability of manifestation is important: we can recognize it, but we can not recognize how we can unpack the fan of the references of an artistic statement in a thousand different directions, but we can not do this at all. Such flexibility, however, contradicts the absolute introduction of the Old Testament time, as contradicts the total seizure of the future neoliberal paradigm. At the end of the Pentateuch, Moses lists all the suffering that has to fall on the head of the Israelis, but he describes them in the past tense - as what has already happened. So the neoliberal project, which produces the eternal “now” and appeals to the invaluability of the present, closes the future for us, which will never happen, because the future already happens, but it happens exclusively within the framework of this already-subious and described for us. Horizontality as an important principle of a speculative project is similar to the principle of horizontal and expansion of the capitalist regime, but preserving the principle of probabilism within the first leaves a loophole for the penetration of this regime preference abroad.

In this sense, speculation becomes one of the effective tools of work, and contemporary art is sensitive to this opportunity. He has to constantly be in the process of re--wrapping the language in order to be in a situation of non-propiability of his poetics all the time. Imagine that on your "desktop" lies a ZIP archive; The archive has a name, and if earlier this name somehow prompted you the content of the archive and in the “My Photos” folder it was worth looking for really your own photos, now this archive can be called as you like, not containing any direct connection with the help of the most emergency with the most emanating logical chains. This is such a nightmare in which your younger brother, having decided to recoup for a slap in the face, renamed all folders on your computer and you have no hooks left to find the necessary. The necessary, whether it is the necessary reference, meaning, meaning or impact, modern art no longer does not. The radical immunity of the statement of contemporary art is always greater than the sum of its parts, but nevertheless packed in formally given, the final zip archive -is this not the principle of theology, forced to deal with the formal limb of the image and the word at the infinity of what we need to talk about?

The massive appeal of contemporary art to the topics of ritual, witchcraft and religion in the past few years is only a formal expression of what is currently an inalienable internal property of contemporary art.

Guided by this approach, it is permissible to say: art, at the level of the language presenting the same as at the level of form, is in a non -pretervalities. Such art denies the possibility of each object to be unpacked into infinity, denies its always suspended position between what it is before us, and what it can appear. It also refuses the object to establish it with an event, in its constant renewal in all the new and new environment of relations. Finally, such art denies that speculative potential that only can bring us abroad captured by neoliberalism of the eternal present, taking away from us any alternative. The modernity, limiting itself to already, becomes that dead film, inside which suffocate from depression in the doomed and vague awareness of the impossibility of action. In turn, a speculative action, this new theology, which descended from heaven to Earth, is attracted to the search and instrumental use of this alternative, its production as part of the art project.

In expressing more radically, the philosophers Armen Avanesyan and Sukhail Malik deny modernity in this name itself. The modern is compromised by its binding to the present, its eternal film in which the future is always delayed and, therefore, will never happen. Modern acts in the old logic “from the past to the future”, from already data to its use in an updated form, while the usual linear temporality does not work anymore and the present is produced from the future, and not vice versa. Such a change of time paradigm causes nausea and dizziness, confusion and misunderstanding of what is happening, the desire to return to well -known schemes. In this regard, art responds with two trunk methods of its production. The first is the declarative and persistent representation of the “real” to the artist ( Celebration of Experience , as Avanesyan calls it), hence the next round of popularity of “new sincerity”, the reduction of infantility in their treatment of memoirs and perceived, the revival of childhood paths and fairy tales. The second is a way out of a pre -high circle, a courageous division of responsibility for speculative design. In this case, just the attributes of the already modern, but a post -elaborate (within the framework of the terminology of Avanesyan and Malik) are actualized.

The modern is compromised by its binding to the present, its eternal film in which the future is always delayed and, therefore, will never happen.

The massive appeal of contemporary art to the topics of ritual, witchcraft and religion in the past few years is only a formal expression of what is currently an inalienable internal property of contemporary art. Smoke, once conveying to heaven, “pleasant fragrance” from sacrifices, today, here and now, blocks us access to clearly and comprehensive knowledge about objects. Instead, it allows the object to slide and change, constantly becoming something else, something that we are doomed to distinguish and describe again and again, not being able to finish this description at some point. In our attempt to grab a separate object of art or complex statement, we try to move in the logic of its internal and external relations and inevitably get confused in it the faster, the more persistently we are trying to operate on the experience with us. In our look at the forms arising in strange logic, we are faced with the future that is happening before our eyes, only the one who once dictated this future in the desert-there is no more, a probability between the objects that turns to us one or the other. Each such probability is the promise of an event that may happen, or may not happen, and it is unclear what is more important: faith in its realization or knowledge that it is possible.

The heading "prints" is supported by the Fund for Assistance to the Study of Russian Fine Arts "Russian Art The World".