symposium on love by guggenheim public

John Peter Nilsson

Rethinking art practises: What is the new in new?

Today we are living in a world that is changing dramatically. Yes, I know, this has always been said, no matter if it was a hundred or ten years ago, when one is confronting contemporary life. It is a cliché. But isn' t the new that we are living in a world that has become a cliché of itself?
In 1987, Umberto Eco wrote in "Sette Anni di Desiderio": "Disneyland can permit itself to market its reconstructions as masterpieces of fakery, since the goods that are being marketed are not really reproductions but genuine goods. What is faked is our urge to buy, which we see as real, and in that sense Disneyland is really the quintessence of consumer ideology."
Okay, still, that is not really new, I agree. But let's try another quote, this time Andy Warhol in his diaries June 27th in 1983: "But then, since the sixties, after years and years and more 'people' in the news, you still don' t know anything more about people. Maybe you know more, but you don' t know better. Like you live with someone and not have any idea, either. So what good does all this information do you?" Well Andy, sometimes I don' t know either!
Another quote, this time Rafael Argullol and Eugenio Trías in "El cansancio de Occidente" from 1992: "Passivity is the hallmark of humans today. And it's clear: if people are turned into spectators and robbed of any possibility of influence, this gives rise to a passive being. But all this, of course, takes place under the guise of its opposite. All manner of pseudo-events go on amid a stream of constant activity; activity that reinforces the passive, an uninterrupted motion that fades into immobility. We speak of all the stress and hecticness in our society, but the final impression is of a pursuit of emptiness."
Alright, enough with quotes. What might be new in the new today is that many of us, at least in the middle-class West, have a possibility as never before to be inside of the world. If we have access to information technology, or if we have a reasonable amount of money, but not necessarily being rich, the world has shrunk and we can virtually and for real travel and be part of the world beyond its geography. It is a utopia of universality that seems to have come true.
On the other hand, though, there seems to be a feeling of being outside in this new world. It is a paradox, the more information about the world the less knowledge we get. We are not only consuming goods, but also media, and what media represents. Sure, Marshall McLuhan was right. In many cases it is the media that is the message itself.
But how should we face this? How can an artist practise something without it becoming a meaningless activity that only refers to itself? This a postmodern cul de sac. Is there any way out?
The subject today has to map itself. We have to learn to understand that we always are global - somewhere. The geography is broken and we have to start to navigate from our own experiences. The vehicle for such a journey is not "Who I am", but rather - "When am I?" In a global world we have to navigate with a global language, otherwise we get lost. But our experiences are not only global, it is as much my private experiences, rooted in my own private context, as it is collective experiences from a world that many of us share and live in together. Therefore we have to rethink what an experience can be in relation to language, especially to the fact that language is not separated from either our body or the place in which we act.
anguage is in constant flux and interacts with every context and situation we enter.
This ongoing friction between experience and language creates untranslatable distances. And since the Self can only have a partial understanding of itself, and needs the Other to fill in the gaps, a true dialogue between experience and language can't happen by a simple "understanding" between the two.
If I want to map myself, if I want to position myself in the broken geography, I have to tell a story - my story. If that story is true, it's nobody else's but mine. Of course, this creates a certain misunderstanding, an untranslatable distance between myself and others. What is new in the new today is to fight for a space in the world to tell this story.
It's not cyberspace. And it's not ethnospace. It is a mental space, within myself, within my fellow being.

John Peter Nilsson

Il principio surrealistico d'amore

In Author and Hero apparso su Aesthetic Activity ( 1920-1923), M.M. Bakhtin scrive: " Condizione prima e fondamentale di una visione estetica del mondo è quella di comprenderlo come mondo di altre persone che vi hanno vissuto la loro vita, ovvero comprenderlo come il mondo di Cristo, Socrate, Napoleone, Pushkin, ecc.. Bisogna arrivare a sentirsi a casa nel mondo delle altre persone e questo per essere in grado di passare dalla confessione alla contemplazione estetica oggettiva, dai quesiti su significato e ricerca di significato, al mondo come un bel dono".
Si può interpretare tutto ciò come una comprensione visionaria generale dell'odierno villaggio globale. Ma quando Bakhtin afferma che "bisogna arrivare a sentirsi a casa nel mondo di altre persone e questo per essere in grado di passare dalla confessione alla contemplazione estetica oggettiva, dai quesiti su significato e ricerca di significato, al mondo come un bel dono", l'interpretazione può essere anche una visione ad abbracciare l'Altro senza pregiudizi o presunzioni secondo un'interpretazione più psicologica, in modo relazionale. Abbracciare la naivetè dentro di noi. Riscoprire il/la piccolo/a bimbo/a che sembra sparire dentro di noi man mano che invecchiamo.
Per Bakhtin un ruolo importante in questo processo è il "ridere". Secondo Sigmund Freud, l'umorismo era una forma di disubbidienza, un rifiuto a soccombere ai pregiudizi sociali. Per i surrealisti, tra gli altri, l'umorismo divenne la danza del Diavolo che li conduceva negli abissi dell'inconscio.
In Le surréalisme (1950), Yvonne Duplessis scrive: "L'umorismo non è solo la caratteristica di coloro che non si lasciano accecare dalla realtà. Ha anche un aspetto più profondo in quanto esprime la volontà dell'io di liberarsi dalla realtà e divenire immune ai suoi attacchi. Gli shock del mondo esterno possono darci persino piacere. Andrè Breton cita un esempio di Freud in cui un condannato, mentre viene condotto al patibolo di lunedì, gli urla ' La settimana comincia bene!'. Grazie al contributo dell'umorismo che ci risparmia 'le prove di dolore', esso ha un 'valore superiore', e 'noi lo vediamo particolarmente efficace per liberarci ed elevarci'.".
L'interpretazione dell'umorismo data da Breton come qualcosa per 'liberarci ed elevarci' fu una componente importante per la visione artistica del Surrealismo come potenziale utopistico per la creazione di un mondo migliore e più bello. I Surrealisti assunsero un punto di vista programmatico della capacità dell'arte di cambiare il mondo, rendendo visibile la 'vera' realtà dell'inconscio: la verità assoluta, dietro la falsa facciata della ragione borghese. Che cosa accade se si cambia umorismo con amore? Possiamo usare l'amore per liberarci ed elevarci?
Ovviamente, all you need is love … A partire dal Romanticismo questa è la risposta a tutti i tipi di problemi. Quando qualsiasi altro modo di abbraccio o incontro degli altri fallisce, l'amore è l'unica soluzione. Specialmente nella cultura popolare l'amore è stato (male)usato. Per parafrasare una famosa osservazione di Umberto Eco sulla crisi della rappresentazione nella società, oggigiorno non puoi dire solo "ti amo", devi invece dire "ti amo come Ingrid Bergman amava Humphrey Bogard in Casablanca", ecc.. Pochi sembrano credere nell'amore incondizionato. Al contrario l'amore è sempre condizionato.
Per tornare ai Surrealisti, André Breton scrive nel Secondo Manifesto del Surrealismo nel 1929:" Ogni cosa ci conduce a credere che c'è un certo punto in cui la vita e la morte, il reale e l'immaginario, il passato e il futuro, il comunicabile e l'incomunicabile, gli alti e i bassi, cessano di essere percepiti come contraddittori. La ricerca di qualsiasi altro motivo dell'attività surrealista diversa da quella di quel punto ora è vana".
Non è forse l'amore il punto d'esperienza in cui gli opposti si uniscono? Non meno che l'opposizione tra paura e desiderio, per esempio. Questo paradosso porta al Barocco: possiamo guardare all'amore in modo barocco per cui "la spira" giocò un ruolo percettivo cruciale? Gilles Deleuze ne parla nel suo The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque del 1988. "La spira: il Barocco inventa il lavoro o processo infinito. Il problema non sta in come finire la spira, ma come continuarla, portarla attraverso il soffitto, fino a collegarla all'infinito. Non dipende solo dal suo incidere su tutti i materiali che la spira diviene materia espressiva, con diversi gradi, velocità, e diversi vettori (montagne e mari, carta, tessuti, tessuti viventi, mente), ma specialmente per il suo determinare e materializzare la Forma. Produce una forma di espressione, una Gestaltung, l'elemento genetico o linea infinita d'inflessione, la curva con un'unica variabile.
È ovvio che per il Barocco è Dio a dover rivelare se stesso nei vertiginosi modelli delle forme. Ma non potrebbe essere anche l'amore? La spira barocca può suscitare una sensibilità estrema nel cogliere al massimo il momento, nell'essere in grado di coordinarsi con varie forze al di fuori del nostro controllo personale. Essere attenti all'Altro, e osare proseguire insieme governando i movimenti del proprio corpo sui termini dell'Altro e viceversa.
Possiamo entrare in una stanza, una situazione, che definisce la nostra stessa presenza. Uno spazio che cambia a seconda di come ci muoviamo. Una situazione che va semplicemente avanti, che è.

John Peter Nilsson

The Surrealistic Love Principle

In Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity from ca. 1920-1923. M. M. Bakhtin writes: "The first and foremost condition for an aesthetic vision of the world is to understand it as the world of other people who have accomplished their lives in it-that is, to understand it as the world of Christ, of Socrates, of Napoleon, of Pushkin, etc. One must come to feel at home in the world of other people, in order to be able to go on from confession-to objective aesthetic contemplation, from questions about meaning and searchings for meaning-to the world as a beautiful given."

One can interpret this as a general visionary understanding of today's global village. But when Bakhtin says that "one must come to feel at home in the world of other people, in order to be able to go on from confession-to objective aesthetic contemplation, from questions about meaning and searchings for meaning-to the world as a beautiful given", one can also interpret it as a vision to embrace the Other without any prejudices nor pre-assumptions in a more psychological way, in a relational way. To embrace the naivete within oneself. To find the little boy or the little girl that seems to disappear within ourselves when we are getting older.

For Bakthin laughter was an important factor in this process. As Sigmund Freud saw it, humour was a form of disobedience, a refusal to give in to social prejudices. For the surrealists, among others, humour became a dance of the Devil that led them down into the abysses of the unconsciousness.

In Le surréalisme (1950), Yvonne Duplessis writes: "Humour is not only the hallmark of those who do not allow themselves to be blinded by reality. It also has a more profound aspect, to the extent that it expresses the self's will to liberate itself from reality and to become immune to its attacks. The shocks of the external world can even give rise to pleasure. André Breton quotes Freud's example, in which a condemned man calls out on his way to the gallows one Monday: 'The week is beginning well!' Thanks to the way humour spares us 'the test that pain forces in us', it has a 'higher value', and 'we see it as especially effective for liberating and elevating ourselves'."

Breton's interpretation of humour as being "for liberating and elevating ourselves" was an important component in Surrealism's view of art's utopian potential for creating a better, more beautiful world. The Surrealiststook a programmatic view of art's capacity to change the world, by making visible the 'true' reality of the unconscious: an absolute truth, beyond the false façade of bourgeois reason. What happens if we change the word humour with love? Can love be used as a way to leberate and elevate ourselves?

Of course, all you need is love... Since Romanticism this is the answer to all kind of problems. When other ways of embracing or meeting each other fails, love comes as a solution. Especially in popular culture love has been (mis)used. These days you can't only say "I love you", you have to say "I love you as Ingrid Bergman loved Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca" etc, to paraphrase Umberto Eco's famous remark on the crisis of representation in society. Few seems to believe in uncondinational love. Instead love seems always to be conditional.

Coming back to the surrealists, André Breton writes in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism from 1929: "Everything leads us to believe that there exists a certain point in the spirit at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future, the communicable and the incommunicable, the high and the low, cease to be perceived as contradictory. Now it is vain to search for any other motive in surrealist activity than the hope of discovering that point."

Isn't love the point in experience at which opposites are united? Not least the opposition between fear and desire, for example. This paradoxe leads to the Baroque - can we look at love in a baroque in which "the fold" played a crucial roll in perception? Gilles Deleuze deals with this in his in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque from 1988: "The fold: the Baroque invents the infinite work or process. The problem is not how to finish a fold, but how to continue it, to have it go through the ceiling, how to ring it to infinity. It is not only because the fold affects all materials that it thus becomes expressive matter, with different scales, speeds, and different vectors (mountains and waters, papers, fabrics, living tissues, the brain), but especially because it determines and materializes Form. It produces a form of expression, a Gestaltung, the genetic element or infinite line of inflection, the curve with a unique variable."

Of course, it was God that should reveal himself in the vertiginous shapes of the forms according to the aim of the baroque. But it can be love as well, can't it? The baroque fold can spark off an extreme sensitivity to making the most of the moment, to being able to coordinate with various forces that are out of our own personal control. To being attentive to the Other, and to daring to go along with it by governing the movements of your own body-on the Other's terms and vice versa. We can walk into a room, a situation, that defines our own presence. A space that changes depending on how we move about. A situation that is simply going on-that just is.

John Peter Nilsson