<< SERENDIPITY At the beginning, confronted with problems in the project, we had to make up our minds, to examine what we had brought and what we were taking away with us from Paris. At the beginning the conversion was simple, the situation of our stay clear, we needed to uncover our own points, precognitive ones - a precognitive map of our Paris, intuitive search and a map of the heart. In contrast, Euclid's (Cartesian) space was compressed (due to my ailing health), however the space of the heart was very open, seeking places, 'conversions in the realms of the heart' during the first session. The next session of our sojourn in the studio was analysis, - following trails, ascertaining, facts could be lined up so that a narrative row emerges from it - whose simplest form would sound like, 'someone has walked down this road', (allowing) a jump from what at first glance appear to be unimportant facts, which are perceptively possible, to the complex reality which - in the last instance indirectly - it isn't. Our own points were precognitive. With precognitive points (on the map of Paris), which simply refused to coincide, they only coincided with the cognition of the heart, feelings (possibly), the second session in Paris showed, (analyzed) the facts of our previous stay. 'Let's take the human body and let's spread out it's skin. Let's take the internal organs and scatter them. We can now walk all over it and inside it in the same way in with one walks over the Sahara desert.' (And Eco continues) 'This body's internal systems of enunciation still exist which prevent us from saying the same thing about it as we would say about Sahara.' Like Duchamp's 'glass' it is a transparent, limited space, without its own place, yet which still encompasses 'many sojourns' inside it. Thanks to Kodak this project was made possible, 24 copies formed on this occasion a chemical row, more so than a mycologic, ostrich or rhapsodic one. The format of an antic box - 'diabolic' or 'magic a square', some type of frame.. quietism, yet another wish to assure oneself of the condition of our things, 'a cage which has set out in quest of the bird', chemistry which is chasing time, codes, dreams plunged into chemistry, circulation of substances, their meeting. 'To the source of the Danube'. 'The poem does exactly what it says; it itself create what it gives space to'. Why did I mainly photograph at night on the river, in the second Paris session as well, the floating nightly enclaves of the tourists, joining (itself into) irony. In the reduced indexes of the world, (ironically) the systems of images/inquiries and results are reduced as well, - you feel how the colors on the surface of the water are dissolved in emulsion, how they become these floating cheerful enclaves of tourist in the colors of the ship's lights, islands which surface from the black ocean of the world, appearing once again in another place as an imaginary scheme of a 'healthy body' ..I don't know, however, a digression in Kant's form: the subject experiences his/her judgment as natural and logical 'although it is only aesthetic' so that the characteristics ascribed to the object by that judgment are deemed as its (the object's) characteristics even though they emphasize the 'relation of the object's preconception towards the subject'. '...a rose is a rose is a rose..', an paleology which creates', 'love towards an echo' awakened by a poem which leads towards a search of the 'semantic relation between the elements which are in no way semantically connected' ..'however every rose is of a different color'. A paraphrase of G. Stain's verse, being unable to find the quote, Milica says - 'the revenge of the object', or, should I add - 'the manner in which Derrida has shaped his lectures in the last few years by combining an oral form of expression with analytical writing'. Miroslav Perkovic, aug./sept. 2ooo Does a picture come to us or do we discover it? 1. - 'Picture of a moment', picture of anticipation: of which, - after which you expect something; even if that anticipation lasts only a moment and afterwards - even if we conclude that our anticipation isn't justified- fulfilled, the feeling (of recognition) is lost somewhere - or maybe we conclude that we don't even know what we were awaiting, - waiting for something unknown which would bring something new - yet still expecting to recognize that 'new, unknown' as our own, another discovery of something which belongs to us. 2. - Pictures which 'last a long time', static pictures, collected, internal experiences (sensations) discovered in the exterior. 'Young Hegel euphemistically spoke of the 'power' of the subject to 'draw' the pictures 'out of the night of selfness', i.e. - from unconsciousness and suppressiveness, or to 'allow them to drown'. The first thing to meet the light of day are the pretty, aura - like pictures, i.e. according to Benjamin - those which, however close they are, look back upon the viewer from afar, those which open eyes in his eyes. The subject then emits that it is ripening, as Hegel says, the subject of ripeness is 'his ownership', his symbolic perceptive property - the picture belongs to him'. (Dietmar Voss; Metamorphosis of the imaginary) Analysis of the pictures: known/unknown; perception/reception; at the end, a search for the true I and what is it determined by? Awareness of self as the referential point in the refraction of personal and general - subjective/objective; in the experience of the one and the other, to stop at an earlier point, to recognize the 'border' - the touch, from the external to the internal / and vice versa. The experience of a 'picture of a moment' - expectations (what comes to us from outside, what initiates us), or a 'static picture', picture of studying, contemplation: - what is it that we recognize as being close to us, that is, what is it that we recognize in it: 'Caillois believes that in our vision of certain beings, imagination and observation, ghosts and facts are intertwined. Caillois's conclusion is almost equally stunning. According to him we are mistaken in thinking that Imagination submits solely to its needs, evolving in a way which is in keeping with its unique structures. No matter how true that can be on one level, on the other Imagination 'borders' Nature, it is its continuation. Caillois writes: 'Supstances and dreams follow distant yet analogue roads.. I dare to say thet the same 'nerve structure' intersects their unique field..' Still, on that unique field the battle of inventions of the imagination are competing, just like organisms, even species. Only 'inventions' which justify themselves (Caillois mentions 'one imagination juste') are justified in the evolving universe, they take root - exactly because it seems that the 'complex and disturbing accordance' make that universe just'. (Ihab Hassan, Dismemberment of Orpheus) A river runs through the city - always the same and yet different - makes the city always the same and yet different. The ambivalence of water - the surface, reflex, illusion, implies that imagination and fantasy can 'read' a different story each time; on the walls of the banks it is possible to read the stratigraphic layers of the city - imagination brings those layers into a single plane, into reality. Fragmenting the bank via photography, measuring the space between: the banks, bridges, myself. Establishing the chosen images in our own (internal) relation of space and meaning; it is possible to move them, it leaves the possibility of substituting them in a row, games, changes, it leaves establishing the context - establishing and determining the frame and its simultaneous disintegration: 'The frame of that search is often the same. However, it is a well known fact that frames give forms to all that we hear or see. Lean the frame sideways or break it and you will receive something else; make it aware of itself as a frame and the perception changes.'.. 'Sally who is reading Emerson says out loud: 'The eye is the first circle; the field of vision which gives form is the second; and throughout nature that primary figure repeats itself into eternity. It represents the highest emblem in the code of the world. Circles, frames, codes..' (Ihab Hassan, Dismemberment of Orpheus) Milica Lukic, aug./sept. 2ooo Essay "Serendipity" by M.Perkovic & M.Lukic, from Catalogue "Paris-London 2000", Published by Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, 2000 Slides from "Paris-London 2000", Photo Installation, Show of Milica Lukic & Miroslav Perkovic, Salon of Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, 2000 Cityproject, Paris-London New York City,1999-09 |