Riccardo Caldura - A Question of Resonances, 2009
Perhaps every attempt to make "objective" the view that opens onto the hidden side of things has needed, and not only recently, a transcription, a decoding, which has in turn proved to be an attempt, ever more explicit, to understand the workings of the mind. Or at least this seems to be the attempt that has driven, and continues to drive, the research of the Neapolitan duo since the mid-1990s. Research that has taken shape in works that turn out to be devices for transcribing and encoding what, happening beneath the surface of things, at the same time calls into question the subject's own psycho-perceptual modes. That is, their receptive capacity, their "being resonant", as Bianco-Valente explicitly recalled on the occasion of an exhibition project in Rome, at the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere.Making "objective" what one observes regarding the non-evident aspects of things, "objectively" rendering what reveals itself thanks to the subject's receptive disposition, attests to the need for transmission and communication to others. In this way, what is being observed is removed from the merely individual sphere of one's own experience, one's own lived life - that is, from the intransitive dimension of subjectivity. It is not enough to immerse oneself - in things, in the mind - it is necessary to describe what happens during the immersion. Were it not for this gap between immersing oneself and observing and describing, we would no longer be talking about immersion, but about a mute, submerged condition, from which nothing could be expected.1 Because what follows from submersion is nothing other than pure loss, annihilation. Every immersion (into things, into the mind) treats that edge beyond which there is no return as precisely what one must be wary of, in order to be able to see at all.
And being able to see means posing the problem of allowing others to share in what one has seen during the immersion. Turning towards others is the movement away from the edge that has taken shape between immersion and submersion.2 Implicit in this turning is the "something to say", the "something to show". And consequently the question of how to say it, how to show it, brings with it the question of which device (word, image, in the various possible forms) can be suited to addressing others, while avoiding the risk of having nothing to say, nothing to show. The light of understanding and the darkness of annihilating loss are, in fact, very close moments, threads interwoven along the edge of being submerged. As at least an example of this interweaving and tension, consider Paul Celan's invocation of the word that "...through the night, / wanted to gleam, to gleam" and the risk of its dissolving into nothing but ash, in the ubiquitous Nacht: "Ash. / Ash, ash. / Night. / Night-and-night."3
If nothing but silence (and ash) accompanies being submerged, it is instead the possibility of misunderstanding that falls to whoever thinks they can describe what has been understood during the immersion. The need to make known to others what one has seen or felt beneath the surface of things implies some elaboration of tools and means suited to limiting, giving an edge, a form, to the misunderstanding to which one exposes oneself in addressing others in order to describe what luminous thing has appeared during the immersion. Finding a bank, an edge, thanks to which one can climb back up out of the immersion, means giving a form to the misunderstanding.
Here a possible fork opens up: what there is "to communicate" can aspire to full objectivity, to an elimination of misunderstanding; it can aspire to a complete transparency of transmission and communication, and thus to unambiguousness, attainable also thanks to a constant improvement of the devices and instruments capable of effectively rendering what has been understood. This first path, branching off from that possible fork, we might generically call scientific, and it traces back to an epistemological urgency of philosophical origin.
The other path is the one we might call, no less generically, artistic/poetic. It too takes shape in an "objective" communication, and thus with the preparation of devices, means and procedures capable of carrying it out. But now we are dealing with a communication that does not aim to eliminate ambiguity, but rather, in communicating what has been understood, to preserve it. This communicative mode, however up to date the means employed may be, carries the trace of a distant mythical dimension, and thus of the question of origins, of sources, of genealogies. That is, of a stem-cell-like, equipotent condition of understanding.
It is nonetheless true that the metaphor of the fork, of the roads branching off in different directions once the problem is posed of how to render to others what has been observed during the immersion, seems in some way insufficient, or of doubtful effectiveness. After all, it is precisely from the crisis of the epistemological frameworks based on the transparency of the rational approach that the problem arose of considering that second path, one that does not aim to exhaust unambiguously what has been understood, but on the contrary to keep it in a state of "oscillation". J.J. Wunenburger speaks of phenomenology and hermeneutics as "new methodologies that have established themselves in contemporary philosophy", capable of "reorienting" its research. Thus the question of the image, to which Wunenburger's work is devoted (the image to be understood as the domain proper to the artistic/poetic, which harks back to the "stem-cell" nature of myth, and for whose analysis phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches have been decisive), "reorients" philosophical reflection, constituting "the raw material for any problematisation concerning principles and ends."4
One must ask, however, whether this "reorientation" of philosophy towards the question of the image actually also involves those "secondary" disciplines that branched off from philosophy's epistemological urgency. That is, one must ask whether the question of the image also concerns the scientific disciplines. If by image we mean whatever keeps open the condition of ambiguity in understanding, then perhaps the answer must be no. At least as far as concerns not so much philosophy itself, but the secondary disciplines it generated, the metaphor of the fork, of the two separate roads for rendering and communicating what has been seen and felt during the immersion, may still hold some plausibility.
In the sense that the image, in the scientific field, either becomes an object of analysis - although it must in any case be stressed how difficult it is to discern the interweaving "of the infinite ramifications of the objects of inquiry and the related problems" (ibid.) - or else it can only find a place already clearly formalised by Kant: that is, evaluative observation seeks, even within the possible domain of "beauty", a correspondence between what one is observing and the purpose for which one observes it. A horse, to return to Kant's own examples, is not simply "beautiful", but more or less suited to pulling a cart rather than to being ridden.5 The reading of a CT scan certainly does not aim to grasp, in that image, its lack of function or purpose, and thus its being valid "in itself", but exactly the opposite: that is, the greatest possible adherence, the greatest possible objectivity, with the data being sought.
Immersion (into things, into the mind) aims, along this path we may generically call scientific, at a transparent, objective rendering of what has been observed, in view of a purpose beyond mere observation. The need for devices to render what has been observed, and their improvement and refinement, thus maintains a functional relationship to a specific purpose. The observation and evaluation of a CT-scan image, exactly like the evaluation of a horse's "beauty" with a view to its use, aims precisely at a purpose: adequate treatment, or the animal's suitability for pulling rather than riding. "Deep in my mind" (1997) does not render the functional image of a device designed to produce an encephalogram, but rather the disembodying of that device from the purpose for which it was produced, that is, a scientific purpose aimed at cerebral analysis. Similarly, "Altered state" (2001) is not simply the rendering, now in the form of a video projection rather than a diary page, of the investigation that the chemist Albert Hofmann had conducted on himself to test the effects of the psychoactive substance he had discovered (LSD).
These two examples, both referring to works by Bianco-Valente, seem for a moment to brush against the scientific approach to immersion (into things, into the mind). In reality, however, they operate by disembodying it from any "adherent" purpose, opening instead, beyond adherence, a condition that is, in the Kantian sense, "free" or "vague". Nonetheless, in this kind of work an "objective" dimension is still restored to the immersive procedure - an objectivity that translates into the production of concrete products, that is, of artefacts, of works, even if of an essentially digital nature, that show what has been observed. Compared to the scientific approach, however, the image, though still rendered in "objective" artefacts, contains and gives form to the misunderstanding without exhausting it in the transparency of a datum. Indeed, it rather brings out its inexhaustibility.
It is a dance of points, or rather of luminous clusters tending towards the punctiform, that one witnesses observing "Volatile", another work also from 2001. A dance that has something hypnotic about it, delicately hypnotic, such that, in observing it, one does not entirely lose consciousness, but suspends, for a brief span of time, the waking state, the condition of vigilance.
A slight catatonia, induced by this as by other works of the Neapolitan duo; think for instance of "Relational Domain" (2006), of the slow wave-like movement that animates the maps of air routes used for the large-format double video projection. The rendering of the immersive practice that observes what happens beyond the surface of things does not concern only the modes of communication and transmission set up by the artist, but also concerns the condition of the viewer, the way in which the viewer is drawn in, immersed in turn, in the exploratory dynamic.
In the case of the works mentioned, the state of slight catatonia induced by them, their suspending, at least momentarily, the viewer's habitual psycho-perceptual state, works to favour the activation of a second level of relationship with things, one that occurs when being awake and alert, when being present to oneself, is for a moment set in parentheses. In everyday life, this bracketing of the state of vigilance is not at all rare; the phenomena of distraction, of forgetting, reveal how far from sharp "the dividing line between the normal person and the neurotic" is, and how fragile and discontinuous the state of vigilance actually is. It seems to hold true only in the temporally past condition of having 'been' (alert) without being so any longer. One was not paying attention as much as one thought, and thus another condition emerges, normally imperceptible but nonetheless always present, which seems to flow beneath conscious behaviour.
It is a condition that Cesare Musatti, commenting on a well-known text by Freud, called "this 'micropsychopathology' of ours" - that is, that series of "parapraxes", hastily explained away as momentary slips or oversights; those moments of distraction in which our inadequacy "to a full adaptation to reality" surfaces.6 But it is not at all distractedly that I observe "Volatile", and at the same time I cannot properly speak of attention either, still less of vigilance (with the wariness that being vigilant entails): another condition altogether is activated in observing the incessant, delicate, luminous movement. Something that is triggered by the immersive practice into which the work draws me as spectator, and which seems to identify a relational and psycho-perceptual mode situated between the two poles of normality and neurosis identified by Freud. A suspended condition, one that seems to belong rather to an "infra-thin" level between distraction and being adequately vigilant.
Pavel Florensky recalled the concept of "active passivity" with regard to the possible reaction of an object "to the influence acting upon it". The capacity for reception implies in some way a "predisposition" of the object towards the acting cause; whose reception would not be possible if "the receptive conditions" did not somehow correspond "to the nature of the acting thing". But if it were a matter of an influence, of a force "that does not act blindly and with some violence", one that were not even perceptible, that had no evidence, could one perhaps conclude that that given force does not exist, and that it does not in any way act upon a given object? It is true, Florensky concludes, that living organisms (man among them) seem not to be sensitive to the magnetic field: "The presence of a magnetic force is known to us through indirect data, but it does not exist for us directly, because there are no conditions within us for perceiving it."7 This does not mean, however, that if "certain perceptive conditions" were artificially stimulated, then the detection would not occur, within the organism thus stimulated, of that force and that influence which, in the natural condition, was imperceptible, and thus considered "non-existent". The vague beauty (pulchritudo vaga) we referred to earlier, rereading a passage from Kant, seems to be one of those imperceptible forces that act upon that organism which is man, when he ceases to seek the reasons and the meaning of things. That is, when, as if in a state of mild catatonia, he lets himself go to the pleasure of a purposeless contemplation, thanks to which he can gain access to that deep layer of active receptivity in which things are "freed" from their common meaning. "Volatile", as a work, acts "artificially" as an activating element of an undefined predisposition to receive the subtle influences acting upon my being as spectator. My condition as a "contemplator", artificially stimulated, thus registers the interaction taking place among three elements, and not only between two: myself, whatever this pronoun may mean; a work made up specifically of a video projection of points of light; the condition in which I am immersed, that is, reality. Of these three elements, only one seems to be "fixed" and stable, despite the incessant movement that animates it; the other two elements (myself, reality) are imperceptibly repositioning themselves.
The triadic quality just described, or rather the observation of this triadic condition induced by a work, is perhaps nothing but the reverberation, the imperceptible influence, owed to the very formal composition that structures the movement and the animation of the points of light. For the apparently random combination and interaction of the points of light, Bianco-Valente have referred to studies on the formation of large flocks of birds - hence the very title of the work. The study of flock formation has highlighted patterns of individual behaviour within a group that are not based on following a leader, but rather on a flexible system of references, allowing an individual to relate to the others in such a way that the group does not lose its cohesion, while that single individual always has a few simple points of reference for its specific situation. It is at least worth mentioning that this kind of study has had practical repercussions of great importance for the simulation of movement in three-dimensional animation. Craig Reynolds, starting from the study of flocks of birds or schools of fish, developed a digital animation model "based on three dimensional computational geometry". Reynolds called his creatures "boids", describing their individual behaviour according to parameters such as separation, alignment and cohesion.8 Such research, which can only be touched upon here, has broad repercussions, being used not only in the field of biology and animal behaviour, but also in ecology, in traffic studies, in economics. It has nonetheless been suggested that the three elements mentioned (separation, alignment, cohesion) might be considered an echo of the French revolutionary triad - liberty, equality, fraternity - thus extending this reflection to the political sphere. Not only that: on the basis of the three parameters mentioned, one can study the relationships between the global and the local, with the necessary prevalence of the latter in an individual's orientations. The local thus becomes the frame of reference perceivable by the individual within the complex movement of global transformation.
Returning now to the specificity of the work proposed by Bianco-Valente, arising from calculations based on moving triangulation, one could at least provisionally conclude that the work itself is structured, conceptually and not only concretely, in turn as a triangulation, whose other two points, thanks to which (and from which) one can keep the "right distance", are made up of attention to the aspects of scientific analysis of reality and attention to the relational modes between individuals and their surroundings. Not only that: the notion of a continuous repositioning based on parameters capable of favouring the adoption of a "right distance" also concerns the existential dimension of this couple of artists.
Here we refer to the significance that travel has taken on in their lives. This is not travel in the merely practical sense of the term (trips for work, or breaks from work), but rather journeys intimately tied to the question of identifying the points of a broad triangulation capable of subtly, imperceptibly "influencing" their very lives. They have spoken of this several times in interviews and conversations, so this is not a matter concerning the private sphere alone.9 The journeys are made twice a year, to coincide with the two artists' birthdays; the destinations are established following the indications given to them by a Neapolitan astrology expert, Ciro Discepolo, and are based on complex calculations concerning the position of the planets in their interaction with Bianco-Valente's respective natal skies in relation to certain places on Earth - precisely those indicated as the destination of the journey. This is not a question of believing or not believing in unusual influences, nor of testing anything on the plane of scientific fact (that is, how plausible, or even verifiable, astrological geography may or may not be).
The question concerns, rather, the subtle relationships that define the "right distance" between man and things, when things are conceived not only as the external world to be investigated, but as the immaterial place onto which the psycho-perceptual dynamic is projected. Rosalind Krauss, in a brief yet intense piece devoted to a Spanish artist linked to Pablo Picasso, Julio González, recalled the practice of drawing with the stars, which characterised "the ancient practice consisting of seeing figures in the constellations". Krauss writes: "With their curious indifference to the look of things, the constellations project into the skies the natural world of ships and swans, inscribing it with a drawing that disdains the mere delineation of resemblances." The technique of such drawing, that is, literally "constellating", is, as Krauss again observes, "neither mimetic nor abstract". Such observations are aimed at that particular "drawing in space" that characterises the last, and perhaps most creative, phase in the production of a skilled artist-craftsman such as González. Perhaps it is precisely by drawing on his own words, just as Krauss herself does, that one can, hopefully without forcing things too much, once again bring together the immaterial paths followed by Bianco-Valente in their travelling between earth and skies. González writes of his own research: "As in the restlessness of night, the stars show us points of hope in the sky; it is these points in infinity that have been the forerunners of a new art: drawing in space."10 Perhaps it is not entirely unfounded, although there are obviously no formal debts whatsoever between the work of the Neapolitan duo and the artist from Barcelona, to also apply, to their search for places bearing possible astral correspondences, to their travelling, the term "constellating" proposed by Krauss - considering the invisible lines drawn between points of light in infinity, between star and star, just as they were once considered: extraordinary projections, "neither mimetic nor abstract", of restlessness and of hope.
Notes
1) This particular use of the concept of the 'submerged' owes something to the unforgettable observations made by the chemist-writer Primo Levi in "If This Is a Man". 'Submerged' is that condition which reveals the loss of all critical distance, the loss of "every trace of thought", the mute conforming of one who "has followed the slope to the bottom".
2) Vittoria Broggini touched on the question of the "submerged and immersed gaze" with regard to the two artists' work, in her essay "Bianco-Valente: at the junction of the 'visual text'", included in the catalogue "Visibile-Invisibile. Bianco-Valente, video works and environments 1995-2008", published by the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna of Gallarate. Here the problem is raised while drawing a clear distinction, however, between 'submerged' and 'immersed', and considering only the latter concept as the one that, from a more general reflection, can nonetheless bear a relevance to the two artists' practice.
3) P. Celan, "Speech-Grille", in "Poems", edited with an introductory essay by Giuseppe Bevilacqua. Meridiani, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan 1998 (1st ed.)
4) J.J. Wunenburger, "Philosophie des images" (pp. 400-401), Einaudi, Turin 1999.
5) Cf. I. Kant, Critique of Judgment, Section I, Book I, §16. J.M. Schaeffer comments: "Dependent beauty (pulchritudo adherens) always presupposes a concept of what the object is meant to be, and conceives of the object's perfection according to this concept." In "L'arte dell'età moderna. Estetica e filosofia dell'arte dal XVIII secolo ad oggi" (p. 64). Il Mulino, Bologna 1996.
6) Cf. C. Musatti's introduction (p.11) to S. Freud's volume "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life". Boringhieri Editore, Milan 1971
7) P. Florensky, "Lo spazio e il tempo nell'arte" (p. 45). Adelphi, Milan 1995.
8) See http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/
9) See "Interview with Bianco-Valente - 16/2/2008", edited by Lelio Aiello, included in the catalogue "Alfabeto esteso", published on the occasion of the solo exhibition at the Galleria Contemporaneo in Mestre. Dario De Bastiani Editore, Vittorio Veneto (TV), 2008
10) R. Krauss, "This New Art: To Draw in Space", essay included in the volume "L'originalità dell'avanguardia e altri miti modernisti" (p. 131), edited by Elio Grazioli. Fazi editore, Rome 2007.
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September, 2009