D I S L O C A T E D G E O G R A P H I E S / /
Dislocated Geographies investigates what we think is natural but unpredictable and what seems familiar but is actually strange. While chance has played a significant role in many groundbreaking scientific discoveries, human life and nature have been profoundly impacted by each scientific breakthrough. In the artist’s view, the human species has been conditioned irrevocably by, and through, complex visual representations of the scientific theories and events that try to define our existence in the cosmos. It is through the abstraction of these theories into visual processes that one is able to experience a true, and accessible, sense of the Sublime.
‘Definition’ - Essay by Pierre Attard
Two strata of human existential reality can be discerned: the fundamental sensory and the imaginary linguistic. Interpretation occurs when the latter is superimposed on the former through belief. Through interpretation, the linguistic elements break down sensory reality into compositions and in this way, the world of objects is created.
Science is a type of interpretation where emphasis falls mainly on the sensory stratum. Here, the linguistic elements are based on evidence thus minimising the discrepancies between the two. Nevertheless, the nature of the sensory stratum and that of the linguistic stratum are not the same. Additionally, colours, sounds, tastes, odours and physical sensations, which together form the sensory stratum, exist independently from the linguistic stratum formed by judgments.
In this body of work, the artist points to this ontological distinction and seems to sense that scientific meticulousness is not enough for objectivity to emerge. Here, objectivity is not even the theme, rather, we witness pure sensory reality. With this step, the artist is shedding light on both the limits of interpretation and the fact that the foundation of definiteness is itself indefinite. Objectivity is uncovered as a complex fabrication that can be dismantled in more subtle realties and the way in which the artist investigates sensory reality helps to clarify the very nature of this objectivity.
Just as the distinction between the colour yellow and the colour blue reveals that green was never a homogenous colour, likewise the distinction between the linguistic stratum and the sensory stratum reveals that the experience of objectivity was never an integral and concrete reality. For this reason, the investigation of this distinction elucidates better the experience of objectivity. A philosophical approach to this investigation requires a top down approach. The starting point should be the analysis of judgments so that on its basis the comprehension, and maybe the observation, of sensory reality’s true nature becomes possible.
The basic judgment, that on which language and all its components and relationships are based, is the sense of oneness. Accordingly, for any linguistic structure to be comprehended it is fundamental to grasp the nature of this judgment. The nature of oneness is a fallacy, or better, a distortion of reality. If, for example, the object cloud is taken in consideration its immediate impression is that it is one reality. The definition of a cloud however reveals that this object is an amount of water particles and therefore the same definition reveals that it is erroneous to consider these water particles as one reality.
The same happens when these water particles are defined as water molecules. The definition reveals that these water particles where never single parts but a variety of molecules separated from each other in space. Every object can be exchanged in this manner and every time that such an exchange occurs, the sense of the original object is lost. The reconstruction of the objects exchanged is destined to result in a numerical contradiction since what is essentially many cannot be one at the same time.
The sense of one is experienced everywhere but is found nowhere. It presents itself as an obvious and evident reality but disperses itself when examined. This occurs because oneness is a hallucination created by the brain enabling other judgements to be made on its basis, particularly functional ones. Every type of definition shows this fact because it has either a compositional nature or a functional nature and in any case the definition deviates the attention away from the subject.
In the case of functional definition, attention is deviated towards the use made of the object and, therefore, the emphasis falls on the action and not the object itself. Tools speak more about human intentions and actions than about themselves. This nature of definition reveals that in reality nothing specific and definite exists. There exists indefinite sensory reality that when judgments are superimposed on it only the impression of the definite is created.
The artist presents a clear picture of the foundations of reality, one more clear than the scientific explanations, which are founded on superficial judgments. The artist shows how in the absence of judgments reality becomes a continuity without interruptions where, when language is no longer a factor, there remains no more distinction between matter and energy. Matter, which normally seems to be divided in solid, liquid and gas now becomes a continuous amalgamation where beginning and end between one thing and another doesn’t exist.
The artist hints to the possibility that the structure of reality can appear enigmatic and contradictory because of the fact that there is language interfering. For this reason the artist is eliminating the sense of objects and the sense of divisions present between them and proposes only what remains, a reality that can be described as a dynamism of variable variation. In these environments, there is no place for contradictions and conflicts precisely because there exist no distinct objects that can cause theses.
In front of the dynamisms presented by the artist, the spectator observes a tranquil spectacle that influences with its evident and immediate impacts. This is another message being insinuated here: sensory reality is not deprived of significance but is itself significance. This aspect is observed clearly in experiences that aren’t taught such as smiles and the tone of voice. In these, significance is obvious and familiar and as a matter of fact a baby is able to understand and respond to it instinctively.
This aspect of sensory reality gives a direction to how the spectator should observe the work of the artist. That which is dynamism of variable variation should remain dynamism of variable variation. For this reason, there should be no place for interpretation in this work. The spectator should simply let himself experience the impacts and effects that it leaves on him in the same manner that two lovers understand their smiles without many explanations.
Here the artist is acknowledging his smallness, sheds his ego and, with humility, expresses his reverence towards existence. His work can be described as a mystical, one where the sense of the absolute, brought about by language, is being put aside and instead a mysterious reality is being proposed. When the senses of practicality and convenience are put aside and existence is no longer treated merely as a mechanism, life and its relationships start manifesting themselves in a spontaneous manner and everything continues to evolve in an ever-fresh present moment. This is what the artist desires to convey, a reality apart from time and education where awareness is free to recognise between that which is truly relevant and that which is artificial.