Four authors’ texts were given especially for Week of contemporary art – 2004. They represent in a different form the ideas and relations that arose in the authors in connection with the theme of the exhibition “The Ideal”. These are artistic texts directing the attention to popular or not so closely related to the everyday life ideas, forms and things that authors combine in an unusual way.

GALYA PENKOVA

UNUS MUNDUS

The ideal for world’s harmony and unity is the reason for the most heroic and adventurous campaigns of the mankind to the unknown, campaigns, that in one paradoxical way, are reason for epoch discoveries, as well as for fearsome catastrophes. The longing for harmony has led the work of so many great minds, that have crossed the human borders for good or bad fate of their own or world’s destiny.
The cause of all this, the famous analytical psychologist K.G. Yung, finds in the archetypes which, according to him, are base for human knowledge – “…it is not about inherited notions but about inherent disposition to generate parallel images of notions, respectively for universal, identical structures” ¹.
Such archetype example we find in the title “The Ideal” and in the concept of the Week of Contemporary Art in Plovdiv. The idea of the Center is interesting that presents in the project with its “horizontal radiation” – “different artistic practices will be situated will be situated on an imaginary line, connecting the Center for Contemporary Art - Plovdiv with the central city part.” In this connection I would like to give an interpretation to this idea from psychological point of view and concerning the symbol of the Center as one of the four main symbols together with the circle, cross and square. Taken in this sequence it is “before all Principles, Absolutely real: the center of the centers could be only God”². But what is God is a question that is beyond the competence of human knowledge. Thus in the symbol of the Center we sense coincidence of the contrasts and in this way of thinking it has to be seen as a hearth of dynamic intensity. “It is the place of the condensation and the simultaneous existence of the opposite forces”³ that is a total polarity of the balance and harmony between the complementary forces. What is this notion based on?
In the book “ Prediction and synchrony” Mary-Louise Franc points that “in our causative thinking we make a huge difference between the mental and material events and just watching how the physical events produce or show causative effect toward each other or toward the psychological events. Until the 19th century there is an idea in the sciences that the physical causes have only physical results and the psychic – only psychic 4 .
The idea of two centers, of two opposite points of view dominates the process of the whole human knowledge, where is the base of “the dispute for world’s harmony”. For one point of view the fundamental is “the concordance of the parts and the whole”, it uses quantitative categories and needs precise observations. It responds to the Western ideal and is typical of the intellectual type. The other point of view is characterized with “the whole” so it uses quality notions and symbolic forms and sees the world’s unity in the analogies between the micro- and macro space. It corresponds to the Eastern religious perception and is typical of the emotional type.
Many researchers indicate that in the middle of the XX century the discoveries in the sphere of the atom physics and analytic psychology show the way for uniting these two extreme positions.
An interesting proof of this is the beneficial co operation of K.G. Jung and the Zurich physicist Rebert Pauli (1900-1958г.). Analyzing the facts they reached to a conclusion that “both sides of reality have to be accepted – the quality and quantity one, the physical and mental – as mutually complementary and in utter unity”. In this way the idea of the Center shifts in a direction of a vertical radiating – it is considered as a place of transition, a path between the heavenly and earthly, a threshold of overcoming. Thus the premonition of overcoming the dispute about “the world’s harmony” gradually develops. In support of that R. Pauli makes the following conclusion: “the alchemist’s attempt to create a uniform psychophysical language had failed because it concerned the visible, concrete reality only. But today’s physics is engaged in the invisible reality…and the psychology of the unconscious studies processes that can not always be referred to a definite subject. The attempt to create a psychophysical monism today seems far more perspective…”5.
Jung names this unique reality of the physical and mental world with the Latin phrase unus mundus, that has already existed in the minds of some medieval philosophers in the quintessence studies. For the analytic philosophy this is the only “implicit order” that stands “under” the fragmentariness of the common consciousness. Not all psychologists accept the idea of this “unique world”. What is lacking according to them is “the vitality of multiple psychics” that aims at finding expression in flashes and “fragments”. And this would be so if unus mundus approves as a formula. But at least Jung’s analytic philosophy supports this concept. On the contrary, there is “a way” that can avoid the inclination of human’s mind to search for recipes and convenient theories – this is the process of individuation. The self-realization of the individual as a whole, undivided and separate from the other individuals’ personality is the base of the process and now the analytical philosopher makes the following статемент – “the individuation has nothing in common with the individualism and narcissism, it doesn’t alienate the man from the world but make him even closer”. 6. That is why finding and/or returning to “his own” Center becomes even more important, because the growing sense of anxiety and alienation comes from the human’s disunity and from the attempts to be transfixed only to the visible outer reality. On one hand this is due to the typical nowadays self-centered human character. On the other hand we should not belittle the tendency that “on the borders of the consciousness world another world appears, ruled by new and unknown laws… Typical of the world beyond the physical and psychical worlds is that its laws, processes and substances are unimaginable”7.
It is a fact of great importance for everyone who strives to penetrate or to give a visible form of “the life beyond things” because it is a symbolic expression of a world beyond the consciousness. Since the rules of common sense do not work in this world there is a great danger of loosing the meaning. In the individual psychic it is known as consciousness damage. In this misbalance the unconscious ruthlessly reveals its negative aspect – it shows as striving for destruction.
Jung finds the only weapon against this in the individual consciousness, that is from the side of unconsciousness supported by the image if the Complete personality.
He says: “…it is not only the center but also the whole circle that includes the conscious and the unconscious; it is the center of this totality as the Ego is the center of the conscious mind 8. Thus the idea of unus mundus of the physical and psychological world finds via The Complete personality its inner psychological equivalent, expressed by the Mandala symbolic. This endorses Jung’s and his followers thesis that there is an inherent aspiration for harmony and unity, which in real life is hardly feasible, because as we said these are two incompatible worlds. Only the products of the unconscious help the researchers to make interesting conclusions about the so called double mandalas and the place of their merge. They are usually presented by two wheels or two disks as one of them symbolizes the eternal order and the other - the time. From mechanical point of view these two wheels can not rotate because they will destroy each other. According to M. – L. fon Franc “the only place where the two systems unite is the whole in the center which means that they unite in nowhere” 9. So this mysterious meeting place is an archetype notion where the private kingdom of psychic and personal unconscious touches the collective unconscious and there is no duality in this point and opposition. This is the place where everything newly born comes form. To support this thesis the author gives a quotation from “Study of the medium” by the Chinese philosopher Mo Dzi who is thoroughly explaining it in practical psychological language:Only the man who is devoted to the maximal sincerity can reveal his own nature entirely and thus can reveal the nature of the surroundings, so in this way he can sustain the transforming and nourishing powers of heaven and earth. Only the man who is devoted to the maximal inner sincerity can know the future. This virtue is nature quality indeed and in this way a union of the inner and the outer can be made and the nature of heaven and earth can be explained in one sentence. They do not exist as duality thus they create the things in a mysterious manner.This is a beautiful idea according to which man can really reach the place of creation. It is an enigma for the man’s mind that he will be still and may be unsuccessfully trying to solve.

K. G. Jung, “Psychology and Alchemistry”, EA-AD, Pleven, 2001
Dictionary of symbols , T.2
Dictionary of symbols, T.2
M.-L. Fon Franc , “Prediction and synchrony”, Lege Artis, 2001
K. G. Jung, “Psychology and Alchemistry”, EA-AD, Pleven, 2001
“Critical Dictionary of analytic psychology of K. G. Jung”, EA Pleven, 1995
K. G. Jung, “The man and his symbols”, §4 A. Iafe, “Symbolic in visual arts”, Lege Artis, 2002
“Critical Dictionary of analytic psychology of K. G. Jung”, EA Pleven, 1995
M.-L. Fon Franc , “Prediction and synchrony”, Lege Artis, 2001

2004

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BORIS MINKOV

Sight and city
or Why the city is ours

3. The city and the visual arts
The city is full of pictures and treats them with pointed fondness. Various boards and road signs, advertising posters and neon signs, video walls and shop windows. These pictures are power fields, temporary sealed position of an on-going process in which the individual takes part together with his attempts to materialize (the experience of possession) and to withdraw (the experience of the rational distancing). Thus they mark the intermediate space between the interior and exterior, between the acquired by the man and this part of the world that he accepts as available. During the 20th and 30th years of XX century artists with different temperament and genre preferences embarked on an active designation of this intermediate space. For example in 1927 Franz Hessel publicized a collage reportage with title “Architectures of sight”. The text is assembled on pictures of the photographer Germaine Krull where the Paris buildings are only projection walls for the plentiful print shows of the advertisements. In this collage is the picture, which became later exemplary, of the Eiffel tower photographed from below as a gigantic mass of steel entanglements which totally loses its shape and function. “Every evening the brightness of the decoration and gigantic letters dress it and it entices us”, wrote Hessel in his attempt to oppose the rationalizing reporter’s view. The time when the city space and its badges “become prints” more and more, gave birth to the first conscious tendency in the visual poetry (Gino Severiny, Fortunato Depero) as well as the attempt of a different kind of intertextuallity that will be later defined as cross-reading (for example in the novel “Berlin. Aleksanderplatz” by Alfred Deoblin). From this moment variations and combinations of the most typical pictures of the urban permanently become favourite object of interpretation. However in the sixties these icon signs turned to a favourite game for the laical too – the man without art education, but professional consumer of the urban space. The phenomenon of the “grafiti” is the most indicative gesture for this. From antroplogical point of view it is not less interesting that the print reflections of the big city started to dress the human body too. The clothes (and especially the light cavalry from the contemporary man’s wardrobe) started accepting the Babylon congestion of signs and icon images on them. The trade mark of the big companies and the mediocre ironic mottos curiously meet each other on the young people’s t-shirts: the metonymic figures of success against the formulas for upturning of the success principle, known from the Gavrosh’s street songs. Such meeting of different discourses on the clothing of those who are most actively building the contemporary city can be accepted as a mini performance – a play where all of us are at the same time and to the same extent performers and spectators. The great number of similar subjects, places where different pictures and texts crowd and compose the macro-plot of the city. As not much expected example of similar to the described micro-plot for the Gavrosh’s words to the idea of success, can be given the micro-plot of the city marathon (from the beginning of eighties the real city has its marathon). – With the subjectiveness of the goal achievement when the win of one doesn’t mean by all costs defeat of another, as well as bringing out the individual activities in the public space, the marathon racer (not for example the fencer who eliminates his opponent) is an adequate figure of the city competition. Contemporary visual art met with willingness the message of the remarkable penetration of outer and inner, of public and private, of the balance between the human communication transparency and professional specialization opacity. The art product has been already perceived not as uniquely created in the sacral (or sterile) contemplation but as a sum that gathers the tracks of many intermediate visual arrangements. Not only that visual artists have physically left the galleries and studios and turned to “alternative” (or better say “no one’s”) spaces, but they emphasized on the act of perception, on the idea of sight training; they, let’s say in general, started showing interest in the moment dimensions when the things happens at the same time with their articulation (pronouncement or presentation). It is not accurately to say that visual art have extended the territory; it began staging its own medium, discovering the medium of the visual in the people’s public behavior. Thus children’s games and toys, jokes, “grafiti” and city marathon, the appliances of kitchen technology and the standardization of the relaxation are objects of the new art, they are its accomplices. As private case of the custom complex and the kitsch, taken as nest for greasy finger prints, as a bank of pathetics of the average perception and the connected emotionality, as a force imposition of not-authenticity, is also an accomplice of the visual art. (By the way in Bulgaria during the last 25 years there is a vast net that is constantly growing with banks of kitsch-generating plasma: from Svetlin Russev to Vanga, from the Golden Orpheus to the golden girls, from the Assembly to Valia Balkanska. Visual art searches every day to disassemble such banks.) Contemporary art has made an implicit idea of transparency that corresponds to a great extent to the city sensation of constant presence of somebody’s sight. Generally, people’s equality is equality of the sight. – And this, as it is said in the jokes, is a good news.

Boris Minkov

2004

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ELENA PANAYOTOVA

Freedom as an obligation

One of the not obligatory duties of the artist is to examine and register the processes around him. To react, even not always in a rational way, to what happens. In time of political changes and social shocks, time of turning in the social conscious, time of tests and small victories, people react differently and develop themselves.
The adequate artists together with the researchers observe and analyze the specific events as they are trying to give them somehow a deeper emotional or more abstract interpretation from the pure scientific one. Contemporary visual art has left the museum and gallery space long time ago, has passed over the narrow frames of the beautiful influence and is trying to answer questions that excite more and more people out of the limited circle of permanent visitors in the exhibition halls. Art provokes new way of perception and sense, idea, experience and synthesis.
The public already do not obey the rules of the “ideocratic” system, bringing fear of the differences and diversity. The art spectators are not only passive viewers, they participate in the whole process of creating the art work, sometimes consciously provoked according to the artist’s idea, and sometimes spontaneously react by their own will. Without this mutual connection between author and viewer the shows and forms of contemporary art would have been nonsense and aimless. Even the notion “art work” has lost its previous importance and now sounds pretentious, plane and empty. More important is the mutual process of exchange of concepts and information, building or breaking contacts, turning art into evidence of the moment or into a process of mutual acquaintance.
I myself am trying to provoke this very process of equal contact with the audience. I am trying to awaken reactions on different levels, to break some prejudices and to look deeper in the invisible for the accustomed to the everyday life eye changes.
Because I perceive freedom as an obligation.

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VESELINA SARIEVA

Practices of iterance
Questions of visual authenticity

In the beginning of the 90-ies on the corner of “Zhelezarska” and “Joakim Gruev” St., Ivan Picelj(1) scrubs the remainder of:

announcements
necrologies
wanted

He holds in his hands a small heel brush made of transparent plastics that looses its everyday identity and looks special on the spotlights. Its stiff hairs are also-fingers, also-nails. Paper pieces - wet, dirty, crumbled fall to the ground in paradoxical identity. A projector is switched on – on the wall and on Picelj’s back pictures of bread and crumbs are alternating. Bread and crumbs. Picelj is middle-aged and his movements are slow and methodical – circles from the right to the left. Before the breaks starts the circle from left to right. And then continues.

This gesture is his poster. The posters of New Tendencies from the first to the fifth. The memory of them. Countless circles on a black background. Kinetic.

announcements
necrologies
wanted
poster

With this act of brush replacement (this for painting with the other for removing and scratching) Picelj stresses on their movement. Scheme without the object. Construction without the body. Repeating the gesture, the movement makes them serial and confirms the regularity, the sequence. The sequence is broken by the pause, the change of direction. Activity in passivity. That is why before the breaks he turns the circle in another direction. But circle is still circle, hence the movement is stillness with other form. Here the gesture is a commentary of the scratched - announcements, necrologies, wanted, a commentary of their language and information. He turns them into sawdust with identical consistence, equalizes them. As equal as the loaf of breads from slides and the crumbs after them.
I have come hear with my Vespa and Haselblat. I am curiously looking over the crossing which turns it into a small square. Feast, fiction.

(1) Ivan Picelj – one of the founders of EHAT-51 – a group of artists founded in 1951 in Zagreb, united of the constructive approach. Later some of them go to New Tendencies.

2004

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