conceptual artist

The Illusionistic Surface

The Illusionistic Surface

Text / 2008

I

My head is killing me I should not have gotten into that argument again can’t remember what it was about god I need some water why am I always the first to wake up he is still sound asleep while my head doesn’t feels like anywhere near a place I want to be now why do we always argue should it be like that I wonder too much maybe it is hot in here still there is a gentle breeze coming in through the open window that is nice I think the sun is about to come up still too early to get up what is he thinking now is he dreaming of me in there his arm is moving towards me empty the surface of his arm feels rough strong and I like the small curly hairs I can pull and make him quiver shall I no now what do I know about him lying next to me he sometimes feels so distant yet when I touch his skin the surface is telling me he is here with me gently now there is a shadow on his face dark around his lips a soft kiss on his ear are you there with lines crossing from his face to the blankets continuing on the floor always make me do these silly mind games to get lost in an artificial spot marking obscure meaning while seconds pass away and away and away and what am I doing that argument comes back with a bad taste think I should not have let it happen but it slips I don’t want it to happen can’t remember how many times I have said to myself relax don’t go there it is good as it is it is now here breath in stop let it go but then it hits me and I can hear myself utter words that don’t seem to physically relate to where I am with wave after wave of perpendicular surface of nothing just air expanding and contracting densities spaces flowing between us yet indiscriminatingly hitting him and forcing him to take a step backwards space that is bended by mere words for which time needs more room to cover what am I saying that it is so hard for me to be at ease maybe I should just sleep again but that is not going to work now let’s get some water slowly my bearings are still messed up there I look awful I do am getting older sometimes I just don’t seem to recognize my face anymore like pictures that have been faded by the sunlight while you recognize the faces but they seem to belong to another time zone with me just scanning the surface and they staring back right through me the photo drops from my hands getting another glass of water time stops a gab time starts again I am getting older it is not only the drinking and late night fucking around anymore maybe I should change brands that stuff I am using seems not to be working anyway no matter how many times I cover my skin with it why should I fake it anyway I am not getting older and yet I need to sit for a second while at it I need to piss also looking at his quirky drawings on the door always makes me smile a bit sure his dick is big do women draw images of huge cunts actually can’t think of anyone now that I think of it having a huge vagina appears not to be very powerful nor attractive but then large breast are so do things that point outwards provide more comfort and power than falling inwards though he does seem to like it when he rests his head firmly against my vagina and I feel his breath tickling me while my hands are going through his hair how short it may be why can’t he leave it growing the idiot with all these men out there I find myself with a guy who has shorter hair on his head than I have between my legs rewind thus creating space seem to be more defined by taking it away than by extending it would be a reason for us to be here to take space away on the first day god created space and he got so scared of it that with a bang he started filling it up and in an ironic act of faith these tiny space collectors appeared trading spaces on a confined surface but what was there before god made space at this singular point in time let’s call that ground zero was there no space or anti-space as I read it somewhere or was that antimatter can’t remember should take more care in really remembering these things I’ll put that on my to-do list for tomorrow smile back or was there just more space now some people claim to have little to no space but they are comparing of course to others who have collected more space so maybe at ground zero there was no space that God had and an awful lot of it from somebody else upon which creating light God vidi and vici I got to get me some of that with an enormous phallus erected he shoots these objects all around defining space must have been messy but I better not start thinking about that now finish and get back to bed

II 

It should be about time for him to arrive just let it happen he is always a bit late what does it matter if he is they are just minutes an arbitrary division of some liquid-like quality we call time didn’t I read somewhere that a second is defined by some duration of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of an atom what does that actually mean for some reason I can remember this but not what antimatter is or did someone just look that up I am hyper that is for sure but how come such an incomprehensible minute quantity that I cannot see smell feel nor touch can govern my life so profoundly there goes another one how would I be if I weren’t aware of this thickening ether would I feel any better then or even more lost the room is slowly expanding conspiring with radiation I just don’t look at you anymore I have done with you go play your games with someone else mister don’t look the look what my eyes see I make believe which side I would be on in the war probably long gone before it even started could I look away and if I just tried hard enough it wouldn’t be happening like when you wish you aren’t there that it is not happening to you there and then it is just a dream you close your eyes pull the plug from the broadcasting channel no visuals just statics and then you open them again and the world is back to normal but it isn’t you already knew that before you closed them but in this narrow gap between receiving and being you believe you have the power to transmit and transform but the channel is still on number null no magic figure here what do blind people do in this situation how big is their world how much space do they need to be grounded with the earth I remember going to this exhibition once in which you had to walk into a completely dark room along a narrow corridor you entered with every step I moved forward it became darker and darker more and more the overwhelming feeling of space began to pressure on me and at the end of the corridor you had to let go of the railing then there was this jump maybe Armstrong felt a bit like that in the moment he jumped out of the Apollo 11 being inside a confined shell for almost 7 hours anxious to get out for a walk but onto what here he is making this step freeze there that moment of zillions of radiations between alpha and omega was he free or lost I was then but I felt a chair and sat down I waited and waited a bit more I saw faint figures swirling before me they looked like they were from outside my physicality that I was actually receiving information in this total void I was breathing heavily or heavenly and more time passed by but how much more I couldn’t tell space had fought a fierce battle with time and I was sensing the remains of it are blind people always in this state do they even know of the power of the better than fine states as a sailor I stepped on the shore again feeling nauseated by the experience space had shrunken to proportions I could understand with my eyes calibrating my receptor I looked back at the opening and estimated the size of the room I had been in not more than a couple of meters large a dark rabbit’s hole to fall through without touchdown

III

Cutting the cucumber watch my fingers push chop push chop metal cuts push through vigorously chop the hard wooden surface a staccato beat hypnotizing me creating this weird sensation to play with danger standing at the edge of the balcony I often feel the urge to jump I really have to take a step backwards to exhale leaving me bewildered at this sensation it is not so much a wish to escape but more a desire to know what it is like to fall and hit no I lie I guess it is more about being in this moment I envision my life to have meaning as it progresses frame by frame in front of my eyes I can move the tape freely laughing at scenes from the past my hair getting mixed up by the flow of air which acts as a blanket for my body free from any mental and physical constraints I finally understand my purpose the cucumber is cut silence I see fragments of the room reflected in the steel blade of the knife I am holding a photo of a couple passes by a picture that I found on the streets inside a cupboard I couldn’t resist taking it with me the black and white photo is quite old the couple standing next to each other he is looking straight in the camera proud to be fixed on celluloid her gaze is slightly away as if she is looking beyond the borders of the photo into my world already conscious of the fact that she is trying to see something that she will never experience their hands are almost touching each other but for a small gab between them was the photographer too early I wonder or were they afraid that capturing the bond would somehow demystify it making it into something tangible that can be recorded by mechanical eyes and understood within the confined space of our material world another reflection how Pollock must have felt trapped after having done his action painting live in front of the camera with the camera behind a glass plate registering every movement of his gestures while he is painting on the plate probed and scrutinized under a microscope as if the painting is merely based on causality a sum of human actions and physical reactions according to some Cartesian Boylian or Newtonian law that can be measured and analyzed having taken the perspective of the canvas gives the impression that Pollock is actually obstructing the canvas’ view with his paint the canvas being buried under layer after layer of stripes and drips of filthy color all energy absorbed and radiated instead of an insight into this almost ungraspable process we get excluded more and more from the painting and any mystic truth the surface might be revealing is it possible to have the same perspective as the canvas and experience it at the same time whatever it means can it only be looked upon or can it be looking back to us wasn’t there a painting titled blind painting implying that other paintings can see if there is such a concept as sight of canvas does it then need a viewer is it conscious enough to go without or am I being very arrogant now and self centric towards our species do you need to be conscious to exist what if in this singular point in time when the universe was created the dust that would make us conscious and constraint was forgotten God had a bad day though he hadn’t created the day nor any other form of radiation yet of course or maybe he very consciously wanted to liberate us from the weight of our own thoughts for reasons that seem more legit to me by the day but he lost the formula for the mythical element carmot and just used red peppers as a substitute all went extremely spicy afterwards but without any discrimination an Indian meal on steroids so to speak a whole universe full of zombies going about their business eating and being eaten fucking and being fucked God I hope I am tonight I have no clue about what the point of it is though it sure has a point I guess using a similar logic of the blind painting a blind viewer could be defined someone who cannot physically see the work of art but has some conscious understanding of it beyond the obvious descriptive one of course there is this weird phenomenon called blindsight where people that have some kind of brain damage on one side of the two brain halves can see objects when watching straight ahead even though these objects have been placed in their blind spot I remember reading that this phenomenon was expected to help resolve philosophical arguments about consciousness but alas come to think of it if you can have beings that have no conscious awareness of their meanderings and I seem to meet them more often than I like could you have conscious species that have no form of sensory inputs from outside only the ones that constitute to his state of consciousness like a Deus ex Ars referring back to the textile surface a being or object would be self aware but have no idea about space nor time the concept of a lucid dream comes to mind but purer always truly in the here and now not like us transient ones who are forever separated from it by an undividable segment the closer you are to the asymptote the further away from actual knowing it how I have often stared at these two mathematical lines on a planar surface one created by the abstract function and the other one by overseeing logic going on into infinity further than the farthest point known to us and still they continue with every distance travelled they get closer but will never touch nor cross no speed of light will ever change that two persons whose life are intertwined but are separated by consciousness are unable to know what it is like being the other only sometimes when I just had sex with him and he is still inside of me strong wet exhausted lying on top feeling his heartbeat on and in me I briefly have the illusion that I know him that I know what it is like being him but with another exhale this feeling evaporates and we are on two separate lines again the eye of the knife moves back to the photo they are still watching me I wonder why I did take it with me and put it there to see am I afraid to be forgotten left behind in somebody’s cupboard as something that lost its function and together with all these other paraphernalia I lay there waiting well over my expiration date part of me buried alive with veins full of dust unable to scream in the split second that I look at them I have the illusion that they are conscious in space materialized out of indefinable nothingness as long as I keep staring at them they exit I feel sad now almost burdened by the obligation which I cannot hold absurd and empty a childish solution to a game I am unable to grasp nor play the knife moves all reflections are gone

IV

I wish I had a button that I could just press to stop my thoughts at will once I am hooked onto a certain strain of thought I can let it come back over and over again like a merry-go-round spinning out of control in some classic film noir movie instead of the overly used cinematic bullet time effect for the outside world I would love to able to pull down the reverse for my inner sanctum I press the button time continues normally for everybody but me the camera moves forwards but zooms out at the same time creating the illusion of an expanding room while keeping me unchanged to the observer more room to be in the latter alone would be a helpful trick to do being able to zoom in and out at will condensing or expanding space using some internal telephoto lens blurring out the background creating a narrow depth of field through which we could experience the world it’s rather peculiar that we have defined our visual history by images that we ourselves can’t really mimic photos showing the main subject in focus while having blurred out the noise from its surroundings our visual world is always in focus there where our attention is but with our substitution eyes we can calmly examine the space that is out of focus marvelling at the beauty of a softened reality easily accessible from a flat surface but I guess no harm done or not did we alter our mental space by morphing our perceived reality and how many photos are needed before any irreversible change is done the absurdity of it to be able to focus on something in space that is out of focus my mind is starting to spin again from this play with logic maybe part of my brain could process the visual information that is in focus and another part could do the same to the out of focus world then consciously I could chose where my attention is making consciousness into something that is separate from my point of attention with maybe a precise moment at which something becomes conscious or comes into consciousness there is this experiment that when the image of a small solid disc is flashed first followed quickly by a picture of a ring which dimensions are such that it can contain the disc and if the timings and intensities are just right the second stimulus masks the first the observers in the experiment say that they saw only the ring so did the disc become conscious and get forgotten as an Orwellian rewrite of the truth or was it never conscious in the first place because it was delayed on its way up to consciousness by the ring but then the assumption of a precise moment implies that there is a difference in real time at which things happen in the brain and a real time at which they happen in consciousness two real times spinning inside my head no wonder I am in a constant state of denial which one is real and if both are real are they always in sync separated by a fixed number that identifies us from other species the ultimate number pi or some other irrational figure governing our lives according to some cabalistic logic could the real real time please claim its rightful place as photo is a condensed representation of space on a two dimensional surface at a certain time could you have an opposite residue let’s call it a still a condensed print of time taken at a certain space of defined dimensions with something like a time camera device when you perceive this still you sense some simplified concept of time and get an idea of the space it travelled though similar to a photo camera that takes pictures at a specific time but it are the objects in that space that tells us something about that particular time and only if we have a referent for them meaning if we have some preconceived knowledge about similar elements in that particular time slot we can reposition the time of the photo relative to our real time at least one of the two I would think in order to pinpoint our location in the space of the still we would need some amount of preconceived knowledge about time elements for a particular space and some form of receptor for this possibly zero dimensional stimulant so that when we experience the still we get an idea of the space it was in something like a sixth sense or another form of paranormal sensor through which people claim to have a sensation of an event that is about to happen the odd thing is to express it mildly how can you have knowledge about a specific moment in time when it hasn’t occurred yet the only referents you have are in the past as absurd as watching a photo and suddenly realizing that you are looking into the future because of the objects in that photo but only if you have experienced these objects in the future could you relate to them of course are time and space just defined points on a mathematical abstract circle no beginning and no end just endless motions of perpetuum mobiles of astronomical size always there wave after wave of cosmic dust spinning and swirling with a roaring sound in my head I can close my eyes and not see anymore I can close my ears and not hear anymore I can close my nose and not smell anymore I can close my mouth and not taste anymore I can close my hands and not feel anymore I can close my heart and not love anymore why can’t I close my mind and not think anymore or is thinking inevitable related to being like Descartes stated wondering whether or not he existed was in and of itself proof that he did exist as soon as I am able to close my mind I as in my conscious self would immediately fade away into oblivion maybe that is the reason my mind goes into overdrive so often a mere form of self preservation as long as it keeps circling it ensures its existence against the sucking powers of a monumental vacuum cleaner odd word vacuum cleaner why would you want to clean the void that shouldn’t take too long I would think ladies and gentlemen let me introduce to you our greatest invention to date the Void 42 Super Cleaner your answer to even the hardest questions on earth and it comes in pink sadly true void only exists on paper the mambo jumbo of quantum theory predicts that no volume of space can be perfectly empty I am having difficulties understanding this my body seems to lack the ability to physically relate to total nothingness and my mind goes in opposite direction completely blank following the prediction what was governing space first the prediction from the laws of quantum mechanics or the voidness of the space itself how can you define nothingness actually without having something to define it with I take a pencil and draw a circle a huge circle and inside of the circle I write space endlessly empty I look at the circle follow its curve precisely one time and then I look back to the words stare at them till I see that my hand moves and before I know it I start writing outside of the circle the words hopelessly full

V

Finally you have arrived