Jan Świdziński

Contextual Art (3)

1
The main problem of the civilization in which we live at present is the impetuosity of changes taking place. The state of preindustrial civilization, developing till the end of the l8th century, may be described according to the model of a clock: a continuous cycle of changes. The state of industrial civilization developing successfully throughout the whole 19th century may be described according to the model of discrete transformations: the passing from one definite state to another, just as definite. It is possible to notice a borderline between the different phases. There is no such possibility in the civilization into which we have now entered. The speed of changes in time, as well as in geography, is to great for us to be able to distinguish the respective states. The only model, according to which we may describe the present situation of our civilization, is the process of continuous and ever faster changes. There is no possibility of distinguishing the respective phases, excluding separate, independent areas. There exist other notations of time for different models.

2
Time in the first model is historical. It plays the role of a scalar which can be applied to the facts to put them in the correct order.

Tune in the second model is the internal time of the system involved. There exist at many periods of time as systems of reference. They are independent of each other and mutually incomparable. Relativistic time is one of the parameters of the system. One adopts the point of view which describes the system discussed. Man is something else for the field of knowledge which is biology, something else again for sociology. The cubist point of view does not apply to Surrealism. They are different fields of knowledge.
The creation of such a system satisfies the condition of objectivism demanded of modern science, but the system needs to be separated from the process of mutual interdependence, kept in a stable position as an isolated specimen. The language of the discussed system, or more widely used semiotic signs depends on the same laws as the remaining parameters. Their meanings are within the system. The proposition of analytical sentences is fully justified here.

The building of such a model, however, demands a certain amount of time to arrange all the parameters of the field according to the existing situation. What happens, on the other hand, when the situation changes every moment and there is not enough time to keep on finding new and adequate parameters? This is a problem which has now emerged for both science and art.

The proposition of Art Sociologique to look for problems of art which are not solved, in the same way as with scientific problems, is naive.

3
Let us look at the consequences of the resulting situation. The continuous change of reality causes the never-ending change of sign which are used by civilization in the processes of information. The sign, which in the first model was transparent towards reality, where in the second model this transparency was lost, becomes a sign of itself. In analytical sentences, the meaning is hidden within the sentences. Let us accept them on the basis of terminological convention and not on the basis of experience which connects us with empirical reality existing outside the sign.

Conceptualism talks about the ideas with signs and not about the reality from which our own language is separated.

In the modern situation, a sign is neither a window through which we look at the world (it does not describe a reality), nor a sign of itself embracing its own idea; it is empty, a place to be filled by reality.
What happens with signs in a civilization of very quick changes?
Understanding of a sign takes place when the receiver of the sign is able to set the suitable “signifiant” to the suitable “signifié”. What is considered (signifié) concerns the indicated reality; what is meaningful (signifiant) is a sort of manifestation for us of this reality. In order to connect manifestations with results which develop from them, just as in the appearance of manifestations we perceive their causes, we need to have the knowledge of a certain number of incidents which consolidate this connection in our mind. The signs which are used by language or art function as artificially constructed manifestations in order to show existing facts or objects. If existing facts undergo a change, the signs with which we marked them lose their usefulness. Employing them mislead us. “Signifié” does not mean the same as “signifiant”. In initial stages, changes concern meaningful aspects whereas in the final stages the facts lose all points in common. In mathematical terms, one can say that in the last phase, where there is complete misunderstanding, “signifié” and “signifiant” make up separate sets of collections of meaning. Reality as indicated is also something different from the picture of this reality previously formed in our minds. It is practice which permits us to settle once again the correct relationship between what appears and its meaning. Practice is the criterion of art acting and the area of meaning.

If the changes are continuous, if periodic repetition of phenomena does not take place, practice corrects the newly created mistakes but does not permit the establishing of stable principles which could be used by us in other cases. It concerns the examined moment. What is true in one context is not true in another. Only an empirical context describes the truth of a sign.

4
This situation does not only concern the elements used in the building of meaning in a language or m expressions in art. It also affects the principles which rule these elements, uniting principles (syntax) or principles verifying the truth of the expressions used (logic). The logical criteria of truth and falseness which could be applied require a repetition of examined relationships. If continuous changes take place, the criteria stop functioning.

We can judge the phenomenon not a priori, on the basis of our knowledge of principles, but a posteriori, knowing the results which it brought forth. The principles of art do not function. Thus, the situation which interests us is not ruled by the principles of formal logic operating with the values of truth and falseness. They become dominated by another, stronger system. It is possible to say that in the relativistic model the expressions used by art denoted their separate elements which, in turn, each possessed its own denotation. This was the principle of extensional expressions. In the situation of a different context of reality, continuously changing extensional expressions are replaced by intensional ones. Their denotations do not rely solely on the denotations of component expressions. In order to describe their meanings, it is necessary to refer to other facts than only co those which can be taken from the idea found in the name.

If A-L writes Joseph instead of Joseph Kosuth in his works, he uses, against his own intention an intensional expression, which is an empty name for those who do not know the jargon of the Art and Language group. Modern science, such as mathematics or logic, never operates with intensional expressions. The formulated language which it uses must always be extensional. The same affects the second model of art and Kosuth places the same condition on art when he writes in Art after Philosophy about art as about analytical proposition. Contextual art overthrows the condition of extensional expressions which puts it in opposition to modern formulated scientific languages, as well as formulated meaningful systems with which traditional art operated and also to conceptualism operating with analytical sentences.

Contextual art once and for all does not operate with a set system of signs. The language which it uses is being continuously constructed and reconstructed like meanings which it accepts in the never-ending process of bringing reality up to date. The only criteria which it is subject to is the practice of reality which forces us to overthrow unnecessary principles of the past, in order to create systems which are capable of accepting current meanings. (In dialectics, this is described as the battle of opposites. It differentiates contextual art from the Vanguard movement in art and is nearer to Bakunin’s idea of permanent revolution for the sake of revolution).

5
“Conceptual theorists” (since, as Kosuth rightly states, “conceptual stylists” should not be considered as “a stylistic alternative, within Modernism, to painting and sculpture” subject art to the manipulations of the axioms of formal logic. The propositions which art puts forward are not only concepts of science but are opinions experienced with conviction; they are assertions. Art does not tell the truth; it convinces in the direction of the truth. The principles of logic by which it is ruled are principles of deontic logic appearing in ideological systems, according to which art acts or in which it acts. The system of principles of this logic rules over such states as: to learn, to acknowledge, to overthrow, to believe, to presume. It is logic which rules over what we usually accept as subjective, dependent on the subject. The attempt which separates the acting subject from the aim of its activity (subjective from objective) seems to be one more dream of science and art of the bygone period.

The inseparability of these two layers – the subjective attitude of the acting subject and the objective results of his performance – determines the most refractory layer; the most daeply hidden layer of knowledge (epistema) of each civilization determines both its ideological and mythological support. The factor which is truly able to modify it is the infrastructure with its economical arrangement. The development of the modern Art World is restricted by the frames of this structure. The efficiency of the statements of art in this deep logical structure is based on definite statements but, nevertheless, it questions and undermines the explicitness of other statements. (At one time, the efficiency of Dadaism and the first appearances of new artistic tendencies at the and of the 60’s, were based on the efficiency of this activity). Deontic principles may be enlarged to questions. Aqvist, in his nonclassical erithematic logical calculation, leads the question to a special type of order.

Instead of asking which objects have ownership we take the existence of objects not having this ownership for granted. If we place a pragmatic condition on Aqvist’s calculation about establishing a question because of person “p” in the time interval, we will receive a formula which should answer the question asked by contextual art.

6
The main problem of modern civilization is the loss of man’s contact with reality. Reality changes much quicker than the signs with which civilization marks it. We are entangled in canons which have lost the situations they directed, principles ruling non-existent relationships, words lacking their corresponding objects. In our deontic logic we continuously believe in what is obligatory, permitted, prohibited, although we do not know if the objects of our duties, consents and prohibitions still exist.

Contextual art is not subject to a priori considerations, or to canons, rules, duties or prohibitions of art.

It does not act with the historical time of traditional art. It creates its Musee Imaginaire every time from the beginning.

It does not act with independent relativistic time. There exists process dependent on dialectics.

It does not differentiate between the subjective and the objective. It is impossible to differentiate the subject from its objects in anything but an artificial manner. It is not based on science and neither does it oppose it. The term “science” is the same type of deontic term as any other.

There are assertion and intensional expressive acts in the field of meanings which are put into effect as indexical expressions, creating their meanings through the pragmatic context in which they are placed. It is not principles that rule the sense of the phrases but the pragmatic context in which they are found. From the sentence “x is art in time t” one can only see that “x” is art in time “t”. It does not mean the “x” will be art in the following units of time: t1 … tn which would appear if one accepts the logical assumptions of the previous models of art.

(In the first model “x” would always be art, as according to Malraux it would be absolute. In the second model, it would always be a definite value, according to the accepted reference system. The Negro sculpture brought to Paris, losing its sacredness in the reference system, is a good example).

The example: “x” is art in time “t” may be specified. “X” has the property of being art in time “t”, in place “p”, in situation “s” in relationship to persons/person “o”, then and only then. A change of any of these elements automatically means a change in the studied values. A dispute about good and bad art, without giving the pragmatic context, is without an object.

Thus, time in contextual art is actual time: it is of the present, in a definite situation of a definite moment and place in which we find ourselves in the dialectic process of change. It is time which never returns and is not symmetrical in relationship to the past and the future. The past and the future are only a projection of the present. (The past or the future for me as a subject exists at the moment when it becomes the actual object of my discourse).

7
Contextual art is the process of realizing incomplete realities. Its behavior is one continuous transformation from subject to object and from hidden meanings in deep structure to surface structure. An artist is in a double role. He is the subject who makes artistic operations and, at the same time, while showing himself in his work, becomes the object of his own activity.

As an acting subject, he is always dependent on something else. Being the subject of his own activity he is the object of somebody else’s activity.

I am an element of the process produced by reality and I am also producing a new reality. I am one of the elements of occurring relations and also the one who takes part in the making of new relations.

Art is neither a description nor a report of reality. It is an activity produced by other activities and the cause of future activities. It is a social practice. At the same time, it is compliance with social practice and its formation.

8
The permanent and continuous transformation of the process of contextual art takes place on two pivots simultaneously: on the diachronic pivot and the synchronic one. Its modernization is the dividing point of these two pivots in place and time at which art finds itself as the interpolation of all influencing components.

Its modernization is never closed. It is the moment of the process of never-ending changes.

The truth of art is the function of the size of the area in whose borders it is possible to verify its functioning. This is the truth towards the whole reality and not to a fragmentary one, which is only one of the possible reference systems.

As in the dialectic process of art, however, the final verification never takes place; the process of art becomes a series of modernizing incomplete realities.

9
Art influences social principles, modernizing the logic which rules over them. Its real performance concerns the deep layer structure. Art is not the knowledge of a given civilization. It is rather its wisdom, the intention of art to a group, to a given culture, to a given civilization, to the geographical system. Dependence exists a priori. There exists a possibility of interpolation of dependence.

There does not exist a morphology of contextual art. The only morphology which can be accepted is occasional morphology, viewed relativistically under pragmatic conditions. Its choice is a matter of strategy and that is what justifies it.

C i t e d   l i t e r a t u r e :

A.Church: Introduction to Mathematical Logic, London: Oxford University Press, 1944

J.Hintikka: Knowledge and Beliefs. New York: Cornell University Press, 1962

W.v.O.Quine: “Reference and Modality”, From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.

G.W.P. Hegel: Wissenschaft der Logic, Gottingen: Vandennoeck Reprecht, 1935

J.Kosuth: “The Artist as Anthropologist”, The Fox, New York: l, 1975

L.Aqvist: A new approach to the logical theory of interrogatives, Uppsala: Filosofiska foreningen, 1965

J.Hintikka: “Quantifiers in deontic logic”, Commentationes Humanrum Litterarum, Helsingfors: 23, 1957

E.J. Lemmon: “Deontic Logic and the Logic of Imperatives, I”, Logique et Analyse, Bruxellcs, 29, 1965

A. R . Andersen: “A reduction of Deontic Modal Logic to Alethic Modal Logic”, Mind. Oxford: 67, 1958, p. 100.

A.Malraux: Le Musee Imaginaire, Geneve: Skira, 1948

A.Malraux: Les Voix du Silence, Paris: Nouv. ed. compl. Gallimard, 1952

N.Chomsky: Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton, 1957

N. Chomsky: Aspects of the theory of syntax, Cambridge: The M. I. T. Press, 1965

J.J.Katz: Semantic theory, New York; Harper Row, 1972

S.K. Saumjan and P.A. Soboleva: Le modele generatif et les calculs des transformations dans le language russe, Moscou: 1963

J.Kristeva: “Semanalyse et production de sens”, Essais de semiotique poetique, Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1972