Neurathian Boatstrap
14th Istanbul Biennial
Neurath’s boat is a metaphor central to anti-foundational explanations of knowledge and was first formulated by Otto Neurath. It is based in part on the Ship of Theseus, which is often employed to illustrate issues of identity through changing conditions. Anti-foundationalists believe that there is no absolute truth, but rather an ongoing process of readjustment to volatile surroundings.
As one steps aboard the ship, there is the sensation perhaps that the vessel has been reconstructed with parts from many other ships which have long since vanished.
NEURATHIAN BOATSTRAP
INTRODUCTION Marcos Lutyens
“We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.”
W.V. O. Quine, Word and Object, 1960
Neurath’s boat is a metaphor central to anti- foundational explanations of knowledge and wasfirst formulated by Otto Neurath. It is basedin part on the Ship of Theseus, which is often employed to illustrate issues of identity through changing conditions. Anti-foundationalists believe that there is no absolute truth, but rather an ongoing process of readjustment to volatile surroundings.
As one steps aboard the ship, there is the sensation perhaps that the vessel has been reconstructed with parts from may other ships which have long since vanished. However, these borrowed parts breathe new life into an old shell. Similarly, the void-imbued contents and processes on board the ship point to the elastic nature of the body and mind that may adapt to lost body parts, as much as to newly discovered senses, or vast new frontiers of ideation.
The project continues on the quest of previous endeavours, notably the Hypnotic Show with Raimundas Malašauskas, towards the simultaneous dematerialisation and embodiment of art in relation to visitors.
How deep is your coffee?
Raimundas Malašauskas
How deep is your coffee?
Or how far is the unknown? It is definitely closer than you think. I mean it is not only closer to you than you think it is, but it is closer to the locus of yourself than your thinking is. A strange thought, right? It springs from language and goes across the space it creates towards an unfinished destination at the speculative speed. So it is not just the space of thought that is on my mind, it is also the space of thought out of my mind reachable from accidental breaks and leaps of thinking. You may consider it a space of transpersonal imagination though.
Assuming that there is a formless zone of non-thinking (which I would not necessary identify with the unknown) between a thinker and thinking, we might wonder how long it would take for us to reach each other there. You probably remember that to arrive to the Cartesian idea of thinking as a source of self and identity has taken at least a dozen of years for you and several hundreds for humanity. So how long does it take to escape from dead-ends of logic and mechanical propositions? Do you go backwards repeating your steps in reversal or will non-thinking teleport us from there at the highest speed? Or maybe it will happen in no time at all?
“Whenever you are ready”
Audio, with the collaboration of Morten Norbye Halvorsen, four speakers, 2015
An inductive cyberspace, true to the Greek wordκυβερνητικός which means “skilled in steering.” The ‘voice’ opens a gap into which the psyche may enter, accompanied by harmonics of underwater propellers and dissonant sine wave nodes.
Forbidden pools
Video installation, color, 2015
From synaesthesia, we take the leap into paraesthesia. Our brain sees the colors our eyes have never witnessed: our imagination trails along behind.
Blindsight steps
Installation, white felt dots, 2015
You see but may not understand, she may feel but keep silent. Each step, an inverted induction.
Like the taste of sugar in the mouth of a mute
Orange film
The room inside your mouth is sometimes larger thanthe room you sit in, but infinitely smaller than the spaceof mind.
Neurathian Boatstrap
14th Istanbul Biennial
SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms drafted by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
A project by Marcos Lutyens
Büyükada IDO Pier, Büyükada Island, Istanbul
Production managed by Chiara Ianeselli
Collaborative contributions by Morten Norbye Halvorsen,The Institute for Art and Olfaction, Department of Mechanical Engineering, North Western University and Gözder,Association of Persons withVisual Impairments,Turkey,
Produced with the support of Alberta Pane Gallery, Paris,Arte Boccanera,Trento, Chambers Fine Art, Beijing / NewYork, Guillaume Desnöes,Albertine Kopp, Giuliana andTommaso Setari, Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jacques Font and Eléonore de Saint Seine.
Thanks to Paula Mierzowsky, Ekin Ozkan, Önder Bekel, Angela Lopez, Dan Miller, David Sprecher.
In 1999 Graham Gussin noticed an interesting thing in the scene of arriving to Solaris (1972, Andrei Tarkovsky): one can cross space in no time at all. This discovery enabled him to construct a number of complex acts of disappearance where he would come back to the site of the destination at the same time as when he left it. However his knowledge about the world would be changed. In those days Graham Gussin was highly involved in teleportation and visiting places of transformation whose power to affect its visitors extended beyond their knowledge. In one of the trips that involved a number of different speeds and time warps I noticed that he would either focus on distant objects as if they were in the reach of the hand or would impose distances upon the most intimate objects and subjects. I am not sure whether he was more interested in distances that affect you (like in the case of producing desire and longing) or in affecting via distance (like
in remote viewing or telematics), but it was definitely a distance rather than a site functioning as a locus of transformation. To put it in other words a distance was a connecting device as well as a basic premise of any cognitive practice - without it you and me were just a homogenous singularity resting in a pre-individualist state of being. And Graham was able to cross them in no time at all (or along the lines of poetic time) regardless whether those were mental, transpersonal or physical distances. Perhaps this was the reason why I’ve decided to reformulate the question “How deep is your coffee?” to “How deep is your coffee after you drank it?” after I learned more about it.
Raimundas Malašauskas, Paper Exhibition, Sternberg Press, 2012
Neurathian inductitve knots
Naval ropes, various dimensions and times, felt
Falez stele
Ceramic, various dimension, organic material, 2015
Water-formed braille over eons:inverted and decipherable to the touch.
A platform for the installation of art to the mind, based on extracts from 3 novels:Aslı Erdoğan, The City in Crimson Cloak, 1998
J.G. Ballard, The Crystal World, 1966
Olfaction, Los Angeles
Neurathian Boatstrap
5September -1November2015
René Daumal, Mount Analog, 1952
Aromas with the intervention of the Institute for Art and
Reading area
Menu for Z to C, consciousness performanceBooklet
What you hold in your hands is a collection of interviews gathered during research with visually impaired people who are members of the Gözder, Association of Persons with Visual Impairments: memories, and the deliquescence of the senses are illuminated through your orbits.
Cabinet
Menu bookParoptic menuDigital Deliquescence
Combination menu for inductions (1,728 permutations) Paroptic menu: after René Daumal’s experimental research into the sense of skin-vision.
Digital Deliquescence: the crystallization of metals through the re-extension of a missing limb: makers, refugees and phantom limbs.
Guanyin and the whale
Old boat, chladni plates, 2015
Seeing-sound through the voices of the visually impairedfrom the Gözder Institute: reflex-color as emotions,cityscapes frozen in memory-time, dreams that undergo sensory substitution.
Neurathian Entrance
Old planks, various dates and dimensions
The cobbled together reduction portal to a transport medium, a vessel, an empty container, a bardo space.
SESSIONS ON THE BOATZ to C consciousness performance.
Visitors are invited to close their eyes and to be guided into a consciousness performance.The sessions will be conducted by artist Marcos Lutyens and will explore the relationship between consciousness and embodiment. Each session is inspired by three works of literature: The City in Crimson Cloak by Asli Erdogan, The Crystal World by J.G.Ballard and Mount Analogue by René Daumal.
Length approximately 1 hour. please be aware that the performances are in English only
For more information and to book a session please visit: http://14b.iksv.org/announcements.asp
