IRENE CAESAR'S ESSAY "SISYPHUS HOWLS "OM" AT ZEUS" #1
ESSAYS ON PHOTOGRAPHY
IRENE CAESAR
SISYPHUS HOWLS "OM" AT ZEUS
The Unity of the Absurd and Meaning
Spring 2010
#1
sisyphus_howls_om_at_zeus.pdf
Extract:
"I create absurd performances documented by photography. These performances or events are absurd, because they are not simply improbable - they are unacceptable in the every-day existence. Arthur Danto, with his full gravitas, is throwing up colourful plastic eggs in his contribution to Damien Hirst’s “spot paintings” in the series “People of Art as Objects of Art.” People are fighting with plastic and eating plastic in the series “The World is Made of Plastic.” A woman is mourning her own death in the series “Double Portraits.”
Conventionally, the absurd is separated from meaning and opposed to it. The absurd that I create is absolutely of another kind - it is inseparable from meaning. To start with, I have a completely meaningful purpose for my extreme absurdism: to test major concepts of human civilization. If the result appears to be totally absurd, this has something to say about both the conceptual foundations of our society, and about the established separation of the absurd from the meaningful. In the situations that I create, my actors are confronted with some concept in such a way that they enact this concept in an event that happens not only in the continuum of my art, but also in the continuum of their most intimate life. I do not put my actors like mechanical dolls into an artificial setup, as is fashionable now. In my images, the concept is not external and superior to the actors’ existence. A super-hero, in my image “Fast and Furious” (series “The World is Made of Plastic”) fights with plastic with such an intensity that he believes in the importance and meaningfulness of his absurd fight. At the time of the shoot, he believes that he is a super-hero. I do not cut off the oxygen to make my actors less alive, more zombie or cyborg-like, but to the contrary, I create extra minutes, hours and years of their lives, extra dimensions, extra spaces for them to live in with the most intense meaningfulness. This meaningfulness is surely of another kind than is commonly believed -- it is inseparable from the absurd."
1. Analytical and empirical philosophies are wrong. Meaning is inseparable from the ab- surd: there is no meaning without the absurd
I create absurd performances documented by photography. These performances or events are absurd, because they are not simply improbable - they are unacceptable in the every-day existence. Arthur Danto, with his full gravitas, is throwing up colourful plastic eggs in his contribution to Damien Hirst’s “spot paintings” in the series “People of Art as Objects of Art.” People are fighting with plastic and eating plastic in the series “The World is Made of Plastic.” A woman is mourning her own death in the series “Double Portraits.”
Conventionally, the absurd is separated from meaning and opposed to it. The absurd that I create is absolutely of another kind - it is inseparable from meaning. To start with, I have a completely meaningful purpose for my extreme absurdism: to test major con- cepts of human civilization. If the result appears to be totally absurd, this has something to say about both the conceptual foundations of our society, and about the established separation of the absurd from the meaningful. In the situations that I create, my actors are confronted with some concept in such a way that they enact this concept in an event that happens not only in the continuum of my art, but also in the continuum of their most intimate life. I do not put my actors like mechanical dolls into an artificial setup, as is fashionable now. In my images, the concept is not external and superior to the actors’ existence. A super-hero, in my image “Fast and Furious” (series “The World is Made of
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Plastic”) fights with plastic with such an intensity that he believes in the importance and meaningfulness of his absurd fight. At the time of the shoot, he believes that he is a su- per-hero. I do not cut off the oxygen to make my actors less alive, more zombie or cy- borg-like, but to the contrary, I create extra minutes, hours and years of their lives, extra dimensions, extra spaces for them to live in with the most intense meaningfulness. This meaningfulness is surely of another kind than is commonly believed -- it is inseparable from the absurd.
Commonly, meaning is understood to be a signification that is either empirically evi- dent or analytically self-evident (in virtue of its own definition). Meaning is supposed to be relevant to the accepted systems of empirical experience or rational / linguistic justifi- cation. Both of these systems require the regularity / repetitive patterns of meaning. Empirical opinion rests on regularities observed in nature and society. Analytical defini- tions are regularities that are imposed upon nature and society by language. Every ir- regularity is considered to be absurd. The absurd is a contradiction, mistake and irration- ality. The system ascribes to itself the full authority of being meaningful and expels those who do not comply as being absurd. Meanwhile, a marginal person who is ex- pelled does in return consider the entire system of norm and definition to be absurd. He either creates his own analytical discourse (with new definitions) or changes the empiri- cal reality either collectively or individually to such lengths that the prior empirical regu- larities apply no longer.
Thus, the established dualism of absurdity and meaningfulness makes them inver- sions of each other. It simply posits two opposite meanings, and from the point of view of one meaning, another meaning is absurd, and vice versa. The irony of this duality is
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that each meaning is debased as being absurd from the point of view of an opposite meaning. Thus, in the system, as a whole, meaningfulness is profaned and undermined. By expelling the absurd, both analytical philosophy and empirical philosophy fail to reach the universality and necessity of meaning. They are incapable of expressing mean- ingfulness - it escapes in opposition and on the margins. And, as a result, analytical phi- losophy and empirical philosophy do not create a meaningful discourse and experience. Obviously, man can arrive at understanding only when he is capable of combining in one and the same vision both opposite meanings - the absurd with the non-absurd.
2. Camus is wrong. Meaning is inseparable from the absurd: there is no absurdity without meaning
The duality of absurd and meaning, though a profanation, is justifiable in a closed hi- erarchical system. It provides the security of definiteness: an agent has the ability to clearly define meaning as opposed to the absurd. But, most importantly, he always has a way of escape. The agent can always hide himself in the active opposition to the system or, passively, on its margins - in the domain of his own “ridiculous” meaning. And lastly, though any agent chooses one meaning over the opposite meaning, the system as a whole is the existential collection of all the possible meanings in their opposition to each other. The existential totality of these dualities is a fluid unconscious realization that meaning is inseparable from the absurd. It allows for at least a possibility that someone will become conscious of the system as a whole, i.e., of its hidden unity of the absurd and meaning. That is why when Camus posits that both sides of the duality (the absurd vs.
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meaning) are absurd, that is, meaning is not to be found anywhere, this is a sign of deca- dence and self-destruction - both of the system as a whole and of each individual. His absurdism is non-existent: when meaning is lost, the absurd is lost as well. The absurd- ism of Camus is a sheer pretence.
Camus says that man becomes his own master when he realizes the absurdity, mean- inglessness of his situation, and of everything else, accepts it and bears it with cheerful- ness. This kind of absurdism does not simply leave meaning eternally outside, or in-itself - inaccessible to man, as it is done by a great absurdist Kant. Camus destroys meaning entirely. It is not simply a negative absurdism - it is the absurdism of a gravedigger. It accepts repetition, it embraces the loss of uniqueness, it rejoices at the purposeless toil. “Everything is not that bad”, Sisyphus repeats over and over with full realization that what he is doing is senseless, meaningless and purposeless. The cheerfulness of Camus is morbid in its essence. It is a varnish on the destroyed and rotten reality, with no definiteness and no escape any longer - a scary and repulsive smile of a corpse.
I reject the absurdism of Camus, as well as the absurdism in a closed hierarchical sys- tem. Contrary to the latter, my events are self-contained - they contain both opposites at once -- meaning as well as the absurd. They do not separate the internalized meaning from the externalized absurd. And contrary to Camus, my images are absurd not because they express the loss of meaning. My images are most acutely and intensely absurd be- cause they express the most acute and intense realization of meaning. Contrary to his, negative, fatalistic, and I would say, cynical absurdism, my absurdism emerges not be- cause of the loss or lack of meaning, but because of its excess. The more is there of meaning, the more of the absurd there should be, and vice versa. In my images, the
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events acquire the excess of meaning, because the meaningfulness is heightened and stimulated by the absurdity of what my actors are doing. My events are psychological traps - my actors hunt themselves down into these traps and confront the absurdity not as a matter of play but as a matter of survival. The survival concerns their sense of genu- ineness - how genuine they can be and how genuine their reality is.
My actors do not pose; they are asked to act, and act with the most intensity possible. I do not function as a photographer who takes shots similar to a reflection in a mirror. I function as a producer who locks the doors and keeps the volume of emotional intensity up. My actors make a choice: they can either pretend / lie that they really act inside the event, or they can act with such intensity that the event acquires more genuineness than the every-day routine. My actors start with the full realization that what they are doing is absurd. And my purpose as a producer is to make the event as absurd as possible. But they do what is considered to be absurd so intensely, and get consumed by the absurd ac- tion to such a degree, that it becomes more meaningful than norm, tradition, code and regulation, which they follow in their daily life. If they pretend / lie, they disintegrate -- they join Sisyphus of Camus in a cheerful grave. If they reach the extreme of purposeful self-expression, they survive as genuine human beings. And the more is there of the ab- surd for them to overcome, the more of meaningfulness there is for them to realize in their immediate existence.
I argue that Camus was wrong in believing that man becomes free when he looks at the absurdity of his life from aside with the estranged ironic acceptance - in the moments when Sisyphus goes down to pick up his stone and has time to contemplate his situation. I believe that man becomes free when he becomes one with his situation, one with his
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absurd. My actors act on the limit of their abilities. They cannot allow themselves the estranged and relaxed irony. If Camus thinks that what my actors are doing at the mo- ment is only the absurd, too bad for Camus: they forget about Camus and his gravedig- ger’s irony. They cannot think about anything else beyond what they are doing in the moment. They locate themselves completely in the present. If they need to recall some- thing from the past or the future, the past and the future become the present for this mo- ment. I call this synthesis “the excess of the present” in a “peak state.”
When man completely locates himself in the moment, in the “peak state,” he does not divide his existence into the externalized absurd and internalized meaning. The estranged irony of Camus belongs to the past and to the future. But the past and the future are sim- ply the fictions of the mind - only the present is. Because man truly exists in the present only when he is in a peak state, the true human existence does not in principle accept the separation of meaning from the absurd and the opposition of meaning to the absurd. Un- fortunately, Camus does not reach the ultimate minimalism of existence. He has too much time for the past and for the future. On the climax of a “peak state,” my actors transcend the duality of meaning and the absurd, and reach beyond meaning and beyond the absurd, each one taken on its own. This synthesis of meaning and the absurd is self- justified, self-aimed and self-contained. The absurd is a necessary stimulation to go be- yond routine towards the most intense purposefulness. If there is not enough of meaning, there is simply not enough of the absurd to overcome. I argue that without the stimula- tion of the absurd, meaning is in principle impossible. I insist: each man is responsible for preservation and recreation of his own absurd. In relation to the dualistic hierarchical system, and outside of art as such, this kind of conceptual action would correspond to
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ideological subversion and revolution. In relation to Camus’ “cheerful nonsense,” this kind of conceptual action would correspond to the situation when Sisyphus turns against Gods and wins. Sisyphus howls “om” at Zeus, and Zeus runs away.
Thus, the criterion of meaningfulness reveals itself as the unity of the absurd and meaning on the climax of purposeful self-expression. This purposefulness fueled by the absurd is more real, significant, memorable than any common sense and common lan- guage (analytical or empirical) experience and justification. Meaningfulness does not come as a non-absurd end-result of overcoming the absurd. Meaningfulness is the very manifestation of the absurd in a genuine human being. The peak states, when this unity of the absurd and meaning happens, are most ecstatic. To survive as a genuine human being, man should actively seek peak states in all his emotional and intellectual activities. A peak state is necessarily absurd, because it disrupts the routine by an outburst of unique self-expression. A peak state is all about individuation. Individuation is a necessary ideological subversion and revolution that every man should do every day to locate him- self in his own unique spatio-temporal moment. Most strongly, individuation manifests itself in revelation -- the unexpected and sudden realization of meaning that is not com- monly accepted and, so, is considered to be absurd by common sense and common lan- guage. Secondly, in his personal revolution of individuation, man realizes himself as a cause - a very special case of causation. He liberates himself of determinism, and be- comes free. He changes reality. He determines himself. He is no longer a Sisyphus ridi- culed by Gods.
3. Individuation with its revelation as the unity of meaning and the absurd
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The moment of knowledge-realization is called revelation. Revelation is the strongest manifestation of the absurd. Revelation is the re-veiling or discovery of a hidden mean- ing -- the revaluation of established values. This newly revealed meaning is not com- monly accepted or encouraged. And in his discovery of meaning, man realizes his oppo- sition to the established system of meanings. He discovers himself as a sudden outcast from the common-sense signification. He suddenly and cruelly collides with the absurd. His revelation rejects the established values as absurd. And, at the same time, the system of established values rejects and dismisses his being “right” and “having truth” as absurd. If man cannot cope with the total and extreme absurdity of his revelation, he cannot han- dle his revelation and arrive at knowledge. The more there is of the absurd, the stronger the revelation is. The revelation makes man fall out of the ordinary to such a degree, that it was attributed to the interference of God. But the “God” here is the Absurd. The Ab- surd makes revelation possible.
I agree with Aristotle who believed that man acquires knowledge when his mind be- comes identical or “one” with the object of his thought. But contrary to Aristotle, I argue that the unity of mind and its object is the unity of a unique mind and a unique object. A typical or generalized object exists only as a fiction of the abstract mind - the mind that has torn its ties with the reality as it truly exists. Reality exists only via individual mani- festations. Typology is inability to bear a high-voltage cognitive state of revelation. Even though events and people may look alike or similar, repetition is existentially im- possible. There are no two objects, people or events that are exactly the same. In other words, there are no objects at all. Everything that exists is a subject. Every experience
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or manifestation is subjective. The mind that has lost its taste of uniqueness is a dying mind - a mind that is lost between hallucination and nightmare. Individuation is the only way for man to exist. Individuation is the only way for mind to think. We know of classes or types only via the difference between classes or between types. If classes do not differ significantly from each other, we call one of them a subclass of the other, rather than a new class. The same logic, overlooked, must be applied to the individuals. Indi- viduals exist only by way of their uniqueness.
The most intense unity of the mind and the object is precisely the realization by the mind of its own uniqueness and the uniqueness of its object. Man claims his right to vio- late any alleged regularity, change reality and recreate the body of knowledge at his will and whim - after his own unique make. This individual recreation of reality cannot be provided by God -- the alleged great revolutionary -- for all of humanity at once, or by any National Revolution for the entire nation at once -- French, American, or Russian. Every man is divine who creates his own unique world anew every day. Such a man is an every-day revolutionary. Every day, he makes a discovery that knowledge is a fiction if it is not individuated and recreated individually. He knows all too well that knowledge is experiential (and contextual) - my knowledge, or rather my revelation, of infinity is not your knowledge of infinity.
A truly knowing mind enters the intimate connection with its object - analogous to orgasm, pregnancy and birth. A child that is born is a unique experience that can never be repeated. That is to say, it is necessarily an abnormal experience. It violates and ridi- cules the norm: the more abnormal it is, the more individuated it is. This abnormality makes man fall out of the routine flow of events. People destroying the norms of behav-
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iour, dress codes, sexual norms, for example people dying their hair blue, or having sex with goats, are considered to be abnormal, sick, or marginal. If they are not placed into prisons and mental institutions, then they are simply brushed away as being absurd. But the uniqueness of a sexual act with a goat is completely lost when it becomes a habit. To happen at all, the violation of uniformity and normality must happen once in a unique way - individuated to the extreme by this unique individual here and now and never re- peated again by anybody else, even himself. Our society is so aggressively opposed to individuation that every strong individual protest against the crowd-driven fashion, norm and cliché immediately becomes fashion, norm and cliché itself. In 1921, Rodchenko created his abstract monochromes to announce the death of painting. But in the 1950s, Rothko stole the rotten bones of abstract monochromes from the stinking corpse of the dead painting. What was an abnormal break-away for a genius Rodchenko becomes a fashionable break-down for a grave-digger Rothko.
The absurd is nothing else than this abnormality of individuation. Every kind of uniqueness is absurd from the point of view of uniformity, typology, regularity, tradition and fashion. Self-conscious absurdness is individuation in its highest and best manifesta- tion. The absurd is the ultimate destruction of uniformity, typology, regularity, tradition and fashion. To say that men exist only through individuation is to say that they exist only through the absurd. It is precisely because revelation is nothing else than the strong- est realization of this abnormality of individuation, that it is the most ridiculous manifes- tation of the absurd. Man realizes that he himself and anything else that exists do not be- long to any class, category, type, and norm. This realization is analogous to the world- creation. Unique, non-shareable objects materialize out of the Word - out of the repeat-
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able and shareable abstract concepts, called Language. It is precisely because the abnor- mality of this world-creation is so out-of-ordinary, so necessary and sublime that it is at- tributed to the interference of God. But the “God” here is the Absurd. The Absurd makes the world-creation possible.
Being completely unique, experiences cannot be expressed by language, and are es- sentially non-transferrable from a subject to a subject via linguistic units precisely be- cause language operates with repeatable structural units. Only visualization can express uniqueness, and only when it reflects the moment / the event of revelation. Genuine ex- perience is a flow of absurd moments and events. When experience stops being absurd, it stops being an experience. When man does not experience his life as being ridiculous and abnormal, he fails to live. He becomes an object of “culture” - of social and political manipulation. He becomes a fiction inside an illusion. The destructive nature of “cul- ture” lies in the fact that it inculcates norm, repetition and typology. Culture cannot in principle assist a unique man in his uniqueness. It deprives him of the only existence that he can have - his individuation.
Culture is the biggest lie. Anything that culture appropriated was initially created against it. Culture kills. Culture is the most abhorrent monster. Its most effective and horrific instruments of murder are: the fascism of fashion making unique individuals look and behave the same; economics that operates via hording unique individuals into the fic- tional aggregates of classes; politics that manipulates unique individuals via rigid politi- cal divides like parties and movements; religion that makes God fit into the procrustean bed of cross and coffin and deprives the divine itself of expressive freedom; science that puts the regularity and conformity of genera and species above the freedom of unique in-
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dividuals; and art that castrates creativity by schools, tendencies, and styles. If an indi- vidual complies with uniformity, conformity, norm, regulation, code, he enters the grey zone of non-existence, illusion, and self-destruction. When he repeats words after some- body, he dos not speak at all. If he wears fashionable clothes, he does not wear anything at all. If he tailors his opinions after the established tradition or consensus, he does not have opinion at all. Repetition is mechanization. If man sacrifices his individuation, he becomes an automaton programmed from the outside. He has no face, no freedom, no voice.
Common sense - this modus operandi of “culture” -- attributes meaning to something that can be shared, and absurd - to something non-shareable. The very expression “common sense” implies that sensibility is of shareable nature. Common sense makes meaning the currency in circulation. It forces individuals to exchange their unique gold nuggets for paper money. But, contrary to common sense, only becoming unique can separate man from the hive mind, and acquire his and only his own existence - the mean- ingfulness of the self. Self-realization is necessarily the estrangement from the common, from the shared. To truly exist, man should live in constant realization not only of his unrepeatable value, but also of his non-shareable value. Because I am after this unre- peatable and non-shareable value of this or that man, the estrangement of the situations that I create is complete. Not simply are they the atypical situations, they are unique. They are my revolt against regularity, repetition and typology to such a degree that I will never be able and will never want to repeat the situation that I created once. But they are more than that - my images are my refusal to share everything with everybody. They are
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my revolution against the manipulative “culture” with its paper money of pseudo- expression that is not backed up by human gold.
Indeed, language can only vaguely express this uniqueness not only because it oper- ates with repeatable units, but also because it operates with shared units of expression. Linguistic expressions belong to the shared “culture” more than they belong to the non- shareable individuated mind, which is the only way mind can exist. Only the contempla- tive or intuitive mind can in principle be individuated, because, in opposition to the calcu- lative and abstract mind, only the contemplative mind is capable of mental visualization, that is, of having experiences in the individuated way. That is to say, only visual art can in principle touch on the minds of men -- or, more precisely, the visual art of absurdism. The creations of visual art have value only when they are absurd, that is, when they ex- press the non-shareable value of an individuated “peak state.” Because every mind is unique, it can only playfully tune to the uniqueness of another mind and marvel at the non-shareable value of its own uniqueness and non-shareable uniqueness of another mind. “Common sense” is existentially impossible. It is a fiction. Man arrives at the realization of his freedom only after he fully realizes the non-shareable value of his uniqueness. That is to say, after he embraces the absurdity of his existence.