Excerpt from the manuscript, 'Is that you? '

 

‚IS THAT YOU?‘, is based on an idea from my early finding phase in Belgrade*. I had organized experimental workshops with friends in my and other studios, where we explored our bodies and senses, among other things, with blindfolded eyes. The aim was to find out and to explore the other senses without visual perception and the associated taste patterns, preferences and prejudices. In the process, discussions about social stereotypes arose. The individual in the mass and the mass in the individual. Is that you? and to which share are you yourself? To what extent do you define yourself from self-awareness and to what proportion of socio-cultural character. The experiment reached a new level as the followers of the theories of Sigmund Freud were confronted with the theories of Wilhelm Reich.

For me, Sigmund Freud was a "no go" like Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin or Karl Marx; Everything in me refused to accept their theories and the perfidious stigmatization of humans as a mechanical being driven by instinct and corrupted by greed. Oddly enough, their theories did not apply to them, but to the rest of humanity. Well, they worked out of the circumstances of their time, they dared to play God and tried to create a new human being. I do not want to question the intellectual achievements of these thinkers, but their works have had a devastating impact on society to this day. During the time in Belgrade, we were the guinea pigs in the Marx experiment. It also shows too clearly what simple minds can do with great ideas ... like so many Christians with the ideas of Christ, the Nazis with the ideas of Nitzsche and the nuclear power states with nuclear fission. Ideological experiments on humans always create Frankenstein monsters.

 

A creative person creates, a destructive one destroys! Basically, both do similar things, they rebuild their environment, but with different attitudes and results. Interesting that children already have these tendencies ... I recently observed (or once again) how a child with two sticks and laces created large wonderful soap bubbles, they were floating in the wind like living light organisms and a screaming horde of children chased the rainbow bubbles and destroyed them.

I could not classify Wilhelm Reich at the time, but this soon changed, and he entered my world of thought together with Erich Fromm, and Alan Watts*. Life became more bearable with thinkers who considered and described humans - women and men - as complex creative beings, with all their light and shadow sides of their mentality, sexuality and spirituality. From the perspective of Freud, Newton, Darwin and Marx, when it concerns the study of their humans model - Men and females - so it seems to me, were reflections of themselves and their social environment in their time. I am doing nothing else, I’m experiencing and describing my time, in which there is, apart from the misanthropic, particularly misogynic diehard demons of the past, a world-wide networking present time. In contrast to the dark times of the above mentioned human connoisseurs, many great, creative people live in my time, which unfortunately are still tormented by Freudian neurotics, Newtonian robotics, Darwinian monkeys, and Marxian exploiters.

Basically, any devaluation of the woman is also a devaluation of man who was born by a woman. Although, some men behave as if they were the offspring of hell, and the devil himself has shited them into this world. Above all, I think of various fanatical representatives and followers of different religions as well as their secular vassals who disguise their personal inferiority and impotence behind ideologies.

'Is that you' is an experiment devoid of all theories, where people can discover and share intimately, mentally or spiritually in an anonymous environment.

Since Belgrade, I have organized the experiment "Is that you?" In private settings in Amsterdam, New York and Luxembourg and then in Berlin for the first time as a public Interactive Multi-Media Installation Performance. It took place for the first time in 2012 as part of the "Homebase Festival" and for the second time at the "Friction Art Berlin" same year.

The Interactive Multimedia Installation, Is that you 'of 2012 consists of photos from past and recent sessions. I asked the participants to mark and describe body parts and places on them with circles and what they feel and how they stimulate these places. In the second room is a video loop in which naked torsos from different people are alternated by male and female hands. Behind the viewer, a third room with two openings, in the room is an anonymous person who can touch the viewer in the same way. The exhibition space can be closed off for a private experience. The interaction is anonymous and by mutual agreement.

The participants have the opportunity to record their experiences, to discuss, or to enjoy and to be silent.

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LvL

* 1980-1985

*Alan Watts-1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters :)

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"Newton's whole image of the world is based on billiards. The atoms are billiard balls, and they bang each other around. And so your behaviour, every individual around, is defined as a very, very complex arrangement of billiard balls being banged around by everything else. And so behind the fully automatic model of the universe is the notion that reality itself is, to use the favourite term of 19th-century scientists, blind energy. In say the metaphysics of Ernst Hegel, and T.H. Huxley, the world is basically nothing but energy--blind, unintelligent force. And likewise and parallel to this, in the philosophy of Freud, the basic psychological energy is libido, which is blind lust. And it is only a fluke, it is only as a result of pure chances that resulting from the exuberance of this energy there are people. With values, with reason, with languages, with cultures, and with love. Just a fluke.

Like, you know, 1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters for a million years will eventually type the Encyclopedia Britannica. And of course the moment they stop typing the Encyclopedia Britannica, they will relapse into nonsense. And so." From 'Out of your mind' The nature of consciousness by Alan Watts

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