(A Point of View)

Preface 1

If we think of artistic practice as an augmentation of reality, there can be many interpretations.

You can add an object to a room. You can open the doors of a cupboard. You can rearrange them—which is not yet creation, but rather combinatorics. You can open a window. You can remove a wall. You can build another room onto the existing one. That is already closer.

And so on…

Different levels. One goal.

Preface 2

When a small window is opened in an enclosed space, at first the fresh air entering the familiar atmosphere may seem almost sacrilegious, destructive.

Then it becomes ordinary and necessary.

Later, unnoticed.

And at that moment, perhaps, it is time to open the window.

Aesthetics is similar to air. At first it agitates us, then becomes familiar, necessary, natural.

Until the next change.

And the creative act is precisely the opening of the window.

Whether this act is ethical or not depends on the situation.

Clearly, this is a metaphor. But in order to give the metaphor reality, one can perform

the ACTION “On Ethics, Aesthetics and Breathing”:

Breathe into an enclosed space and open a small window.

NOTES

1. The reaction will depend on the composition, mood, preparedness, and other conditions of those present and breathing.
2. When the window is opened, it is not only fresh air that enters the room. Information also leaves it, in the form of a change in the composition of the air produced by the life activity of those present.
3. The experiment can be modified by using holotropic breathing instead of ordinary breathing.
4. If desired, the experiment can be continued by performing other actions: for example, opening the window—or perhaps going outside (not necessarily through the window)…

Marina Razheva
Published in the proceedings of the Third International Symposium
Sputnik. Technology of Active Reflection
Kemerovo, 2001.