Alex Anikina. “How to Operate as a Human Artist, or the Antichthon.” 2015, artist book
This text, or its ancestor, first appeared in a book object that physically – literally – had no beginning or end. The kind of reading temporality that it invited was very different from any other book on my shelf: much closer to a meditation than to an immersion into a narrative. Such format, I thought, was good for describing the cyclical thinking that the artistic research often employs (mostly independently from the artist). But it also invited forth a particular relation to the time and the materiality of reading, a side of this cultural technique that is often taken for granted. Departing from the idea of a very basic storage device meant to overcome the insufficiency of memory, the book became a way to develop a complex kinship with the material body of the text itself, and its particular rhythm, not unlike that of abacus or prayer beads – a kinship with another way of thinking, a tempo, a counting device for the mind.
So while this text is a finite excerpt by necessity – an abrupt cut in the previously uninterrupted kinetics – it still links back to the cyclical ways in which thought operates, not as a linear progression but as recurring spirals and feedback loops. These circuits are universal to material bodies, be it a camera, a human being, or a book. And in a book concerning revolution, a word movement that already etymologically hints at the space charged with monumental paradigmatic shifts, planetary orbits and the fragility of lives involved, this text cuts through and straight towards the materiality of the act of reading. With so many ‘others’ involved, on many occasions I found it necessary to put the qualifier ‘human’ in front of the words that seemed to already contain it: however, only then the intertwined human and nonhuman temporalities became evident, and the intimate fragility of life in the face of larger-scale events and processes could be felt again.
couldn’t be expected to fill
the instance between my expectations
and your hopes.
But what could happen,
and is still happening,
is a workaround process of fulfilling desires
which have nothing to do
with our goals.
The thin simplicity
is conducive to things.
There are some things
that are easier imagined:
archives kept in the human graveyards,
artificial mountains,
endless films,
and others.
Being functional is defined
as the multiplicity of possibilities
combined in certain ways
with the multiplicity of skills,
and then divided by the number of
the most likely outcomes.
In other words,
dumb luck.
lamb duck.
I could go on.
Somewhere later,
or earlier,
I mention a play on words.
Sometimes
a play on play
is just an ornament,
and sometimes
it becomes a lever
which is just
long enough.
Most of the sometimes
I know which is which.
Do you?
The point is,
it is entirely impossible
to write this book in any other way,
as it is impossible
to read it
in any definitive manner.
some
understanding
by means of a net.
Through filling the gaps,
I achieve nothing;
but something else happens:
the meaning turns halfway
and clicks.
The words in this text
are unsure of their meaning
for a good reason.
The whole of it
is just a ‘click’
happening
in a very slow motion.
(Isn’t quoting yourself
a way of reinforcing
your own existence?)
I believe that it is still possible
to describe some of the operations
which are at work
inside a human artist.
Of course, there is no way of knowing
if the order of operations is significant.
usually collide into an operation, which,
mapped onto some more
unexpected temporalities
becomes a miraculous guide.
Give a coin to the guide,
so he can safely transport you
to the far bank.
Take care not to fall
into a whirlpool.
Where human artists are concerned,
other nonhuman presences
are to be expected.
My camera is easily one.
I use my camera now
as anything but:
as a divination device,
as an imperfect clock,
and as a reminder of my own mortality.
All of those are instruments
for a limited lifespan.
Limits, however,
drive growth.
In the floating consciousness,
islands appear and drift.
For them to become continents
(which then under the weight of time or reason or chance
crack and let the boiling blood show through),
something must happen.
A point of rupture, or
a point of convergence.
A point where everything at once collides
to form an imperfect whole,
which then proceeds to act
as if of its own volition.
A set of circumstances,
which, left to develop,
evolve into a moving,
acting thing.
Important here
is how not to be afraid.
For a long time I thought
that not to be afraid
meant to love.
Here,
include some darkness
in the equation.
Darkness has to be constricted somehow,
otherwise it’s just darkness all around -
and then we are in deep space.
Or the underworld.
Who knows.
Well,
delayed knowledge has its perks.
A human artist
is mostly conflicted,
and only then
productive.
The conflict in the text
is always partially resolved
through the process of writing it.
So in a way,
once it is finished,
the text is also
a monument,
an act of marking.
I would like to think that
it’s an act of bravery.
And as such,
an act of love.
any everyday word
is an effective contemplation device.
For me,
taking a walk in language
is definitely something
that’s been persisting
for a long time.
When I am finished,
I will have lost my way,
as if in a deep forest
where apparently lost people always take slightly to the left,
and so will have made a full circle.
In this endless landscape
it will be almost impossible for me
to find intensity.
As I will mention,
or as I have mentioned already,
it is a very slow click.
Intensity is just another name.
I will now list some of what might be present,
however it is necessary to remember
that the list is infinite,
and that due to the lack of intensity,
it might bore you
to death.
(As I have mentioned earlier or later:
death as an effective contemplation device)
The list goes, some simple things:
internal pressure,
irresolvable conflict,
unbearable irony,
description that is just too much,
play on words,
play on meaning,
play on play,
conceptualized attraction,
indecisive surface,
strongly challenged perception,
shift in the definition of decency,
affirmation of futility,
postapocalyptic intentions.
I would always go with the last one,
but then
I am trying not to overuse it.
One really has only one shot
at Apocalypse.
And so
no things from the list,
except maybe for the play on play,
are directly present in this book.
And the pace
has to be slow.
because the pages
are material and thus finite.
You will touch the pages,
and they will disintegrate
and turn into
sunflowers,
eventually.
Again,
in a text like this
there is no need for
intensity
as most understand it.
But there might be
a buildup,
a suspense,
a pause before jumping –
some circling of vultures, if you want.
Not fire itself,
but some potential
to catch on fire,
and to catch on fire
again.
Burning treasures
in a hidden chamber;
an operatic movement of the heart
that is constricted
by emotional overflow.
in trembling of water.
No, of poison in a cup,
to be noticed while standing
outside the gates of Athens,
in one extended second
before the hands
have brought the cup
to the expecting lips.
And then.
Ferryman!
I don’t have any small change.
Ferryman,
talk to your king
and tell him how I
have been mistreated.
I’m stranded here.
Carry me in your boat,
ferryman,
merry man in a hood.
For the river is stubborn.
And the line is thickening.
Again.
It is necessary for us
to continue in circles.
Dramatic mise-en-scènes
and transparent tragedies.
To be lulled by the narrative
into the whole
suspension of disbelief,
I am wondering now
how this affects me,
and you.
My childhood was
gone and gone again
with my mind suspended
over a book.
The sweetness
of that suspension
is something that I find difficult
to overcome.
Yet something
that I, myself,
am incredibly reluctant
to use.
breathes down my neck,
like many necks before,
I surrender to the desire
of falling into familiar narratives.
To fall from the sun,
to descend to the underworld,
to overcome challenges,
to be punished indefinitely,
to show wisdom and cunning.
Familiar to whom?
Is it me or my other self
from beyond the slavic border?
When resuscitating a text from scratch,
feel right under its jaw
and check if it has a pulse.
If you can then follow the pulse,
and by tracing it,
to discover the shape of its living body,
I congratulate you.
Most of the time
in my book
this is what artists do.
Or at least in this book,
while it lasts.
The correlation between
the shape of writing
and the physical shape.
The good thing about material objects
is that they have
a more or less definite
center of gravity.
Consider any book a universe of its own,
and it would be easy to see how
in gentle mockery
the pages of this book
revolve around its empty heated center.
To fall into it
is to surrender to the gravity
of the book,
and in doing so,
to reimagine the text
as a universe.
A cosmic configuration.
I would quite like to do that.
After all,
the center is also
where the tigers live.
The conditions are precarious,
and the situation is imperfect,
which is often a case
with utterances
fashioned after the Big Bang.
I would like to rethink the fall
as a concept of deep trust
interlaced with complete
understanding of its own future.
At the same time,
the orbit is not a perfect circle,
but it involves a circular motion,
a side glance
which continuously alters the course.
A straightforward plunge,
a dive,
a fall
could be one way of breaking the orbit.
But it is not the only one.
And I’m continuing to circle
around, as the state
of sustained fragility
is important for this text.
The idea is that of something happening very slowly,
for a very long time,
but just a second before
everything collapses
beautifully.
The question of being under-controlled.
The question of taking a fall for something
you trust.
The punctuation becomes important.
Since there is no definitive end or beginning,
a word to serve
as a punctuation mark.
It could mean ‘And so’,
or ‘wait’,
or ‘so and so’.
And so,
if there exists
some understanding of physical time,
I am following it in circles.
The habitual human time,
the time of sunrise into the day and sunset into the night,
is a matter of motion in space.
A matter of spatial configurations,
of orbits and movements of celestial bodies.
The day and the night being a lucky
follow-up.
From here,
the orbit becomes significant.
The movement which is
projected and thrown ahead
of itself; like the projector’s light,
except not in straight lines.
The light falls on the screen.
But to explain its fall
before the notion of gravity is invented,
is to circle around, endlessly,
within the text.
And this tells something
of the geometry
of operating as a human artist.
I’m circling here
partially
in order to name
my operations.
To name a thing
in this landscape
is to cause it
into being.
over any
preconceived notions
of being,
I would still choose
an over-arching trust.
A trust not unlike the one
that I feel towards falling.
Or towards the the fact that
any window in the two-mile radius
would most probably contain
some form of fragile proportion of
human architecture
and moving image
of the trees in the wind.
In terms of production of finitude,
I’m driving around in circles
because we don’t want to go home
just yet.
I’m only getting to know you.
Essentially what I might be doing
is painting sunflowers
over and over.
In order
to repeat the operations
of another artist
physically.
through actions.
Even if they are simple.
I am remembering another operation,
which is un-naming;
un-naming is
happening in this book
en masse; and it is not
the opposite of naming.
In fact, these two
operations can be quite close
in functionality.
I could un-name the sunflower,
but it wouldn’t change a single fact
of its constitution,
as well as the fact
that sunflowers include themselves
into the movement of celestial bodies,
and in doing so,
participate in construction of time.
A human being could
also participate in it
through making films.
If the idea of operation invokes the labour of the surgeon,
or the cut,
it only does so in this text
to reveal the ghostly presence of film
in any other activities
this human artist
might undertake
in the darkness.
The work of putting hours into
the material unfolding of
your own body is
a task on par with how not to be afraid.
On some days,
a human artist might feel
the following:
endless fury,
deep melancholy,
momentary blindness,
innocence,
excitement,
the weight of the world,
subjective experience of time.
Madness concealed
so well that it passes for
the tragicomical.
The constant alienation.
How to fall?
I watch films on fast-forward;
it makes me feel like
is still somehow possible,
even if shorthand
version.
An artificial mind would make
a better work of it.
But as we are still in the darkness,
it is hard to distinguish between
madness and enlightenment.
And absolutely no reason
there can’t be both.
And so we continue
on our orbit.
When abstraction in the text becomes confusing,
the drive behind it returns
in the form of more narrative.
All the hard work burnt to ashes
makes space for more hard work.
The work then becomes a concept of faith,
only the congregation is deeply flawed.
In our line of work
the exalted presence
is often just a shadow
of more things to come.
The hero we left in the underworld
only needs to continue walking.
Walking
becomes an operation.
As a kind of proficiency
that only appears in
the liminal space.
Of the same kin
is the art of staying still in motion
(mastered so well by flies and trains,
often together).
The architecture of vision
becomes cinematic.
The lines extending
from the eyes to the objects
included.
Thin lines
but not
invisible.
The vision,
as one said,
is a propeller;
propeller eyes move,
rotate, film.
on its own axis.
Wondrously
generated kinetics.
All calling the central region!
Calling the planet.
What better witness
to record a revolution.
Oh merciful king,
I have brought to you
more signs of disaster,
more songs of longing
and more lines of light.
My pale horse
is actually made of desire.
Dissociation of meaning
is not always humorous.
It is the dissociation of expectations
that produces the desired effect.
The naive approach.
Let’s say
there is a degree of
in our every proceeding.
Do I dare disturb the universe,
he asked.
I would say,
by all means.
So that when we approach
the hungry guard
at the gates
we can announce ourselves
properly.
So in the realm of what exactly
does our hero end up
upon coming back from the underworld?
Or, the question should be,
does the hero ever
intend to come back?
Look at the actual mirror, and not
at the image that
the mirror is forced to bear.
But then,
when is the image
one with the surface,
and when do they stay
like two brothers?
that we have not considered.
The act of witnessing
a greater scale.
The act of inscribing
some mortal eyes
in the bigger scheme.
The human artist
might be aware
of that.
***
Perhaps, the answer
is closer to the pond’s surface
like the faces of koi
who are proficient at divination,
and therefore tell no lies.
How to return, supposing we can?
The more we circle,
the tighter the orbit;
so that the hero can,
finally,
turn back home.