GEOMETRY AND "POINT OF VIEW"

(Continued)

The art I make is not about building up pictures based on geometries manipulated from a “point of view”. Rather, it is about the force of reality itself, and generating images based on that force—which, most fundamentally, is a spherical force. It is a force of prior unity (or all-inclusiveness). Thus, when I make images on a flat plane, the fundamental impulse is not to imitate three-dimensionality. It is about a flat rendering (or demonstrating) of the nature of the force of reality itself—prior to “point of view”, prior to egoity. I am not just involved in an aesthetic or a program for how to make a picture from shapes and so on. I am not sitting in “point of view”.

Therefore, through artistic means (as I also do through verbal means), I am working to demonstrate the nature of reality itself—just as it is, as it is self-evident to me already. I am not merely trying to make paradoxical images, but rather to demonstrate how the world is in reality itself, and how awareness of the world as it is in reality itself can show itself even to humanity in general, human beings who are otherwise seeing things from “point of view”, and who are also habituated to looking at pictures that are built upon conventions historically agreed upon, such as the Renaissance idea of perspective. The imitating of the real world through the use of rules of perspective started in the fifteenth century, and then that became the academic convention of how to make pictures.

One of the aspects of modernism that changed that was the relinquishment of the idea of perspective—as in Cézanne’s case, or the work of cubists such as Picasso and Braque, who began making pictures based on multiple “points of view”. But, even so, that is still taking the position of “point of view”, to make a picture that is paradoxically associated with the “point of view”. That is not what I am doing.

This is, in part, why I am tending toward the flat two-dimensional approach now. I am not trying to imitate three-dimensional reality. In Cézanne’s statement, he is still talking about three-dimensional forms—cylinders, cones, and spheres. He is not talking about circles, triangles, and squares—not flat geometries. Rather, he is still conceiving things conceptually and understanding them in terms of volume—still seeing forms in the plane of conventional realism, in the mode of traditional picture-making based on “point of view” and perspective.

I am not really involved in picture-making. The position in which I am making images is not simply picture-making in and of itself. Rather, the basis on which I am making pictures at all is the same in which I speak and live and work altogether. It is already prior to “point of view”, already without “point of view”.  “Point-of-view” perception is part of the convention of day-to-day awareness. On the other hand, neither am I simply trying to make pictures that are paradoxical over against “point of view”—rather, I make images that are prior to “point of view”.

Therefore, the images I make are not merely images based on multiple “points of view” and the deconstruction of perspective. Rather, they are generated prior to “point of view”, prior to conventions of picture-making based on the tradition of perspective and rules in the academic tradition. I go beyond all those conventions.

Just as using the camera (which is a “point-of-view” machine) inevitably makes images on a certain basis, I have had to work with the camera now for years to overcome “point of view”. Of course, I used multiple exposure as a means to do that. And that was something I was particularly doing when I was using film cameras. Now that I am using digital cameras, I am not trying to make multiples—although I could.

In fact, at the moment, I am not using photography at all, as I was before. When I shoot images, I shoot single-frame forms. I have not been including them in the images lately (although I expect to do so again)—but, day to day, I respond to them. They are sort of like a sketchpad. I bring them to the studio, work further by responding to them, and generate images in response to them, rather than actually putting the photographs into the image. I expect to use the photographs within the images in various ways, but still as a means of going beyond this “point-of-view” machine.

The body is a “point-of-view” machine. It is an ego-machine. I do not want to simply use it as such, as a convention of communication or perception, but (rather) to go beyond that. The body can be a means for generating images for others, who are also bodily existing, to see—and, optimally, for those seeing the images to go beyond just looking at them and to actually participate in them. 

I am manifesting the self-organizing force of reality in the context of perception and communication—and, therefore, of images.

Cézanne and the impressionists characteristically used little, short brushstrokes. My so-called “brushstrokes” are very, very small. They are bytes, pixels—more directed to how the brain organizes and generates visual perception. My interest in the digital process, however, is not merely technical. In fact, I do not really want much to do with that. I want to simply make use of the visual characteristics (as with the camera) that are possible using the digital means without getting involved in the machinery of it, the procedures of it, the linearity of it, and all the rest of the mind of it. I just work on it strictly as a visual process, without having to become embedded in the “technology-position”. I prefer to keep apart from that, just as I do not want to get over-immersed in the technology of the camera or anything else like that. I am always going beyond it, always standing prior to it, standing free of being subordinated by it.

So when I work, I am always standing outside the “seat” of the technology. The interest is strictly in terms of visual or perceptual phenomena, so that I am still working with the fundamentals of image-process, or the fundamentals of perception, rather than getting involved in “techie” business (either with camera or with digital means). In that case, I can be fully involved in the perceptual process and in the generating of images that manifest the characteristic of reality itself.

Unpublished commentary by Adi Da Samraj.

Copyright © 2007 ASA. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed.

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