Introduction to Metaphysics

As the Blood of God Bursts the Veins of Time

Introduction to Metaphysics 2022

39 x 9 x 1 in

Household mirror, circuit boards, acrylic square, laser-cut velvet sheet, desk picture frame, laser-etched mirror trays

This piece is the first (in the checklist order) of five “Introduction” pieces which feature neologisms or technical terms from my System of Transcendental Qabala, and are meant to direct the viewer’s attention to that system. The other four, referring to other topics in my system (besides metaphysics) are called “Introduction to Cosmogony”, “Introduction to Eschatology”, “Introduction to Axiology” and “Introduction to Epistemology”.

It should be noted that my philosophy system and my art practice are in principle perfectly detachable; modernism (which has lost its mandate, in my view) involved an unfortunate confusion (maybe it was needed at the time, but today we need to reconsider) between art and philosophy, with many philosophers, in the wake of Nietzsche, seeking to turn philosophy into art (to create a singular, non-rational, quasi-traumatizing meaning effect), and many artists, in the wake of Duchamp, seeking to turn art into philosophy. Both of these moves are in fact crippling to the human spirit. Because art is not capable of sustaining syllogistic conceptual elaboration, its ‘conceptual’ mode yields only flickering insights with questionable value, and a philosophy that refuses to submit to the light of reason simply stunts the emotional development of anyone unfortunate enough to be in its orbit.

While for me art and philosophy are detachable, in my practice they nevertheless make contact in precisely two points: one is the use of art (especially my operatic film Origin of the Alimonies, but also this show) to convey the unspeakable insights that discursive thought cannot access, and which in an ordinary philosophy system always has to take the form of a myth (e.g. Plato’s cave) or an enigmatic figure (e.g. Badiou’s mathemes), rather than a concept or schema. Music, drama and architectural form are better vessels for these insights than is the written word in isolation, since they can make contact with the full gamut of sensation; for me art provides the soil into which philosophical foundations can be laid. The second point of contact involves sheer transmission or communication: an art work can simply be an occasion to, outside of academia, direct a human being’s attention towards philosophy (without relying on the promotional and institutional infrastructure of the academia industry or the self-help industry).

“Introduction to Metaphysics” features four mirror trays which I laser-etched with, respectively, the names of the four Alimonies of my system (which are metaphysical ‘worlds’), Ololon, Ananon, Ylylcyn, and Sheymn. The patina on the lettering is an artifact of etching the mirror trays upside-down against a wooden plank, with heated wood fiber rubbing off on the mirror glass and the cooling a result. I glued these to a pre-fabricated household mirror along with circuit boards purchased from Amazon, as well as a desk mirror frame around a velvet square into which I laser-cut a cross shape. (The inside of the cross shape ended up going onto the air filter piece that I contributed to the Haus der Kunst group show in Norway earlier this year.)

You can trace the development of my metaphysical thought between the years 2016-2020 on its dedicated RSS feed on my arkwork.org website (which I stopped really using after 2020). The way I’d summarize it today is: an honest and clear philosophical view requires the existence of four worlds. These four worlds are implicitly present in the work of great philosophers working in both the continental tradition (Deleuze) and the analytic tradition (Brandom), but for for these figures, due to anti-religious social mores in their respective milieus, the full abundance is disavowed (in particular the fact that each Alimony is populated by conscious, noumenal beings to whom prayer and meditation - and not discursive thought - provide access). To some degree, the Alimonies are designated more accurately by the tradition of Qabala (which emerged out of esoteric Judaism and influenced modernist mystics like William Blake and Aleister Crowley), although the science-informed nuance of the academic versions (whose qabbalistic source is veiled) is absolutely crucial in providing qualifications and elaborations which provide actual purchase on contemporary reality.

Waking up to God-consciousness is a lifelong process of ascending the Alimonies. The lowest is Sheymn, where one is locked by default through social programming into preconceptions, which cause a greater or lesser degree of anguish depending on one’s circumstances. We then pass through Ylylcyn, the current, real collective and social economic reality being constantly re-created at every moment by living human beings, into which one may leap and find a place. Above that is Ananon, the world where eternal and original ideas are generated and re-combined, which provide blueprints for social, cultural and economic life, and are fundamentally distinct from and perhaps at odds with that life; Ananon is not society itself, it’s a quasi-divine penumbra encircling it, outliving any one generation and non-coextensive with the body. At the highest level one contacts Ololon herself, the second person of the Godhead, who yearns with her whole being for the redemption of human history and of every soul that has every lived.

A life of creative self-realization involves, having attained contact with Ololon, re-descending the four levels and offering unique works of some kind that can open the souls of those with ears to hear to the possibility of making the same journey.

There are many ways to formulate the precise nature of each of these worlds; they always ultimately resist inscription, but each generation provides new resources for making sense of them and making contact with them. The important starting point is to simply grasp that they are really there (this is not theory-fiction), and, if called, to begin work on one’s own unique formulation of their character, or at least to create according to their contours.