Critical essay on Nan°art by Mauro Carbone
Professor of Aesthetics at the State University of Milan, Italy
There is more than one reason why I chose such a title for this article. The most obvious is my desire to ironically deny that I am an expert in the sector, since my signature on the catalogue may make others believe, dangerously, that it is truly my role. The other reason is because its ambiguously formulated expression of doubt seems to initially suggest the need to confirm or refute what I am going to say. I can already imagine each visitor in the lobby feeling strongly an unexpected sense of loss, since all of us upon entering an exhibition would obviously expect to find the showcases of the works we came curiously to see, promising ourselves to get to know them better later. I can foresee how this Nanoart exhibition would disappoint, above all, this obvious expectation, for the visitors will find themselves welcomed not by artistic products lying open to their gaze, but by technological instruments – microscopes and other optical apparatus – unavailable for immediate enjoyment, since visitors would have to rely on the assistance of competent personnel to be able to use them.
My hypothesis, therefore, is initial frustration for everyone. This would not be a novelty thinking about it; since this is the most characteristic effect art has produced - at times, even tried to produce - for at least part of the XX century onwards. I would not consider initial frustration to be negative, on the contrary. As has so often been maintained since the start of the XX century, recognising that our habitual expectations have been frustrated could in fact help us to approach situations as if it were the very first time we were encountering them. We would at least be partially deprived of those certainties that usually blind us to the ways the world presents itself to us.
Against the usual blindness in our case visitors to the Nanoart exhibition are really going to experience their own blindness before these same works put on show. This short circuit will produce a rare phenomenon, or so it seems to me: it will make us reflect. It could, for example, make us think how precarious and, on closer inspection, unfounded, is our position of dominion over the things around us, a role which habit makes us believe we hold.
I remember the sensation of loss I experienced in Paris more than twenty years ago, while visiting an exhibition on the fifth floor of the Centre Pompidou – conceived by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard – the title of which now seems to relate to the exhibition being held now. It was entitled Les immatériaux and was very disorientating for the visitors, principally because it offered immaterial works born from the encounter between artistic and computer research, which was just beginning. Will this exhibition, which celebrates the beginnings of an encounter between art, science and technology in the name of the apparent immateriality of the works, in turn produce similar effects? Or will the visitors, unlike the visitors in Paris who wandered desolately around the exhibition halls, compensate for the initial sense of loss with a reinforced sense of power the minute they press the microscope to their eye, which they will feel is similar to the eye of God, who also rules the infinitely small? May this God not forbid it. So here are a few things - so to say - which I (do not) know about Nanoart.
Perhaps, to avoid this so typically Western sense of renewed and increased dominion over the world, we must remember how the philosophy of the XX century observed that – please note – the eye pressed against the microscope is not without a body or a history, it is not a neutral eye, detached, like the eye of God, and therefore does not affect the microcosm it is observing. No, the eye that looks into the microscope carries with it a body and a history which inevitably involves the object it is looking at, and is in turn, inevitably involved by it, revealing how both – the watching eye and the microcosm being watched – live, again inevitably, in the same place together which, precisely because it is unique is called the universe.
For the same reason, moreover, the philosophy of the XX century encouraged suspicion of the term representation, intended to describe our relationship with the world, as if the latter, according to the German etymology of the word, were placed before us, distant and submissive like the landscape we see from the window, or the view from one of those panoramic viewing points equipped with telescopes for public use, which with a few coins, promise a vision as acute as the eagle’s. Will the microscopes and other optical equipment in this exhibition convey similar promises? Or will they succeed in being like open doors, and guide the visitors, as promised by the title of one of the works, Beyond the pillars of Hercules, magically reducing them to a size which perhaps may make them lose their way in that nanoAfrica which is there for them to explore? It would be superfluous to state that the effort to go beyond the Pillars of Hercules of representation, by exhibiting and even taking advantage of the spectator’s involvement in the work, is what XX century art has bequeathed to the art of the XXI century. Will Nanoart, an art that is just starting to blossom, know how to carry on this legacy? Will Nanoart convince us that it is a window, or rather, a doorway? This is again, something I (do not) know.
Surely this alternative – window or door – unites two alternative ways of interpreting the subtitle of the exhibition, “seeing the invisible”. I was speaking earlier of the need to dominate the world, so typical of us Westerners. This subtitle could sound like a further conquest, like this: “We declare that a new window has been opened that allows the eye to penetrate further beyond! From today onwards the visible has expanded and the invisible been reduced”. Can this western need to dominate the world perhaps be summarised in the need to see everything? In the course of the XX century, however, this need has admitted to its becoming more and more a desperate urge to see everything. Literally speaking, it is the loss of hope that the invisible, in no matter what form, will continue to keep us company. As if we were dealing with one of the natural resources of which we will be hopelessly deprived because of unceasing exploitation. As if the invisible were really the opposite of the visible, and the increase of one could not but correspond to the diminution of the other. Also as if the invisible were not, instead, a promises of other things to see, which the visible itself always holds. This is another way of interpreting the title of our exhibition. The infinitely small does not exhaust all the possibilities of vision. On the contrary, Nanoart welcomes us with its door open wide, a gateway to infinite chambers. In short, the invisible cannot stop hiding, even in the infinitely small: this is what you will be made to see.
While I was writing earlier about the invitation to a journey that could be offered by the eye pressed against the microscopes of the Nanoart exhibition, I suddenly remembered the science fiction film the title of which promised exactly that: a departure on an extraordinary journey. It was called, The Fantastic Voyage (1966), exaggeratedly translated in Italian as The Nightmare Voyage. It was the story of a group of scientists who allowed themselves to be miniaturized and put in a submarine, which in turn was miniaturized and injected into the body of a prestigious colleague, seriously wounded in an attack. The submarine was to climb right up to his brain where they would try to block the threat of an embolus. The inside of the human body was thus the location of this science fiction mission, to be carried out along the path of the veins and the broken arteries. Starting off as “fantastic”, the voyage became a “nightmare” when the miniaturized men had to defend themselves from the micro organisms which we usually see innocently wriggling under a microscope, but which here were transformed into terrible monsters intent on eliminating the minute invaders.
Miniaturization overturns what is familiar and makes it alien, as well as revealing how hostile the friendliest place in the world - our own organism - can turn out to be. Here, in short, is the invisible through which that film made us see the abyss. Will this first Nanoart exhibition succeed in doing something similar? This is essentially what I still do not know. I do know however, that if it fails, I will suggest that the second Nanoart exhibition provide for the nanometric reduction of the visitors themselves, who are then to be put in a nanosubmarine and led on a voyage into the invisible which would be, without doubt, a nightmare. After all, in the film the mission was to have taken less than an hour, and then the scientists and the ship were to return to their usual size, though not to their usual habits. Science fiction, you say? Bear in mind then, that while I was writing this article, I discovered that the first submarine to be sent into our body to distribute medicine without harming the rest of the organism has really been designed. Dear visitors to the first Nanoart exhibition in the world, prepare yourselves!
There is more than one reason why I chose such a title for this article. The most obvious is my desire to ironically deny that I am an expert in the sector, since my signature on the catalogue may make others believe, dangerously, that it is truly my role. The other reason is because its ambiguously formulated expression of doubt seems to initially suggest the need to confirm or refute what I am going to say. I can already imagine each visitor in the lobby feeling strongly an unexpected sense of loss, since all of us upon entering an exhibition would obviously expect to find the showcases of the works we came curiously to see, promising ourselves to get to know them better later. I can foresee how this Nanoart exhibition would disappoint, above all, this obvious expectation, for the visitors will find themselves welcomed not by artistic products lying open to their gaze, but by technological instruments – microscopes and other optical apparatus – unavailable for immediate enjoyment, since visitors would have to rely on the assistance of competent personnel to be able to use them.
My hypothesis, therefore, is initial frustration for everyone. This would not be a novelty thinking about it; since this is the most characteristic effect art has produced - at times, even tried to produce - for at least part of the XX century onwards. I would not consider initial frustration to be negative, on the contrary. As has so often been maintained since the start of the XX century, recognising that our habitual expectations have been frustrated could in fact help us to approach situations as if it were the very first time we were encountering them. We would at least be partially deprived of those certainties that usually blind us to the ways the world presents itself to us.
Against the usual blindness in our case visitors to the Nanoart exhibition are really going to experience their own blindness before these same works put on show. This short circuit will produce a rare phenomenon, or so it seems to me: it will make us reflect. It could, for example, make us think how precarious and, on closer inspection, unfounded, is our position of dominion over the things around us, a role which habit makes us believe we hold.
I remember the sensation of loss I experienced in Paris more than twenty years ago, while visiting an exhibition on the fifth floor of the Centre Pompidou – conceived by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard – the title of which now seems to relate to the exhibition being held now. It was entitled Les immatériaux and was very disorientating for the visitors, principally because it offered immaterial works born from the encounter between artistic and computer research, which was just beginning. Will this exhibition, which celebrates the beginnings of an encounter between art, science and technology in the name of the apparent immateriality of the works, in turn produce similar effects? Or will the visitors, unlike the visitors in Paris who wandered desolately around the exhibition halls, compensate for the initial sense of loss with a reinforced sense of power the minute they press the microscope to their eye, which they will feel is similar to the eye of God, who also rules the infinitely small? May this God not forbid it. So here are a few things - so to say - which I (do not) know about Nanoart.
Perhaps, to avoid this so typically Western sense of renewed and increased dominion over the world, we must remember how the philosophy of the XX century observed that – please note – the eye pressed against the microscope is not without a body or a history, it is not a neutral eye, detached, like the eye of God, and therefore does not affect the microcosm it is observing. No, the eye that looks into the microscope carries with it a body and a history which inevitably involves the object it is looking at, and is in turn, inevitably involved by it, revealing how both – the watching eye and the microcosm being watched – live, again inevitably, in the same place together which, precisely because it is unique is called the universe.
For the same reason, moreover, the philosophy of the XX century encouraged suspicion of the term representation, intended to describe our relationship with the world, as if the latter, according to the German etymology of the word, were placed before us, distant and submissive like the landscape we see from the window, or the view from one of those panoramic viewing points equipped with telescopes for public use, which with a few coins, promise a vision as acute as the eagle’s. Will the microscopes and other optical equipment in this exhibition convey similar promises? Or will they succeed in being like open doors, and guide the visitors, as promised by the title of one of the works, Beyond the pillars of Hercules, magically reducing them to a size which perhaps may make them lose their way in that nanoAfrica which is there for them to explore? It would be superfluous to state that the effort to go beyond the Pillars of Hercules of representation, by exhibiting and even taking advantage of the spectator’s involvement in the work, is what XX century art has bequeathed to the art of the XXI century. Will Nanoart, an art that is just starting to blossom, know how to carry on this legacy? Will Nanoart convince us that it is a window, or rather, a doorway? This is again, something I (do not) know.
Surely this alternative – window or door – unites two alternative ways of interpreting the subtitle of the exhibition, “seeing the invisible”. I was speaking earlier of the need to dominate the world, so typical of us Westerners. This subtitle could sound like a further conquest, like this: “We declare that a new window has been opened that allows the eye to penetrate further beyond! From today onwards the visible has expanded and the invisible been reduced”. Can this western need to dominate the world perhaps be summarised in the need to see everything? In the course of the XX century, however, this need has admitted to its becoming more and more a desperate urge to see everything. Literally speaking, it is the loss of hope that the invisible, in no matter what form, will continue to keep us company. As if we were dealing with one of the natural resources of which we will be hopelessly deprived because of unceasing exploitation. As if the invisible were really the opposite of the visible, and the increase of one could not but correspond to the diminution of the other. Also as if the invisible were not, instead, a promises of other things to see, which the visible itself always holds. This is another way of interpreting the title of our exhibition. The infinitely small does not exhaust all the possibilities of vision. On the contrary, Nanoart welcomes us with its door open wide, a gateway to infinite chambers. In short, the invisible cannot stop hiding, even in the infinitely small: this is what you will be made to see.
While I was writing earlier about the invitation to a journey that could be offered by the eye pressed against the microscopes of the Nanoart exhibition, I suddenly remembered the science fiction film the title of which promised exactly that: a departure on an extraordinary journey. It was called, The Fantastic Voyage (1966), exaggeratedly translated in Italian as The Nightmare Voyage. It was the story of a group of scientists who allowed themselves to be miniaturized and put in a submarine, which in turn was miniaturized and injected into the body of a prestigious colleague, seriously wounded in an attack. The submarine was to climb right up to his brain where they would try to block the threat of an embolus. The inside of the human body was thus the location of this science fiction mission, to be carried out along the path of the veins and the broken arteries. Starting off as “fantastic”, the voyage became a “nightmare” when the miniaturized men had to defend themselves from the micro organisms which we usually see innocently wriggling under a microscope, but which here were transformed into terrible monsters intent on eliminating the minute invaders.
Miniaturization overturns what is familiar and makes it alien, as well as revealing how hostile the friendliest place in the world - our own organism - can turn out to be. Here, in short, is the invisible through which that film made us see the abyss. Will this first Nanoart exhibition succeed in doing something similar? This is essentially what I still do not know. I do know however, that if it fails, I will suggest that the second Nanoart exhibition provide for the nanometric reduction of the visitors themselves, who are then to be put in a nanosubmarine and led on a voyage into the invisible which would be, without doubt, a nightmare. After all, in the film the mission was to have taken less than an hour, and then the scientists and the ship were to return to their usual size, though not to their usual habits. Science fiction, you say? Bear in mind then, that while I was writing this article, I discovered that the first submarine to be sent into our body to distribute medicine without harming the rest of the organism has really been designed. Dear visitors to the first Nanoart exhibition in the world, prepare yourselves!
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