1.episode:w​hat is non-space

I post in my block the episodes’ transcripts of my podcast non-space. Today, the first of the non-space series where I share in short versions my ideas, concept, and artmaking. Hope you enjoy!

Imagine to stay on a beach and watching the sea. You will define the horizon, this small line dividing the sea from the sky. And you know, there is no line, it’s a perception. You define your position in the space, up and down, far and close, left and right.  Or imagine you have a white sheet of paper with 5 black thick lines. How do you value the white space of the paper and how the space of the black lines?

  We are continuously judging, categorizing and valuing the world around us and in us in different spaces defined by limits. Our mind can’t think without these limits and spaces.

Instead, we can imagine timelessness. Sometimes we experience being without a time and we think without the limits of time. Limits of time are given due our sensation or attitudes. Usually, we define this timelessness as eternal or eternity. But what is with space? We can’t think without space or its limits and positions of other spaces within. Even when we imagine the universe, we specify and fix bodies and limits in it. And still, there is an idea, an intuition of being without space, a spacelessness and this spacelessness is what I call non-space.

We all experienced spacelessness or as I would say non-space in certain situations. Situations of extreme physical emergencies or in situation of paradoxes, when we can’t bring in a logical line two contemporary thoughts or perceptions. Same in meditation or in deep contemplation.

In moments of conflicts or paradox, when two forces, thoughts, emotions or perceptions are strong the same and the existing hierarchal organization cannot continue anymore, then a third influence takes place, a new possibility of mind structure.

And this can happen in front of an artwork.

The spacelessness, the non-space, is experienced in between two spaces or in a short absence of space which is equal to its presence. A situation we have in front of artworks.

The artwork is part of a search process of openness and changes visualizing intuition. The artwork is often the result of a conflict with the different spaces: the space in which the work is situated and the visualized imaginary space. With artmaking, we witness the becoming of a different space. This happens by relating spaces and limits differently, shifting the imaginary to the so-called reality and create therefore an alternative imaginary which is shareable. With artworks, we face a gap, the space in-between two states of perception and thinking. This gap is a result of a translation process from one state to the other and once one is in this gap something starts to transform as the perception changes.

Therefore, is a non-space not an empty space. An empty space is defined by a circumscription which is absent in the non-space. An empty space is again a result of judgment.

I like to conclude this brief introduction to the non-space, with the idea, that we need more non-space. Because being in the non-space we can get awareness. This situation is a condition of possibility for transformation as it provides freedom of given preformed structure of thinking, feeling and behaving. Starting with getting self-awareness, we begin to evaluate our conditions and the condition of others. Therefore, is art a key for transformation processes, for the single as for the collective being as it triggers reflection and the process of becoming the other.  Participation in the non-space should be possible for everybody. Thank you for listening and I’d love to read your comments and thoughts you can send me via website rachela.abbate.net. In the next episode, I will talk briefly about the relation between space and thinking.