Definition, The Truth of Virtuality, 2015, is composed of 25 digital prints, each 24×24 cm
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Let’s begin with Plato and the ongoing discernment problem of the two worlds: between the world of essence and the world of appearance. And who could it better explain as Plato himself telling the allegory of the cave, in which people are imprisoned in a cave and falsely believing the shadows are real by ignoring the origin. The prisoners at one point start to turn themselves and discover light and figures cast on the walls, a discovery under struggle and pain, but after adjusting the senses to the light they find the way out of the cave.[1] What if, arguing with Nietzsche, this cave is only a part of a bigger cave? We would believe to be out and being still in a cave. What if, there is always a bigger cave? [2] Whoever is capable to judge the state of being or belonging inside or outside the cave? Whoever decides what truth, model, and its copy is? In ignoring our very being we establish a system of simulacra producing one simulacrum after the other. A copy of the copy of the copy and we are always trying to find a way out of this shadow world to reside the next. Deleuze suggests to consider this false copy without a model, without origin, the so defined simulacrum as a way to overthrow the Platonic two-world system and create In this subversion with the simulacrum as “Dionysiac machine” chaos, equality between all elements, create a state of non-hierarchy.[3] With the latter, we follow the trace of virtuality and its digital instruments. Actually, we are caught in our beliefs of reality as true, at least till we find ourselves in a conflict, a paradox or just in front of science or aesthetics. In art are produced simulacra reflecting reality as fake, as a mask, a false truth. As well intrinsic to art is the claim or aim to arrive at the unreachable truth.[4] The manifold forms of these discrimination-claims in artistic expressions are theorized and categorized and thanks to these experiences we continue our labyrinth-like path towards truth leaving more and more reality behind us. Mankind used numerous methods and technologies to manifest our way of thinking and mirroring the inner status quo. Under this consideration, we should ask what then reflects digital technologies. Technology is an extension of our body and senses.[5] Digital technology corresponds with our nerve-system and brain: an extension of communication between the cells and their information management continuously sharing and connecting in order to build and rebuild a net. Another analogy of information management we find with the brain as it not discerns between images and reality, or between the experiences made in dreams and as awake. Which is the true, which is the false experience? Which image is the simulacrum? Are they all simulacra? Digital technology reflects our consciousness of living the world more and more virtual, connected and non-hierarchic. With all consequences of clashes of systems, chaos, and instability, living in the “ twilights of the icons” [6] we have to ask ourselves, where we are headed to or at least, what are we aiming for. We have the opportunity to recognize the whole experience of life as being one with nature, world, and cosmos and be aware that judgments and differentiation are not true. In the end, our passage in the simulacrum labyrinth becomes the truth.

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The big “but” remains: our aim to leave this system, we have an inherent knowing – and we can’t prove it, that there is something outside this cave-labyrinth-simulacra. And this makes us recognize that pain, suffer, joy everything in this world (in the German sense of “Welt”) is a simulacrum and we have to go beyond and above. We don’t know how, except, that we are using this world to arrive at the next level. At a certain point proceeding on our way in this labyrinth, we begin to understand that we are a part of all and all is a part of us and we encounter our soul by learning to give necessary space to guide us through this world. And we will follow the soul out of this labyrinth.

[1] Plato , Die Republic

[2] F. Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Boese, ed. Karl Schlechta (Anaconda, 2006)

[3] G. Deleuze, Plato and the Simulacrum, transl. by Rosalind Krauss, in October, Vol. 27 (MITPress, Winter, 1993) p. 45-56

[4] see also: Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990), 193-199

[5] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1964)

[6] G. Deleuze, Plato and the Simulacrum