Sclerosis multiplex

Series of 10 assemblages in vitrines, 100 × 70 cm
Combined technique on plexiglass, 2024

Historical records contain countless testimonies about how humanity has resisted not only all-pervasive cosmic entropy, but also about how it is possible to organise and to otherwise experiment with our defence of ourselves. This does not concern a linear development, but rather a sporadic, intermittent movement. Many policies, guided by a desire to eliminate suffering and inequality, contain their own darkness and the seeds of their own destruction. We might call it a chronic autoimmune response, complicating the seemingly black and white nature of such a struggle. The word “sclerosis” refers to the fresh wounds and the scars that accompany it. In the case of multiple sclerosis, practically any neurological symptoms may appear, often crossing over into an incapacity to effectively apply previous gains and to readapt them. Something from the experiences we have acquired is retained in the form of artefacts, and something in the form of documents. Besides a remote and spectacular display, materialised memory offers us a reservoir of referential models, open to further modifications and updates. Faced with our contemporaries’ visions of inevitable Armageddon, what makes sense in the next autoimmune response that we are evidently going through? One of the possible answers is art, producing images that are open to understanding. Thus, one of many attempts to capture the subtle vibrations of the exacerbated emotions on this planet. It’s not a lot, but it’s also not nothing.

Fotografie: Jonáš Verešpej a xy

Ways of Seeing, Picture legends:

1. Votive Tablets, Pentecophia near Corinth, 580 BCE
2. Kylix (typ C), Douris Painter / Getty Museum, 470 BCE / 2002 CE
3. Fragments of a Marble Plan of Ancient Rome, Gianbattista Piranesi, 1756 CE
4. Lapidarium, J.J. Winckelmann Antiquities Museum, Trieste, 1843 CE
5. Facsimile of Notes, Green Box, Marcel Duchamp, 1934 CE
6. Arbeitsjournal, June 15, Bertold Brecht, 1944 CE
7. Sleepers, Confrontage, Jiří Kolář, 1952 CE

A
Dismantling Process Scheme
A scheme decomposing the production of an artwork in the service of entities whose primary goal is to generate profit. It was drawn by Bertolt Brecht, at the time of the advent of sound film, long before the existence of streaming TV channels.

B
Two Chained Monkeys
It is not easy to see slave labour, for example, in our own shoes that we wear on our feet or in the food that we eat every day. Is it possible to see it in spectacle or even depicted in works of art? How much more conclusive is this?

C
What Violence Teaches Us
It is not only the colonized intellectual who has learned from his masters that the individual must be able to assert himself. The idea of society as an association of independent individuals, each of whom consistently closes himself off, either to his own subjectivity, his own wealth or his own world of thought, is literally drummed into his head.

D
We Want World Peace or They Want World Peace
Various meanings are attributed to different events, depending on the prevailing tendencies in interpretation. The tendencies are the result of political struggles. Propaganda is always working at full speed, regardless of the imagination of individuals.

E
Merchant Theatre Scheme
The individual time figures show Capital performing as the Merchant. He spends money to buy consumer goods or advances money to buy labour. He follows one rule, he never part with money unless he receives an equivalent for it. Production is repeated, more and more money accumulates behind the scenes.

F
Politics of Aesthetics and Aesthetics of Politics
The scheme consists of three Duchampian ready-mades, the French window “Waterloo”, the barred window “Habsburg Still Life” and the balcony “Freshly Painted”. At the bottom of the diagram are participants in an art circle protesting their reformist leadership.

G
Great Workshop of World System
The poverty of countries on the periphery is not due to the fact that they are not yet integrated into the world system and thus cannot participate in the common wealth. They are already integrated, but into a ready-made system based on structural inequalities where some benefit from others.

H
Period of Credit Unavailability
The question is not whether cooperative sharing is fairer than other economic models, because it undeniably is, but what role it plays in wild capitalist societies. It is probably one of the few ways to get credit in hard times. Co-operatives help to bridge these periods, only to be pushed out of the global financial system again.

I
Private Property and its Transformation into Communal Luxury
How big can the difference in private ownership be between individuals? We know from the present that such a difference can be incommensurable. Are the claims of feudal-type ownership justified? Contemporary billionaires claim that yes, their property rights are even untouchable in republican establishments. Their interests are mostly defended by people from the lower classes.

J
Abstract Eye of Capital
Capital itself is a moving contradiction in that it pushes to reduce working hours to a minimum, while on the other hand it passes off working hours as the only measure and source of wealth. The original calculating, intelligent machines are an implementation of the analytical eye of the factory foreman. From the beginning, they were akin to Bentham’s panopticon, as tools for surveillance and measurement of labour at the same time. The age of artificial intelligence is no different in this.