You have to see them as the dark constellations, as they appeared in the Inca’s system of astronomy, which was defined in terms of the intervals of darkness between the stars, the internal shapes formed by shining perimeters. What creates significant space is neither an outline, nor the shining dots, nor the presence of light; light is the noise in the dark constellations. What they signify are the dark spaces between these dots. We know increasingly more, have increasingly more information, but as far as the dark constellations go, from below, we lose sight of the outline.
The Dark Constellations, POLA OLOIXARAC
The depth of the abyss is a speculation on the Absolute, of which we know little more than a few unproven certainties. Astronomers know that the light of the smallest star takes millions of years to travel through space, from a point in the cosmos to its final dying destination. Meanwhile, language has clothed the unknown in so many disparate metaphors as to envelope it in a suit of darkness. Imagining the dense matter of darkness empties man's sensorial experience of the world, returning it to a stage prior to that of the visual experience. Once the language of science loses its ability to describe reality, the aporia of thought connect with the dark metaphors of language, bridging the gap between the limits of knowledge and the ineffability of experience. Languages fix coordinates in the presence of light, to contrast with the darkness and catch a glimpse of the images in the deep cavern of time. The architecture of knowledge that is constructed through visual perception requires light, as a constitutive element, to guide itself in the World. Since the dawn of humanity, the development of knowledge has privileged the values of "clarity and distinction" over "darkness and difference". The question "what is darkness?" is linked to the limits of knowledge and language, at the same time that its gloomy tentacles capture vernacular social structures such as myth, rite, magic, and art.
Inside the skull, a dark chamber with two holes and a screen, unfolds the perceptible world of the outside in a continuous act of will and necessity. With every blink, in every moment, linking time and space to explore reality in its ceaseless continuum. Groping, without light, in the midst of darkness, it poses the challenge of blindness. A different experience of the world. And yet, no matter how much light technical and scientific knowledge projects onto Man's life, to lift it out of the darkness of ignorance, the relationship between the known and the unknown will remain in eternal imbalance. Inside the skull, a counter-spectacle of infinite power unfolds, which –like the sky– serves as a backdrop to the stars and to speculative travels, to reverie and memory, oblivion and death. Indian philosophy describes this intercranial space as chidakasha, comprised of the word for "mind" and the word for "space". Thus, an infinite place, which enfolds all the power of the universe, inside an enclosure in which consciousness is most likely located.
But not all knowledge structures depend entirely on the obvious, or on the luminous. To navigate without instruments through the dark of night, groping between chasms and darkness, distinguishing between the intervals of distance that separate one notion from another, armed with a weapon, a navigation tool in dark times. In times when the veracity of information and the value of truth is questioned. To write a book in which the world is imagined as a transparent castle with foundations exposed to anyone interested in seeing it is part of the utopia of illuminated knowledge that once served as a diagram for scientific dreaming. The underside of the plot of that Book of the World once dreamed of by science is represented in the dystopian counter-image of a parallel universe –a mirror reflection– similar to the oneiric underworld imagined by Lewis Carroll in Alicia's adventures. The Deep Web, labyrinthine fabric and counter-image of the Book of the World controlled and monitored by the State. A universe of free content, anonymous exchanges, and immaterial currencies whose visibility is hidden, like the truths that it encloses.
Darkness is expressed in time and perhaps its presence attests to everything immaterial in the universe. Space as yet untouched by the light represents its positivity, its actuality, through the absence of this physical component: darkness is the essence of the luminous. Today, art is perhaps one of the final bastions to sustain within its very way of being a close relationship with its presence. We live in a world where the desire for transparency has tried to erase metaphors and any speculative impulse related to the unproductive, illuminating every corner of the planet. Modern man's inability to embrace the unconnected, or anything lacking electrical wiring, is expressed in the anguish he experiences when cut off from the constant flow of information. Art relates in a negative way, and even out of necessity, to darkness. Complex knowledge structures that amalgamate the unconscious and memory, that configure something that is both there and not there through representation and action, are part of Art's way of being. The paradox of Art consists in being able to present impossible and at the same time real objects. In post-industrial society, with its disproportionate efforts to capitalize on the productivity of life at the expense of down and leisure time, Art would seem but a mere form next to mass media entertainment. Or so its detractors would have it seem. In this context, Art would appear to lose its essence through an arbitrary proximity to the vulgar mass media, while its area of influence is limited to disinterested dilletancy. Before division of labor and specialization of trades, before the secularization and homogenization of the globalized world, Art specified a variety of human activities, whose inquiries facilitated the meeting of man and his shadow and their descent into thought, in wild speculations regarding the unity of body and spirit, the indivisible harmony between the spheres of the living, and the unfathomable multiplicity of the dreamed and speculated worlds in their encounter with wakefulness.
In a passage from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Marx uses the spectral image of the Proletariat Masses to describe modern times:
If any passage from history has been painted gray on gray, it is this. Man and events appear as a Schlemihl in reverse, as shadows that have lost their bodies.
In these gloomy times, the world has achieved a full split. A deep fracture devours the light with the force of a black hole. The separation between spheres of life is so deep that Nature and life, like science and wisdom, are practically separate from the Whole of human experience. Could we surrender to Art the keys to a possible reconciliation between the pieces of this difficult-to-assemble puzzle? Could this split, through artistic practices, find a path to reconciliation? Is there a way, in this fragmented world, to fill the gaps and cure man's alienation from the sphere of human life through the binding power of Art?
In this edition of CARMA, the editorial theme of darkness reveals a wide array of blacks in connection with a plethora of texts and images. The cornerstone we chose, the chapter-aphorism "Black as an Ideal", taken from the aesthetic theory of the Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor Adorno, sets the general tone for reading the magazine. The aesthetic negativity at the foundation of Adorno's thought provides a key to reading the current times. The planetary course of aesthetic discussions is uncertain. But we can grope around, in every direction provided by human knowledge, inside the aroma of thought and the air of time. And although the culture industry has attempted to equate works of art with vulgar entertainment, we realize that their distinctions can be arbitrary. Art constructs tremendously complex knowledge structures that are hardly comparable with the products of the entertainment industry. Adorno invites the viewer not to be content with mere color. Black art, as one of the most disjointed impulses of an art aware of its social significance despite its formal and spiritual independence, is the cornerstone upon which we build our perspective of an aesthetic consciousness with a "capacity to resist and endure".
And while the light of science and the optimism of instrumental rationality sift through the grains of the millenary harvest of man's technical progress, the source of consciousness and other physical aspects of Man's, and the world's, nature remain hidden behind a veil that we can only point to and try to draw back. The human mind, beauty –man's ultimate goal–, will remain a mystery hidden in the dark, regardless of the light that science and technology attempt to shed on them. Our notions regarding the mysterious origins of the Universe, memory, the place of our memories, and the identity of each individual are dark, but perhaps all luminous certainty is wrapped in a dark cloud.