HOW TO PRESERVE A STATUS QUO
If we define a “status quo” as “keeping things in their present, existing state”, we also have to acknowledge that our existence is based on natural cycles, movement and the only constant matter is the ever-evolving change. Everything born dies, everything created dissolves.
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To succeed in even keeping our physical integrity, we need to adapt by adjusting ourselves in reflection to every change in the exterior world. We change our clothes to not die for seasonal reasons, we change our jobs to not die of psychological trauma and hunger, we change our appearance in order to not die alone. We are revisionists by nature so any occurring feeling of being powerful enough to keep anything as it is is a short-term illusion.
So, in these severe conditions, how do you create, shape and preserve a status quo state forever if in this ever-changing life change is not your thing?
If you think bigger than the low-level everyday need of change, the scale in the time span of the illusion of preservation tends to expand. You need to endorse the birth of a tendency, subsisting on single ideas, needs or dissatisfactions, that happen to exist at the same time. The next phase consists in introducing these oblivious single cells to one another and manipulating them into gradually forming tissues as in the biosociality of humankind we find well-being in sameness and solidarity. Tissues then form a solid, comforting and therefore self-supporting mass, now invincible to alien influence.
You have now reached the climax of your status quo – the lack of need to change. Do not be greedy. Russian winters can be very deceiving.
As everything born dies and everything created dissolves, so will you and your lovingly raised status quo.
The only solution for you to eternally preserve a functional present state in its culmination is to thoughtfully ensure finding your death in its peak to overtake its dissolution.
With your last breath while reflecting on your life, you will only see your power to create, shape and preserve a status quo.
But in the end, are you not considered a revisionist if you change yourself from alive to dead?​​​​
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part of “Defy the Status Quo”, Doza Gallery, Sofia
beads, cord, mirror, 40 x 60 x 300 cm.
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TIME
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A conceptual children’s book personal project, exploring the different aspects of time in a human life, the physical limits of a children’s edition and the development of the abstract thoughts of the school-aged.
Manually bound. Personally read and physically presented to children aged from 9 to 15 to explore in series of interactive workshops.
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7x54 cm with spread 114cm, illustration in plastiline
Life is like a very long and weird walk. We do not chose neither when to start walking, nor when to stop.
Time is not something one can touch or see. Time is visible in change. Change is highly vidible in our bodies.
Even if we want to go back, we can’t. We only look back while walking forward.
Because time only moves in one direction and no one knows why.
MORE FUTURE = LESS PAST
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An object is not only preserved because of its physical appearance, practical value or any other object quality, but because of its involuntary, very specific time presence in someone’s life in order to preserve the memory of this very specific time presence, because there are valuable pieces of time that are worth keeping some rubbish off the floor to continue their existence.
However, if an object means something only in one’s memory and the thing disappears due to the arriving future and the weakening of human memory in direct proportion to the arriving future, will the object exist in this future?
Yes, but as an objective monument of the vanished past. Monument of the Unknown Warrior.
Who used to fight for something. Or not. I don’t remember, I don’t know. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
part of “Future Oracles”, Sofia Art Week
sea boat fish thing, 1 EUR, a note, organza
FORM OF COMMUNICATION
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The competition is a battle, inseparable from the entire development of living organisms, present in every aspect of existence, even when the aspects of existence were still few and solely related to physical interaction for the purpose of satisfying physiological needs such as sustenance and reproduction. The nature of competition is inherently polar, and even before the emergence of moral absolutism in humans, or in fact any other morality, in order for there to be a winner, there must be a loser.
Throughout human evolution, art developed comparatively late in and was associated with the emergence of abstract thought, belief in the sublime and all kinds of newly formed mental capacities. However, even in the caves, art existed as a form of competition – that between man and predator/prey, as a prayer for victory over all natural forces hindering human prosperity. It is still associated with the physical, but the use of purposefully chosen colors and axes can already be observed.
In the structure of today’s system, which still milks everything cavernous, competition is inevitable, as it has always been, and although it usually takes place without bloodshed, it can be shockingly ugly and destructive.
Art, due to its later display, is logically a more elevated human manifestation, which, however, is corrupted by the initial physical/physiological baseness and petty needs inherent even in the lowest organisms. In a world of unicorns, in order to be expressed in its purest form, art should not be a struggle for survival among those creating at the lower levels of Maslow’s pyramid, and competition should be considered archaic due to its limited nature, involving only black and white, good and evil and other polarities.
Its contemporary successor is logically the rivalry, which essence is significantly more nuanced due to the fact that it can be a process in itself, not necessarily pursuing an end result and being a mutually nourishing form of communication – without struggle.
At least until someone pulls out an axe.
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part of Dare Zine N°7
clay, axe, pencil, ~35cm of height
