Roy voragen navigating the sublime and the profane

Navigating the sublime and the profane Roy Voragen

“Traces of passage, signs with multiple meanings, something that may be wiped clean tomorrow by a new journey…”

On God and other Unfinished Things, Goenawan Mohamad “In the beginning there is nothing,” so we can read in Genesis. And from here the story unfolds.

Genesis isn’t written by a novelist – a poet is more likely. It reads as a poem, so we can swiftly turn the page to the actual story: from nothingness to the profoundness of existence.

The beginning is depicted in brief – perfect for the speed-readers among us – however, what’s the hurry? It’s like watching a 96-second stop-motion video of how Michelangelo created the Sistine Chapel (it took him four years to actually paint the God's Creation of the World, God's Relationship with Mankind, and Mankind's Fall

from God's Grace on the ceiling). Rome wasn’t built in a day (although, it could burn down in a day). The beginning is summarized to set the stage.

Oftentimes, Genesis is criticized for the impossibility to create something so enormous in such a brief time. My question, on the other hand, concerns the rhetorical device: what is the purpose of this textual brevity? It is as if Mondrian started his career with the abstraction of his Victory Boogie-Woogie and regressed to his naturalistic paintings towards the end of his career.

The contingent bits and pieces of existence are not the miracle but that we exist at all is the miracle. Few words are devoted to this miracle, the story quickly moves on.

That is not to say, though, that the bits and pieces do not matter, they do to us now.

Goethe took the liberty of the artist to re-write Genesis in his book Faust (which was a re-interpretation of an old folk tale): “In the beginning was the act.” And this was a speech act – or, in other words, He spoke existence into being. Poetic magic!

Uttering the beginning of time into existence was a dramaturgical act. The curtain opens and we enter the stage, into the spotlights. The word gains weight and gravity.

Performance art avant la lettre.

A revolutionary beginning – Big Bang Kabum – prophets, poets & philosophers tell us of this. Soon after this leap into being, the door to revolution is shut closed – words become set in stone, certain words and stones are then deemed sacred. The ethical stance of faith could solidify into a habit of belief.

And Nietzsche’s crazy man enters the stage. The stage is a hectic market place – the crazy man yells out for all to hear that God is no more, but no one listened. Habitual belief made Him disappear, according to the crazy man.

Don’t blame Nietzsche or the lunatic in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It’s God’s privilege to create out of nothing. An individual’s act cannot accomplish this. Let alone to render the Maker of this beginning null and void.

The lunatic wasn’t an assassin – there wasn’t just one bullet – so don’t blame the messenger. (And Nietzsche isn’t the midwife of nihilism.)

However, while Nietzsche’s lunatic’s prophesy concerning God’s death might be/come true, His shadows will remain around for a long time to come. Take a look, for example, how we describe artworks. Art criticism is imbued with religiousinspired language. I do so too, for example when I wrote about Newman’s Cathedra.

As Jeremy Biles writes: “A specter is haunting […] art – the specter of religion.”

For long, artists worked at the service and mercy of priests and princes. Once I visited a small church in Rome, paintings by Caravaggio and Rubens hanging on each side of the altar (no guards in sight). And we can still relate to these works, even if faith is absent from our lives (this church was untouched by the Disneyfication of the Vatican Museum, packed with hundreds of people in the Sistine Chapel doesn’t offer the possibility of a profound moment).

I also visited Jerusalem – again, not as a pilgrim. But I did walk down Via Delarosa, up onto the Olive Mountain with a view of the Golden Gate (which is supposed to open upon the arrival of a prophet – I forgot which denomination’s God hopes to father this prophet). On each corner of the old city of Jerusalem, someone from a different Book tried to convince me of the Truth of Him – resulting in vertigo.

In the meantime, I live in Indonesia since 2003 – the country of azan, gamelan and sambal, of coffee and clove cigarettes. It is a nation where ‘what is your religion?’ is one of the most frequent asked questions, a question to which I don’t have a readymade answer. It’s also the land where defenders of the Book protest against art (particularly Agus Suwage and Davy Linggar’s Pinkswing Park, their collaborative contribution to the 2005 CP Biennale, which was subsequently discontinued).

Today, most artists can work autonomously from priests and princes, which is a blessing and a curse in disguise. Anything goes, going merry round and round.

Although, how to create and value art in lieu of horizons? A lack of horizons also results in vertigo. Superimposing horizons like the defenders of the Book aim to do is no longer adequate.

Today, many are more comfortable to speak in terms of spirituality. The twenty-first century, writer André Malraux envisaged, will see the resurrection of mysticism. It will be a DIY mysticism, cherry picking bits and pieces here and there, creating a blend of i-Buddhism.

As a closing note, the final line from an anonymous love poem I received when I was still a philosophy lecturer at Parahyangan Catholic University: “From me, the phrase of lost faith.”

Roy Voragen is a Bandung-based art writer and founder of Roma Arts; he can be contacted at fatumbrutum.blogspot.com. This essay is published in the Frying Tahu exhibition catalog, Soemardja Gallery, Bandung, July 2013 (fryingtahu.tumblr.com/).

Above artwork is by Maradita Sutantio (maradita.wordpress.com).