SANS FER

13:05 CET .. | .. 15th September 2020 .. | .. 45°26’36.3″N 12°20’20.0″E

maschinn focused on beginning from reality, for reality.
We asked: what is the role of art, in a world that is real, tangible, already crafted and constantly rolling?

SANS FER is an introduction to our reply to this question, and to the approach it inspired.

Text by maschinn. Photos by Kate Bellm.

SANS FER

18:54 CET+1 .. | .. 19th October 2019 .. | .. 37°58’56.0″N 23°44’18.0″E

0 ART — from Latin artem (nominative ars) “work of art; practical skill; a business, craft,” from Proto-Indo-European *ar(ə)-ti- (source also of Sanskrit rtih “manner, mode;” Greek artizein “to prepare“)

1 The role of art equals the world currently being realised. The only world we live in and know, we know it through creations. History, identity, science, feelings, time and space, and everything else that has a name: it’s all, strictly, art.

1.1 Artworks are the creations, selective and definitional in nature, that we perceive as real, tangible and in constant evolution.

2 In principle an artwork amounts to a definition of reality, presented in and through specific disciplines, intrinsically meant for developing and enhancing. Our works don’t just replicate, analyse, or reference reality — they first and foremost define it. Art is pure human ability, pure production, of which fine art is the end of the spectrum.

SANS FER theory B ⟜

3 Essentially any definition ‘bears the seed’ of realisation — of finalising reality.

3.1 Always been this way, and always will be. Today our definitional scope is becoming increasingly more evident, as our manipulatory and creative tools grow incomparable to what they used to amount to even just sixty years ago.

3.2 Art realises by giving reality the image, the structure, the likeness of its themes.

3.2.1 In this sense, different ÆSTHETICS correspond to different (merely stylistic) solutions to the relationship between the composition of an artwork and its theme.

3.2.2 The elements of an artwork — its characters, its spaces, its events, etc — always define the artwork’s theme: they provide definitions of what the work is about — e.g. definitions of solitude, of family, of possession. The way in which these various definitions relate to each other in providing a final definition of the theme is the way in which the theme of the artwork is realised.

3.2.3 ÆSTHETICS correspond to compositional and experiential styles shared by groups of works that maintain common a unique, grounding feature: the relationship by which the elements realise the theme within an artwork.

SANS FER theory C ⟜