Philosophy of the project
ON THE EDGE OF IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE

Today the problem of identity and its borders seems to be one of the important and burning questions. In historical perspective it is quite new phenomenon and it is connected to dynamically progressing globalization, in which the artist does not belong completely anymore to one social group, locked in classical norms of acting and being one-self. The opening of information canals to the entire world and history caused a phenomenon of interlacement and mutual interaction between variant cultural circles. Therefore it is not possible anymore to trap one’s own creativeness in one local perspective. Tempo of the changes of the context created in many people a feeling of worrisome dissolving of the borders and categories and created an attitude of locking one-self in that what is one’s own or losing faith in objectivity of the truth and the image of the world. Although on the other hand, life “in the crowded airport of the world” opens before us magnificent perspectives of development and self-recognition. That is the place where it is possible to meet “the Other”. This idea is taken from dialog of philosophy and works of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levianas, Ditrich Bonhoffer, Jozef Tichner and others, it defines the situation, in which “I” find the image of myself in the meeting with “the Other”, on the edge of my identity like in a mirror. It’s the situation of the meeting which forces us to come out from our chassis and to create mutual space with dissimilarities  which gives us hope to find self identity and categories which describe world in global, and not only local dimension.  It is like in multidimensional space, where many frames of reference are needed to define identity and the position of necessary things. A citizen of “width land” has to meet a citizen of “height land”, and then together meet a citizen of “time land” and undertake a mutual dialog among each other, to tell true and entire history of a shape of one’s world. Without the meeting and the dialog, the story of each of them would be shallow and dead. The situation would become even  more impressive and dynamic, when we use the model of Möbius’s ribbon. It is done by taping straps of paper inversely by the ends.

In that space, there is no division into two forever separated, opposed sides. Neither part of the space is unattainable to the opposed one. This simple manipulation binds that, what is opposed, therefore it is an important alchemic coincidentia oppositorum. And art with its flexibility and openness to that what is unknown, seems to be the most fitted field for the meetings and dialogs.

Professor ASP : Andrzej Bednarczyk