Distiming

The awareness of the existence, acquired by everyday prac­tice of life, establishes the sense of time as an endless repetition of the absurdity of everyday routine. Everyday contribution of general increase of absurdity – the seeming certainty, acquired by mere endurance in the uniform hab­it of living; creates the atmosphere in which the sense of time is lost, thus, if equally empty, what is the difference between yester­day; today and tomorrow? In everyday routine, there is a lack of the necessary means of distinction between the Real and the Conceived. By monotonous repetition of life-for-death’ s-sake an endless opacity spreads over the whole area of the overall existence: to see means to comprehend; but how can I comprehend the time that envelops me fully? Owing to the lack of distinction between subject and object, everyday routine lapses into the state of invisibility. The hardly discernible boundary between everyday life and death is only slightly made perceptible by the shaky pulsation: the mathematics of blood refers to the property of continuity as the smallest common factor of the Real and the Conceived. Thus the comparison of the notion of time with the discernible course of thinking as clearly outstanding act of attention by the order of things is imposed, comparable only with counting. As denominator of everyday life the sequence of natural numbers: 1, 2, 3, … will be taken; the algorithm of which corresponds to the monoto­nous course of everyday time. The unison of everyday routine and of natural number sequence furthermore make it possible for the counting of time to start from one, at an arbitrary moment, which may be defined as the Starting Event. From the birth giving point, by further timing: everyday routine is easily spaced to an arbitrary depth of time-in it the border point of perspective (less) repetition of empty days is projected: this is the Finite Event, the presumed beginning of subsequent counting. The turning into time is thus defined as plunging of consciousness into the organized line of unavoidable possibilities; brought to expression through counting. From the Starting to the Final Event an empty space of nonsensical everyday routine is spreadttretched between the two points of infinity called past and future. The quantity of the space is determined as timed everyday routine; whereby the number is used as signifier of time. A vast quantity of numbers; proportionally increased, at every moment by one, makes the sequence of numbers long enough to comprise vast quantities of time. Thus turned into time, everyday routine passes the number control, as a measure of obligatory protection of the sense of the Existing. But still; everything is roofed by the gaping arched ceiling of nonsense. The principle of numerical sequence and control does not bring up the question of sense, it only organizes the counter resistance to the pressure of emptiness in the same way, shifting practical adaptation to everyday routine to the foreground, for the purpose of orientation in the conditions of poor visibility. And, really, what is to be seen in a glimpse at one’s watch? What do the numbers on its face stand for? In congruence with numerical scale; the sequence of individual days is signified; and furthermore of all impersonal ones the sequence does not generate content. By the timing everyday routine is only outwardly determined as a quantitative special relationship and that of the numerator towards the numbered space. Such a quotient only denotes the establishment of the form of construction of time: quantitatively, number is only a scientific tool imposing calculation and excluding any arithmosophy. But; number is not a mere sign-in the first place it is the fundamental and original form of the awareness of the existing: it is the meaning of Total as much as it is its sign. As a sign; number functions in quantities; by the power of organized multitude; in the repetition of impersonal units in the construction of algebraic tower in the air. The quality of a number, however, is exhibited in the form and content of natural rhythms, as an inner emanation of individually personified numbers; and is thus materialized in a literally arithmetic way. While numbers; by their quantities; formally describe the rise of the construction of time; by their rhythmical properties; they generate the content of the construction of the reality itself. Everyday routine is differentiated by the quantity of number; but the numerical grid remains indiscrete. The discretion of numbers as signifiers of empty days represents so-called dis-discretion; called dis-timing. If timing is determined as arithmetic depersonalization; the distiming will mean the understanding of the organization of the established atmosphere; leading us to ourselves. In everyday conditions, gaining consciousness means an Event, defined as self-consciousness of immediate presence. According to the definition, timed space is incontinuous but an elaborate, dynamic staccato, signified by natural numbers, in which every point brings about an unfulfilled possibility of occurrence. Thus it is possible to establish one’s own point of view, at any point, by counting the timed space. When this is done, everyday routine is defined as geometrical location of points, equally nonsensical with respect to the standpoint called present. Thereby, also, the dis-discretion is done and the open heaven of emptiness of the time context turns out strange, utterly different from the established consciousness. In the gained point of presence of the center of everyday routine, particularized consciousness reveals its own new born reality. Outside the pure reality, the notion of the real loses its clear sense. In the overpowering of present everyday routine is cancelled as a world without measure. It is now the realm to be ruled by, the sense of timing in the center of which, strained by presence, there is the prominence of the materialized consciousness. In itself, the original state of presence exhibits the ulterior quality of the unity of pre-original time, indicating timeless constancy of Pythagorean “motionless movement” as ultimate meaning of dis-timing. The measure of distiming given by the rhythm of dis-discretion is determined by the fact that within the realm of everyday routine events, according to definition, cannot be too frequent: if events should occur with endless frequencies; constant state of wake self-consciousness should happen in timeless eternity, but, since in the first differentiation; the certainty of existence of everydayness is established through pulsation; the presupposition is impossible; together with its potential consequences. The smallest gap in between two events is therefore determined by the length of transformations of properties of the two immediate natural numbers. The distiming thus indicates the arithmosophy and the metaphysical action of the revival of the acts of world creation; through which the original feeling of the whole is tested, and the eternal pattern of events is established: the meaning of number makes the borderline area of physics and metaphysics clear. Numbers are not made up creations of reason; they are natural phenomena. They are in the foundations of the Existing; as the principle of unity (1), polarity (2), function (3), symmetry (4), center (5) capable to express what is otherwise inexpressible: the meaning of numbers establishes the most general manner of inner description of all phenomena. The principle of integrality (1), division (2), conception (3), balance (4), re-creation (5) etc. are general points to the extent that makes them indiscernible basis of everyday implacability. Another emmersion in the Phenomenal makes also time invisible: another proof of the isomorphousness of number and time. Distiming is the most efficient way of the extraction of subject from the blindness of immediacy. It starts with the penetration of the integral circuit of everyday timing: on the conquered area of free territory of consciousness; the regularly of the development of the sense of everyday time is apparent. In the course of dis-timing in the numerical rhythm of creation and decomposition of everydayness the overall rhythm of Totality is established. Distiming has thus extended the area of the visible presence to the whole area of numerically defined Totality. Made dis-discrete up to the basic rhythmical original patterns, numbers are visibly pronounced by the images of their meaning, that simultaneously represent meanings of the images: order of the Existing exposed to the light of consciousness acquires the form of everlastingly present time: time does not move; it occurs at once; at any place.

Dragan Mojović


It is not easy to write about the painting of Dragan Mojović. No matter how hard one tries to reject “Procrust’s Bed” as a form of repression against the freedom of non-conventional attitudes; any interpretation necessarily implies systematization and classification as the footing of critical thinking. Mojović’s work constantly evades us, and when it does seem that one has comprehended it by a solid and precise definition; its outlines fade out. This freely i.e. non-academically formed painter; an engineer of technology by profession; has entered art using side streets leading to its front door. He has been noticed by art critics since his first solo exhibition at Kolarac University and accepted by those whose influence had been decisive for the course of arts in the Seventies. Mojović’s rise has been unprecedented in the Serbian post war art. In the course of the past ten years, he seems to have been awarded all the flattering prizes, reserved for artists of his generation: the one for painting at XI Biennial of Young Artists in Rijeka; X Nadežda Petrović’s Memorial in Čačak; “Vjesnik’s” Josip Račić Prize; “Politika’s” Vladimir Ribnikar” Prize … Only a year after his solo exhibition, he found himself in the strictest selection of Yugoslav art within the international exhibition on the occasion of ESCC in the museum by Ušće. Even more than the prizes, Mojović’s appearance itself seems to oblige us to establish our own ranges and attitudes towards art in general. But the privilege has always been reserved for a very narrow circle of creators. Early Mojović’s canvases belong to the aesthetics of new figuration – if structure and visual matter are primary in the definition. But the initial verism and illusion also included certain intellectual penetration into the existential; and with its tendency towards the search of the sense and meaning it overreached the cool, impersonal and desematicized practice of its great paragons and immediate domestic results. It will turn out the embrion of the mental approach to creation which including philosophy, astronomy, physics; ecology etc; extends the boundaries of the artistic in the postmodernist spirit; supplementing the easel illusion with a peculiar “reism”, using both traditional and painterly means and installations; interventions in nature and in urban landscape; actions and language. In an age of spiritual weariness and fashionable denial of the sense of art and invocation of death; Mojović has insisted on its total renewal. Any linking of those contents with conceptual art or even any identification with it means contradicti in adjectum, since Mojović operates with artefacts, and they are incompatible with the principles of post-objective art and particular poetics. Still, owing to its pronounced mental nature of creation; Mojović’s work implicitly includes conceptual art; at least in its reflexive spheres where ideas precede any subsequent definition. As a typical representative of the art of the Seventies, he was not prone to accept any companionship or enter any eclecticism but assimilating or transforming a wider range of ideas belonging to post-modernist era, he reached his own means of communication; powerful enough to substitute the originality of phenomena that precede it or run parallel with it. It is impossible to separate Mojović’s painting from the verbal presentation of his practice and this is, perhaps, another reason of his association with conceptual art. To the extent his schemes, texts, photographs and similar material do serve conceptual art to define its syntax and not less than means of communication, Mojović’s treatises supplement the presentativeness of his work. Their solipsism should be in the function of work: Mojović’s scientism is elementary Pre-Socratic in the philosophical sense, utopial and magic; hisonirism and poeticism are rationally structured. The oeuvre is built on the contradiction and in my opinion it marks ultimate ranges of Serbian postmodernism.

Zoran Markuš