addendum (for the myth of the self)

This work was developed for the exhibition Nemocentric, curated by Bassam El Baroni at Charim Gallery. Two large fine art prints mimic the form of a printed sheet used for book production, namely its front- and backside. Prior to cutting and binding a book, the pages are arranged in the inherent order of the book-making process. The intended publication format is the so-called Addendum, a document that is published subsequent to a book, expanding its content. The publication The Ego Tunnel written by philosopher Thomas Metzinger inspired the curator in his exhibition concept. Moussa Kone refers to this book in his work, text based drawings zoom on side notes which the artist made while reading. It is a work about perception and how we perceive what we call reality.

“Current outlooks on governance and politics seem susceptible to a freewheeling rhetoric of subjectivity. The consequence is egocentrism masquerading as political will and driving us towards a freedom that never arrives. In light of this, Nemocentric looks at subjectivity with a dual lens: one based on neuroscience, the other on politics. On the one hand, subjectivity is explored at the level of the organism, identifying it as a process, a model, and an apparatus that is informed by neurons and computational mechanisms. On the other hand, subjectivity is viewed as the material of social and historical narratives that have come to form popular constructs of what it means to be human. By using this dual-lens view, the exhibition proposes the need to think of subjectivity other than as an important approach that may have an impact on the political realm through its impact on the artistic realm of images, sounds, and objects. Perhaps, it is not more or less subjectivity that will help us overcome historical injustices and future challenges, but rather a more accurate depiction of how subjectivity is produced and how we may exploit that to our advantage.

The exhibition is inspired by the writings of philosopher Thomas Metzinger whose most general position is that, scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as a self. According to Metzinger we become conscious whenever our brains “successfully pursue the ingenious strategy of creating a unified and dynamic inner portrait of reality [...] our brains generate a world-simulation, so perfect that we do not recognize it as an image in our minds. Then, they generate an inner image of ourselves as a whole. This image includes not only our body and our psychological states but also our relationship to the past and the future, as well as to other conscious beings.” ¹ This is the Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity; there is no self as we understand it in popular culture, but there is a model, an infrastructure that produces the unified image of the self for us. This explains why some people who are missing a leg or an arm, may still feel and act as if they possess one. This ‘phantom limb’ sensation occurs because of a glitch in the production of the inner image of the self. [...]”

Text quote by Bassam El Baroni, from: Meine Herkunft habe ich mir selbst ausgedacht. Exhibition text for Charim Gallery, published in a folder for the gallery festival curated-by, Vienna, 2016.

¹ Thomas Metzinger: The Ego Tunnel. The Science of Mind and the Myth of the Self. New York: Basic Books, 2010.