The Manifesto

The animal symbolicum in the cosmos-spatial age. Art as a «visio» of reality. The fragment of the unfinished as a totalizing reality. Symbology-in-progress in space’s iconologic virtuality.

Art is, as well known, a symbolic representation of reality. Its development has been a continuity-in-progress of the symbol, from the primitive man to the cosmos-spatial one. Cassirer claims: «it’s undeniable that both symbolic thinking and behaviour are the most distinctive aspects of human life and that the whole cultural progress is based on them». The animal symbolicum is thus «the creator and demiurge of the culture». The artist — poet, musician — is completely plunged into «the unconscious dimension» to find symbols, as an answer to the ineluctable: the mystery of God and the universe, of love and sex, of life and death. They are a kind of «eschatological ghosts» haunting us. The artist looks for that memory-path justifying his existence. «The labyrinth of the unconscious» — with its energising force — bleeds like an amputated artery. It is the «visible-invisible ghost» in Freud and the «structured language» in Lacan. Extrema se tangunt: the significant like the meaning and the meaning like the significant. Jung looked into «the personal unconscious» till he reached «the collective unconscious» where his archetypes, the «mother-symbols», live.

A «visio» of reality

The artist in his Work-in-Progress is a human being dreaming immortality in his unconscious. Producing Art — Poetry, Music — is like «having day-dreams». Vision and dream participate of the same identity. There exists a «rational knowledge», which is the logical-phenomenic truth of science. There also exists an «irrational knowledge», which is the aesthetic-emotional truth of Art. Without the symbolic intervention of the artist’s emotivity (in every past, present or future artistic language) the «aesthetic object» remains just an «object-object». The symbol goes beyond the sign and gives it an «in-progress» meaning.

The fragment of the unfinished as a totalizing reality

Everything has already been written by the «cosmic memory», both in the visible and invisible reality. We are the pulsing in it. In the genesis of the particles there is already the whole universe in nuce. The code of human life lays already in DNA. The tree is already in the seed. The artist feels this in the «magic of creativity», like a prophecy-symbol which crosses his body. The energy becomes a ritual in the expressivity of his work and, as Nietzsche foretold, «I am my destiny». Every artist has his own cosmic destiny like the trees, the stars, the sea.

Symbology-in-progress in space’s iconologic virtuality

Therefore, what should the artist represent in his imaginative language? From primitive art and the historical vanguards, to those of the last after-War and up to the present ones (just to stay in our century), the history of art always answered to this enigma: a «symbolic-in-progress answer» to Mystery. It is the metamorphosis of the metamorphosis. It is «Eraclito’s river». It is Pitagora’s «cosmic-mathematics» and the progression of the universe. Each movement, trend and artist have seen their own possibility of expression between other possibilities: there is no alternative. Death of Art? An absurdity, like saying «it is the Death of the Human Being». Hegel’s «tautological epiphany» could be considered as the «scientificity» of the Kantian noumenon, a «prophecy» which died before being born. Hegel’s philosophic system is an «upside-down metaphysic». Art is life and transcendence: it cannot be defined but only interpreted. It is an «intuition of freedom». Like love, like emotions, it cannot be «closed into a cage»: it concerns emotions, not statistics. It is the symbolic, figurative problem («open» problems, as Umberto Eco would say) of the painters Federico Honegger (the «Kénosis Project»), Lucio Perna (the «Mirages»), Fabio Massimo Ulivieri (the «Resurrection of the Dome»). It is a structural-semantic, multimedial problem. Everything is continuity of continuity. The universe was born from the death of the universe: that is the ineluctable rituality of Mystery.

Milan, 20 November 1996.

Symbolicum Artistic Group: Pedro Fiori, Federico Honegger, Lucio Perna, Fabio Massimo Ulivieri.