“Rather being in the field of emptiness, the actualinstant of time is infinite because of ‘time.’
Therefore, all moments are contained within actualinstant moments. Only as the infinite one at all moments by entry, the actualinstant moment is able to build an absolute time.
There must be simultaneity between the moment of fantasy and reality.
Thus, the essence of ‘time’ lies within this.” [1]
When a biennial is forced to reconsider the primary marker attached to it –– time, we attempt to ask how the biennial copes with “temporal” genesis, meaning “Indi-Genesis Time.” Moreover, if the biennial aims to understand our contemporary life situations through a certain artistic development and research, then the questions that follow are, why look at artworks, why gaze, and why experience exhibitions, or, in other words, “why are we here?” We often approach art with hesitations about the world and our own circumstances, along with a curiosity that emerges alongside these hesitations, in hopes of exploring new spaces and the potential for mobility. These entail exploring the unknown spaces of consciousness, the uncharted connections with the world, and new agencies of awareness - in simple terms, “spiritual life.” The “spiritual life” required today is not a single world but a “self-space” (world making) [2] capable of opening up various sensory approaches, organizational methods, and imagination, opposing the world connection that more and more homogenization and one-sidedness. Because this homogeneous one-sided connection amasses an unprecedented amount and density of information, our existing cognition and consciousness implode, collapse, and disintegrate like entering a black hole. Therefore, the contemporary era we find ourselves in urges us to imagine, create, and organize various “spiritual lives” (rhizome) with three-dimensional spaces, and this is how “art” gains its contemporary significance. Artists demonstrate and propose various narratives and methodologies of “world-making” via projects and practices, and the flow and transformation of knowledge, information, and data link the practice of “world-making” to the personal experience and consciousness (inner “cultivation”) of the “viewer.” Hence, the discourse is the explanation of the process descriptions and overlay methods. This exhibition project aims to emphasize the necessity of world-making and inner cultivation with “emptiness,” expanding the spiritual space. “Entropy of emptiness” is the “negentropy” that creates and operates the world, resolving the violence imposed by colonization and, in doing so, preserving and reproducing lives.
What exactly did “nothingness” on the Yasujirō Ozu’s tombstone at Engaku-ji Temple leave for the 20th century that remains a mystery to this day? Ozu’s later films, with an exceedingly simple and consistent approach, depict the relationships in post-war families and the state of collapsed relationships. Each daily and tranquil “expression” portrait turns relationship affairs into rituals, and then lets the ritual disappear in a prose-like daily routine. Through these rituals, these everyday lives are represented as a collective spirit. The individuals and their daily routines [3] in his films merge into a “non-judgment” state. Ozu doesn’t place further judgments on the plot and imagery. In this state of ritual, Ozu focuses on an aesthetic judgment that detaches itself from value judgments. Regardless of encountering any events, the actors’ expressions remain at the basic response level, not echoing the plot or context of the event for a special performance. In other words, their expressions present a state of “non-intention” such as an empty scene can be found in an establishing shot, making individual expressions pieces of scenery in human society. This is a situation not rooted in Western philosophy, a situation of “the absolute” or “degree zero.” As such images focus on the post-war Japanese social living conditions, with stable and repetitive framings such as nearly static close-ups of faces, empty shots of postures, still lifes and landscapes, as well as the deliberate filtration of various plots and performative tricks. Ozu applies all of them to shape a cinematic narrative of “emptiness.” The moment of the atomic explosion results in a state of death where “entropy” returns to zero, and the way that Ozu interprets the lives of the Japanese people after the atomic bombing is to minimize the “entropy,” allowing characters in an almost “empty” state to face the gradual disorder of human life.
Nearly thirty years later, in the third installment of “Mobile Suit Gundam,” it is depicted that a “psycommu” occurrs between Lalah Sun, Char Aznable, and Amuro Ray when Lalah is attacked by the Gundam beam saber to protect Char. She leaves a last message to Amuro, saying, “One day, people will be able to dominate time... Amuro, I saw time! ( and I don’t know when it will overlap).” The narrative of Gundam, from the earliest TV series and three compilation films, began with the dialectical axis of young protagonists entering the world’s struggle, which is initiated by the anti-colonial military operations of the colonial Newtypes (Principality of Zeon) against the colonial empire (Earth Federation). (Whether authoritarian colonial regimes or anti-colonial military regimes will all lead to fascism.) The ideal foreseen by Lalah is almost the challenge that the final confrontation scene in each Gundam series faces: whether the “evolution” facilitated by artificial intelligence will accelerate the extinction of the other to complete a utopia of a single species, or expand and accelerate the communication network of multiple species? The main ability after the evolution of Newtypes is “psycommu,” which, as the conflict develops and tenses up, leads to two forces: one is to capture the enemy’s motion and eliminate it rapidly, and the other is the love directed by conscious connections. The epic narrative of Gundam is not only an endless dilemma between these two forces, but also a transcendence after mutual destruction again and again.
The state of Ozu to the “post-war” situation, is like the response of Chishū Ryū in “An Autumn Afternoon.” After attending his daughter’s wedding, he went to a bar and the owner asked, “Coming back from a funeral?” “Hmm, you could say that” he answered. In other scenes, he smiles when he hears the “Warship March,” right up to the wry smile when he hears “Japan lost!” from a middle-aged office worker at the next table by mocking Jewel Voice Broadcast. As if he is lost in the “state of the world.” Besides, the comprehensive and diverse “opposition” that Yoshiyuki Tomino faces, reveals whether colonialists or the colonized could both fall into a “fascisoid,” with only young pilots still in doubt about the meaning of war, seeking “justice” in the cracks of the transcendent world. However, “Neon Genesis Evangelion” presents another type of apocalyptic narrative for human beings, placing the issue of “justice” within the enigma of the “Human Instrumentality Project.” Although not explicitly explained by the original creator, Hideaki Anno, the “Angels” responsible for the “Impact” on cleansing the human world are highly likely an AI entities autogenously propagated by the machine realm through quantum aggregation. In other words, the impact causing significant changes on Earth has evolved from external and natural factors to organic-generated machines, launching a “counterattack” on the human realm. By contrast, the “Human Instrumentality Project” planned by SEELE aims to synthesize humans into singular god-like entities with the assistance of EVA.
Therefore, as the narrative of “Neon Genesis Evangelion” progresses through the four-episode “Rebuild of Evangelion” film series, it becomes even clearer that the “Angels” represent a theological prototype of a certain fascism, as they engage in indiscriminate extermination actions by machine generation. The NERV, led by Gendo Ikari, becomes a sublime archetype of patriarchy under SEELE’s scheme, and intends to elevate humans to “superior humans.” The young pilot, in turn, manifests various neuroses, schizophrenia, and autism under the dual pressures of theocracy and patriarchy, speaking within the crack between life and death “until one day, reshape the self.” (“Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo”) We can observe a human narrative developed by directors Yasujirō Ozu, Yoshiyuki Tomino, and Hideaki Anno that demonstrates that a fascisoid is not an outcome of a specific historical stage or political organization but a relational mode of power with violence within human society or the human world. With the advent of digital and internet technologies, this relational mode is in a more fluid and fragmented development. In these classic fictions, we also can see their constant questioning and concerns about “resisting oppression” and “resolving paranoia.” Yasujirō Ozu’s response is an “emptiness” from the concepts of “equality of all things” and “simultaneity,” as well as an attitude of “emptiness.” Yoshiyuki Tomino represents moments of “emptiness” that occur in the form of events behind a sort of repetitive struggle. Hideaki Anno in his case expresses an unknown and schizophrenia of “emptiness.”
In other words, whether it is the attitude of “emptiness,” the moment of “emptiness,” or the unknown of “emptiness,” all of them respond to the fascisoid within the development of colonial modernity. Enabling “emptiness,” such a unique mode of thought in Asia, to historically coexist with fascisoid in special survival methods and status. Furthermore, “emptiness” and “colonization” will be pushed into an indistinguishable “pre-individual” state by the narrative of capitalist modernity, or rather, a state of “pre-individual intensity.” However, this pre-individual intensity cannot be simplified as the history before certain individualization. On the contrary, this pre-individual intensity often emerges in order to transcend colonial modernity. Therefore, this “pre” has a cosmic meaning of “urgrund,” that is, the production towards an alternative world. “Emptiness” as a method of alternative world production with dis-paracolonization is a creation of the energy operation of “negentropy.” The exhibition “Entropy of Emptiness: Cosmogonic Narrative as Way of Dis-Paracolonization” begins with the state of pre-individualization (para-fascisoid) and trauma recovery as a starting point. Through the artworks, it aims to examine the “negentropy” developed from various thought modes of “emptiness” and how these shape various narratives of world production, becoming a dis-paracolonization event.
