LENA HADES - MATHISM MANIFESTO, PART I

May 06, 2005, Moscow. At 1:00 a.m. the balcony burned down in a house next door to me. The following morning the MA – MA – the Anti-traditionalist Mathism Manifesto was born.

Suprematism and Mathism

“I have overcome the lining of coloured sky, torn it down and into the bag thus formed, put colour, tying it up with a knot. Swim in the white free abyss, infinity is before you."

Kazimir Malevich wrote in 1919.

“We have left the safety of dry land and are sailing! We have burnt the bridges as we went along – moreover, we have burnt the land itself!

Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche was warning 38 years earlier.

Let’s sail that ship! At least it! Especially while the Russian word for ‘science’ – nauka – means ‘boat’ in Sanskrit. The only vessel which can carry us through the ocean of knowledge.

It is small and huge at the same time*, its construction is immensely complex, that is why only the few can board it. Let alone sailing it. But each one on this boat, even the simplest sailor, would agree that the fidley house of nauka contains the mystery of mysteries and it’s hardly possible to get into it. And at the same time the ship’s passengers are always attempting to break into it, with varying degrees of persistence and tenacity. The most tenacious of them is the ship’s captain. He is known under many names: sometimes he’s Pythagoras, at times Plato, Nietzsche, maybe hundred other names – in this rapid spin the captain even remains anonymous sometimes …

The humanity has no other vessel, all these anthropo – theo – and other –sophies (apart from the philosophy itself – the actual love to Sophia, wisdom) – these are mere half-rotten rafts in the roaring ocean of knowledge, and how many people have already drowned clinging to them?

The etymology of the word SUPREMATISM is “superior cognition”, or to be more precise “super-knowledge”.

SUPREMATISM was good by its declaration, but not in the sense of an ‘explanation’, but more in terms of declaring the position. And that’s it. SUPREMATISM is merely a shadow of the arrow fired into the future, called the Scientific knowledge.

What super-cognition are we talking about, when the boundaries of just cognition itself have not yet been defined?

And thus we shall cut off the ‘super’ = ‘supre’ prefix! We shall call ourselves just MATHISTS, and that what we create – MATHISM.

MATHESIS MANIFESTO — MATHEME MANIFESTO

МА-МА means MATHISM MANIFESTO

MATHEME — MATHEIS — KNOWLEDGE — COGNITION --------> MATHISM

MATHISM-ARTISTS — MA-MYSTS* CAN SAIL ALONG IN THE OCEAN OF KNOWLEDGE CARRIED BY THE WIND OF ARTISTIC INTUITION ONLY ON THE DECK OF SCIENCE, IF THEY WANT TO SAIL ANYWHERE AT ALL

JUST ARTISTS, WHO JUST CREATE MODERN ART, CARRIED BY THE CURRENTS LIKE PLANKTON HERE AND THERE ARE FOOD FOR ALL OCEAN FISH, WHOSE LIFE-SPAN IS JUST INSIGNIFICANTLY SHORT.

THESE ARE NOT SAILING ANYWHERE: PLANKTON, WHAT COULD IT KNOW ANYWAY ABOUT THE WIND AND SAILING THE WATERS?

PEOPLE! MATHISM-ARTISTS!!! MA-MYSTS!

THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BOARDED THE SHIP!

WE SHALL BE INTELLECTUALLY HONEST!

WE SHALL NOT “MUDDY THE WATER TO MAKE IT SEEM DEEP”**” WE SHALL NOT USE FOR CRUTCHES OF OUR OWN ARTISTIC IMAGINATION WHAT HAS NOT BECOME OUR KNOWLEDGE!

WE SHALL NOT LOOK IN AWE AT ALL KINDS OF OCEAN JUNK OVERBOARD: THERE IT’S PLANKTON, REMAINS OF CRUSHED RAFTS, SHIPS, ROTTING FISH, TORN NETS – WHAT ARE THEY TO US?

Mathism and Traditionalism

Traditionalism in Guénon’s interpretation is unconvincing:

1. even if we agree with the opinion of René Guénon that the Positivism and Agnosticism were the “base point of all the science”, over the 78 years that have passed since he wrote The Crisis of the Modern World the natural science theories have long overstepped the agnostico-positivist border;

2. René Guénon ignores the Zoroastrianist and Egyptian branches of the tradition. This fact demonstrates the limitations of his “sacred science”.

3. “You will know them by their fruits”: the modern Traditionalists, suffering from lack of natural science education, instead of dwelling deeper into their own traditional knowledge: first of all ancient languages and natural science disciplines, instead they are mainly occupied by gender issues and compilation re-mixes of others’ texts. This is more convenient and, most importantly, more accessible to the crowd, being far from the scientific knowledge.

And in science the competence barrier is the first and the very significant obstacle: to receive scientific education one must plough through huge amounts of information for years. Without learning it you can’t see the breaches in the knowledge itself and grasp which questions would be of particular interest for study. The Traditionalists, daunted by the prospect of investing half of their lives into knowledge, prefer to criticise anthophilosophy, teophilosophy and as a result end up creating the theories which lack a scientific basis just as much. While each time referring to the ‘initiation’ that they’ve received, they are mainly guided by the main Traditionalist rules: conquer with pathos and lack of any polemics, ‘build’ ‘theories’ from non-existent or doubtful sources (the issues in question are normally so complicated, there are no real opponents to fully challenge those sources, and the crowd of worshipping readers is precisely from there – from the crowd!) But as it goes, “where the crowd drinks, all the sources are often poisoned”.***

In these conditions the most honest and consistent ‘follower of traditions’ would be none other than an Anti-Traditionalist — (anti-Guénon first of all).

Mathism and Science

Intuition (both intellectual and artistic) is the wind filling the sails of the science ship, other vessels, alas, in the ocean of knowledge are not to be seen.

To be continued