TEXT experiment Phenomenology of Hands
Title Catalogue: 15 pairs of hands for Bruno Schulz, published by Book Art Museum Lodz Poland. Concept of book design by Tadeusz Myslowski and Wlodzimier Rudniki, special thanks to Irena Hochman, fine art New York.
test reading text, checking rhythm and flow, studio wilhelmina amsterdam photo magdalena jesionek
With hands we build cities wall to wall, pyramids skyhigh, dreamlike realities unreal for words. But when the mind is sick, disordered, hands can become a tool of cruelty, doing more evil than good, see the strangler’s face spasmodically eye blinking at his victim, dearly beloved ambiguity is guaranteed in our hands, they are first of all symbols, peace, connection, understanding for example, but in wartime they control all the bloody guns, tanks, drones and bombdropping plains.
When I think about hands I think about blind people who without the sense of touch would not recognize the body of things. With the back of our hands we wipe away our tears, sometimes our sensitive fingertips refuse to touch our tears instinctively.
Expressions about hands in many languages do refer to not only metaphors, in associative manner providing an image, like a drawing of a child, but they also, on the other hand, show the power of competitive aggression, many times resulting in sheer evil. One of the major resultants of this anger is visualized in the cock-fighting of nations and religions around the globe. In ancient Arabic tradition of punishment, hands of the thief will be cut off, just like the tongue of the lying man who betrayed his king.
When Mussolini raised up his right hand to greet the crowd, I felt like pissing on it. When Longhand Gandhi did the same, you could see the Hand of Peace. People in India eat with their hands, no forks, knives or spoons. With water in their hands they wipe off their asses after the flow of shit. Follow the flow, guru’s say in India. They know how to pull a car up out of the ditch.
Once in an unique momentum in our memory, the awaking, we left the belly of our mothers safely, our hands felt the nature in all it’s tenderness. Baby’s hands in the cradle, they already start waving goodbye, a gesture best-known in the tragic world of departed camp victims, during Hitler’s regime, hands full of dreams and rich DNA-cargo, but empty in essence of their waving.
Having hands means you know the dark road to the harbour of sorrow, where there’s no return. Sometimes I think, overlooking our history: how embarrassing it is to be part in the chain of humankind? Maybe I rather would have been an animal, a family minded rat in underground China 16th century, or a wolf in the lonely mirror of Herman Hesse.
Real believers know to hold their hands upon to God, it’s good, let the idea of God, our Supreme Being, never disappear universe, without such concept we will have no any score in relevance maybe, we would bleed to death, not being able to kiss and heal our endless wounds.
Tell me, what is a soldier or a pilot without hands? A lion without claws. Soldiers without hands would be Laughable Freaks in any (not only American) army. Mindless killers are a disgrace, in many ways, mainly a disgrace purely for the honesty of hands (read: humanity) itself.
Ever had a close look at the hand of a performing illusionist? Don’t observe his hands, it will only distract you. It’s well-known: once you need a labyrinth you cannot do without it anymore. Many hands as pictogram or icons will point you towards the wrong direction. The needle down.
I will kiss the hand that puts a flower on the grave of his brother, kiss the hand of the painter who depicts a perfect blade of grass, or for the same matter a tiny little peddle laying for ages on the bottom of the ocean-shore.
I will kiss the hands of the poet who’s clarity of words for what reason ever convince me about reconciliation with everlasting secrets and mysteries, emptiness and loneliness. Scientist are okay, but I need an artist who will tell me about facts I cannot understand, my undefined brains do not know how to behave face to face with the Unknowable.
I will kiss the hand of a pianist, who with serene calmness and emphasis on round silent minimal tones, with fingers beautifully engineered like the pheasant-tailed waterbird jacana who effortlessly walks on floating leaves. Fingers touching the abstract melancholia of our spinning planet itself in which lullaby’s I was born with hands to reach out for this beauty.
Keys, just like cats, they love our hands, hands they love dancing along with our feet, performing gestures of pleasure and enjoyment, hands can smile when they are happy, look at your hands when you have deep contact with poetry from Zen or Post War Polish poets, they smile, they want to caress, by words or images.
Art, word I was looking for. In Art itself all contradictions are one entity. I think of the brushes in the hand of Mondrian. Such delightful idea, abstract minimalism. No more no less, a great paradox. Monochromes versus Old nature paintings versus new technology and artificial intelligence, all this stuff go along together, hand in hand, why not? I like the interconnectedness of it all.
We will clap our hands for the virtuous creations of the artists, who know what creation means, who knows yes there is also black in the rainbow, miracles happen, see, listen, there’s the nightingale who sings so sweetly even far after sunset.
This little lovable bird touched by the Angle’s hand, does not have only wings, it does have our identity, as humans we are in heart singing birds, it’s just a matter of choice: do we want wings or hands? Can’t have both?
This is a pamphlet about discovering space: let our hands be wings, let’s fly, into unbounded space, let’s forget the thought whether this is possible or not. The Blind Poet from Argentina said, Louis Borges: ‘Our desire to fly, is our biggest disaster’. No sire, it’s our way to reach Selflessness in the heart of our Self Revisited.
We do not realize yet where, in which region of our mind, abstract or concrete or in between, our strong colourful wings are hidden. How to know where they are, our wings, source of spiritual levitation, pure freedom?
I think that specific Icarus-based knowledge is in the hands of true artists who are reaching over to us, we spectators, plain mortal souls we poorly are, as rationalist aware of symbols, but lacking sense of real metaphysics.
© Jan Hontscharenko
Amsterdam, 2011.