What still saves us on a personal level, what can make us state what we want, is to breathe our air as we walk our way. That noisy experience of memories of what we read, of what we do, of what we are without easily noticing it, is what builds a present time, an identity, whose whole (and even historical; history) is not, cannot be the same as nothing. But we can never forget that the stars we like to see at night have long since died.

Art is today an amount of the consciences of that history that people insist on not losing (and I call attention to it in the same way that I insist on writing this text in a code and with a language of that dimension) and the identity endeavour. The vital neurosis of looking for the multiple one for him to return. That identity, in my hectograph course, seems increasingly more like effects. I find it more explicit, but truly bled, in the difficult choices, in the pained remains and that often seem shaming, than in the processes and conscious assumptions, in the paths of history that have been traced for me and that I was offered (perhaps lovingly, but I am sceptical until I find out something else). This identity in the remnant of me, where I seek to see and learn, to trace a history of desire, is closer to the development of needs than in the beautiful "Western" cliché of the "need" for development. Finding (if I have ever found any) the causes, what I want, what I can be, will be in the ends that I decide for myself. There where the words do not explain.

And madness thus gains regions of truth which folly had never reached: it fits in time, it avoids the pure accident with which its different episodes were once appointed to assume an autonomous figure in history. Its past, its evolution, are part of its truth, and what it reveals is no longer precisely this instant rupture with the truth, at all times, with which the folly was identified. There is a time of madness that is the calendar, not the rhythmic calendar of seasons that links it to the dark forces of the world, but a daily calendar, of men, in which history is enjoyed.

487. What is the evidence that I know anything? Most certainly, it is not me saying that I know things.

488. And, so, when writers list all the things they know, that proves absolutely nothing.

Thus, the possibility of knowing something about physical objects cannot be proven.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certain

I work on the internalization of linguistics and its aspect which emphasizes the elimination of the object, making it an almost absolute priority including all the projective experience, towards a field of serious, philosophical, research, on the nature of the concept of art. Where language is the means to preserve our work in a context of research and questioning. And it will arise from a mode of research on art, a linguistic elaboration from the point of view of art and language, of its syntactic structure.

In the field of linguistics, language can be used as an artistic material, going from the research into art to research on language about language, about art, thus making the transition from the material mode of physical implementation to the propositional mode. In this sense, it is assumed that a semantic rise will occur, which reflects a total separation between perception and concept. It is not a brain illusion but rather "art on art," "the work of art as a work of art", casting aside all material representation and all contextual dependency. Thus it asserts the total denial of the artistic object and the identification of the concept. Where the concept is suggested culturally and not psychologically, thus avoiding isomorphism. That, subsequently, it will be quite right to think, in my view, that a work conveys nothing that can be considered artistic unless itself assumes a role of subject, and that its message is conveyed. That is why no work of art is a "statement". So it is abusive, to say the least, to consider it within theory. For to be in an art as an idea in its narrowest sense, causing a further movement towards an ideational, discursive art, with epistemological claims to the concept. Creating a complete separation between aesthetics and art, thus leading the object to its dematerialization.

The depreciation of the whole aesthetic, perceptive, component favours it being stuck to the mental aspect. Art, above all, is dedicated to making propositions: a work of art speaks, it is a kind of proposition, presented in an art context as a commentary on art. Art is not a synthetic proposition in the sense of Kantian terminology, determined by the effects of experience. It is an analytic proposition, whose validity of the artistic proposition does not depend on an empirical presupposition, nor even aesthetic, on the nature of things. For, as an artist, I do not mean to be directly interested in the physical properties of things. I am only interested in the way in which art is able to set up conceptual continuity and the way its propositions are able to logically follow that continuity. In other words, artistic propositions have not got a feature of effects, but a linguistic feature, they do not describe the behaviour of physical objects, and that including mental ones; they express definitions of art.

Linguistic art does not bind any kind of frame of reference with the world and things. It reactivates Kantian synthesis as form and content, the different mundane meanings. I cannot speak of art without referring to a tautology: the work of art is a tautology as it presents the intention of the artist, while communicating, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means that it is a definition of art. Art and the idea of art are one and the same thing. The artistic proposition is a verification of that same art, discarding what is outside its context, what could be the message and the external information. Art as tautology presents itself as an autonomous context and as playing the role of representing itself. Art is playing the role of representing itself and nothing else. Since Wittgenstein that contextual theory of meaning holds that the words of a language have no meaning outside the context in which they appear, they only have meaning in usage.

Being in art and never looking for art. Self-limiting oneself in a tautological system.

The unaffected face in front of the beheaded. The face that smiles close to those who were killed by a firing squad. Always the same faces or frowns. The Good that strangles, the Evil that exterminates. There are so many paths between Good and Evil, paths that are the same; a Pope waving to believers, a Führer bellowing at the troops. Stalin in the letter written by Muller's hand wonders about the reason why this cold sweat is running on his forehead. What is it that leads to barbarism in man? What else is there that is pure? The evil that do they do? "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." In the end there are only faces left. The look of death, is the look of a murderer really cruel? Or is it just as peaceful and holy as the look of a saint's sculpture at the altar? The full-fledged statement of cruelty has a will of its own, it is an end in itself. No one can help fitting a murderer with a killer's face, the same for the saint. No matter how hard I am tempted. When one dies slowly at fifteen years old there is no cruelty in one's look, nor serenity, nor undauntedness, nor dismay, there is nothing. There is only the loss of borders, the hand drops the main thread, everything is lost. An erosion.  Never have Good and Evil seemed as close or as one as then. There are so many differences as there are similarities between the face of Hitler and the caricature of Chaplin. How can I follow two paths at the same time? Stopping looking back and I see my other self moving away. The liquid that takes us goes in through the needle. Slowly. We live together with the living and with the dead. The German shepherd sniffles at my ankles. Clothes are a piece of stripes and a star. I am a stripe inside a star. I am a stripe in a piece of cloth. I am a sketch of a smile that straightens a hat and a silver skull, grunting at the loudspeaker. Half a ton of glasses. A mountain of hair. Lying down gnawing at the bunk bed's wood. Suitcases. Shoes. Kilograms of gold teeth. I am the spotlessly polished black boots, wooden footways, in the middle of the mud. A smell. Belched from the chimneys as success. A cross. Two. Eugenio Pacelli.

Now my voice ... not mine ... not this one ... now my voice ... the one that does not make itself heard ... I know now ... I cannot be wrong ... not as wrong as this ... the one that hears me say what I do not want to say ... I cannot be that far from the truth ... silent in the dark ... nothing to doubt ... I almost got used to it since the beginning of time I almost believed that all the doubts that torment me in the silence without making myself heard since the beginning of time. That first instant. You look at the object first. Hands joined together.

1. Interlaced fingers. Looking as if somehow sucking the invisible. As if somehow I still felt desire for it. Looking at the interlaced fingers. Looking at the mirror as if I was not reflected there. While from the dark there is a glimpse of the blackness. Looking at the emptiness as if I was not there. Like when you look at some place busy every now and then. Glimpsing your absence in the shadow. Looking at the mouth when I speak. The lips move. No words, no sound. Looking at the mouth when I do not speak. No sound.

2. Up against the back wall so as not to be seen. The darkness that gathers around in the background. This is a black line in the dark. This is a dark black line, this. This is a dark shot. Looking at the flickering lamp. Open hands on the wall. What ignorance is then eliminated? Almost as threatened as when he was born with open hands into the unknown. Thus the object was also threatened under the flickering lamp. Not a word. A lamp snapping. No sound. Snaps. Looking at the memory that is directed towards the light. Innocent to the light. Slipping into the memory that slides like a shadow on the wall. And when it is extinguished, who can still see it? And when light. And while his ghost is kept in the dark and hers. And uncountable ghosts wither in the dark. Dissolved in the dark. And when again the light the remote idea of her having been there close to and out of the mirror. I with open hands against the wall.

3. The whole body glowing the same way as when she takes her clothes off. Looking at the object first. All the body still glowing somehow like her ghost. It is not colour or maybe it is. Somehow her dissolved body. No. Somehow her ghost glowing in the dark. The ghost of both. No. Somehow the undivided ghost of both dissolved in the dark. Everything to forget. Calm down.

Calm down.

All the colour still shining somehow. Observing the object first. Each finger rhythmically after another, interlaced fingers. Every drop explodes so devastatingly that you put your hands over your ears. On the waters the wind's fin. I know of such a harsh landscape that the colour red from the blood flows in the aid of the eyes. The wind is a piece of nothing that lingers on the landscape. Dark vein from a clotted scar. I touch you in your wounds black with blood flashing lightnings in the night. The deafening panic of every star. It has to be taken into account the death of each star for more light years that is eine farbe leuchtet.

It has to be taken into account the blood that has clotted to stop the rest. Say anything that will keep you calm. Sleep makes me tired in itself. Say anything that will keep me calm still. I know of such a harsh landscape!... Maybe I do not know. I get so tired in art.

And its virtues? At eye level the faces it does not matter from where. It does not matter how. It does not matter who. They can even go or come back. In a photograph. Photocopy. They will always be the same faces, serene, tormented, with a deep hatred or compassionate, which tell me everything and do not tell me a thing. If art were less hesitant between Good and Evil. It is complicated only when the questions arise within myself. It is complicated only when the practice of painting, the physical act itself, becomes so narrowing but so unavoidable. Painting, going through the work to see it grow. Ensuring the consistency of this process. It forces the act of painting itself to unfold before a purely mental exercise (not to forget that the hesitation between Good and Evil is like a reflection).

476. As a result of it seeming to me – or to everyone – that something is like that, it is not necessarily true that it is so. What we can ask is whether it makes sense to doubt it.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certain

The initial impelling force of all creative practice. The embodiment of objective and dramatic tensions. Inherited from a sensitivity. An anti-Dionysian sensitivity. Figurations directly proposed, directly by their impersonal nature, proposed by technology. Printing. Propositions made in a direct way such as the election of motifs, as if celebrating the right to use them and breaking with pictorial/aesthetic conventions from the intoxication that segregates the assertion or ecstasy of life. Life and death Good as Evil Evil as Good. Experiences once running through the veins. Sliding chemotherapy. Brutality that has been converted. Moral or political experiences. Stalin and Hitler. Bastard and murderer. Images of life, of pleasure, iconographies that are present in an anxious society like this, and these. Schizo-states. Human icons, archetypal identities, the deified human. Pius XII benefactor. Hitler confessor.

Examples of faces that are more than any face that has been on a football field, whose photograph came out in the newspaper. These are not paintings of faces, nor are they portraits of people with personality quotes. These are images which are enhanced with practical and operational models, in a synthetic proposition language, in experience effect, where afterwards it will reactivate with and in a context of analytical proposition. For instance, through photography, using materials and labelling which favour detachment and reciprocal impersonalisation. Words and graphical records are purposes that seem to me to overcome this archetypal identity and that pose decisive contents.

In summary; my work aims to be conceptual. A project with the impracticable capacity to reassure and render harmless nature itself thanks to rational play and ideas. An ideological bridge that claims conceptual motifs as innocent as the primitive states of humanity. Analytical, impersonal compositions that emanate emotions before a nature not too far removed from romantic will and sensitivity.

Historical format. Historically it is language. The culture of decisions made about historical memory has already a communicative form. The concept/form division exists, it is a necessary human whim. It is part of the limits of thought. I am neither more nor less than anyone.

4. It is weird what I "actually" felt. I smelled the muffle furnaces. Krematorium I. And they smelt of cement, clay and iron. But they were not greasy. Gas chamber - Relatively large room - a ceiling height of 2.9 metres. But narrow. Weird. Pipes.

Birkenau; very dark, universe admittedly assumed. Railway tracks. halt. Slojt. A scream, this becomes something. One thing. Also as an animal, sometimes it seems, there are times; or else something with skin: motionless, bright. One thing. I smelled the muffle furnaces, static to the touch, a moment. Neither hot nor cold. Odourless, one thing. Odourless without grease. A kind of shivering emptiness. In the middle always. In the midst of many things. All of them with their mouths covered. A scream with, and in the silence like a thing. Everything steady and wide, and suddenly narrow. The pipes. Forgotten by the energy of inherent pressure. Like death. Like everything full everything heavy. Like food. I differentiate thus, personally. Note. There were no fingerprints on my neck. And the shit remains. Culturally recommended, as a good European. Cisplatin and Etoposide moving in the jelly-like land of the blood. Shifts of feelings dependent on neural functioning, perfect textures, fucking formalisms!...

The hand thinks, it turns out that no one has ever found it, nor did it seek to reach people's hearts through their pockets. This different hand, indifferent. It starts thinking, slowly at first, and then with more force and speed.

446. But why am I so certain this is my hand? Might the language game not rest on this kind of certainty?

Or: Is this certainty not (already) assumed as a necessary condition in the language game?

Namely because of the fact that you are not playing the game, or you are playing badly if you do not recognize the objects for sure.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certain

4. Language is literally a game of mirrors, and in the middle of that game the multiplied scene of a metaphysically derisory carnage is enacted. I want to present myself as a victim of art, a victim of neurosis and its psychiatric and psychoanalytic instances; a victim of the ambivalence between Good and Evil, on the principle that everything below is the same as everything above. I am therefore a victim of opposition to the world, a victim of opposition to man, a victim of opposition from a radicalism with which someone commits himself to the utopia of Good, where, like an angel, he burns the hand, the fingers, the flesh. Grease.

Anyone who has suffered – or suffers breathless – can now sign the word "shit." They wish people to stretch out a hand to them, turning it on all sides and from all sides. Wanting to introduce what they think I don't know. Suffering out of breath. Explaining the absurd. The talent of the absurd which represents going past the limits. That is why an overwhelming snow sometimes falls. The flesh is concentrated in order to receive it, and to accept it.

He walked with his hand outstretched, in the snow. In the smell. Really letting him soak my lungs and blood, cleansing me of a number of things that were good for something there. Walking on a warm smell, on confusing paths, icy rails. The torrent. This, one thing all, everything. A pure form appears that is created for walking happily over hell. In days all the clues of the year were lost. The centres of life, centres of life, centres of intelligence disappear – now once and for all –, and the phrase "we are this thing" is embroidered around with love, a building of conventional tact has been chosen. Our hand. Distancing itself from beautiful landscapes, from family. From our mother. The reference of the pleasure from the low and dry grass springs has been created – despite it being hidden, or rather, not assumed. Man does not love man. He hesitates. The sky curves into the ditches. It is really sad.

5. At the beginning I spoke of art. Production processes. In deep shit! And it is difficult thus to find the transition between the exclamation one would like to let out and the consequences it would bring on what one does. Only in certain cases it is possible to question, “Is this really a hand?” (Or my hand). Because I doubt it is my (or one) hand it makes no sense without a more precise determination. Only with these words it is difficult to understand whether in fact a doubt is really meant – or what kind of doubt. Knowledge is ultimately based on recognition. Does it mean that there is not anything in the world that can really convince me of anything else?

6. Being in life is hard. I have got memory. Nothing has been forgotten, it is now suited to the vindicatory senses of expression and representation. And this is the way to exhaustion, at the centre of fertility. People lose their names, things get cleaned up, the escape from space and the dispersive movement of time cease. It gets fucked up. I am left. With want of love, crowned with my food – not even that – with my own excrement. Fed up with dry tears that hide themselves in favour of a theory of good. The fear that makes me breathe and live to death. With the talent of knowing how to make the truth true. It is enough for the hand to help something dark and, as it writes, the darker it becomes.

582. “I know that” can mean: I already know that – or else: it certainly is so.

589. Because how does a man recognize his own state of knowing anything?

590. At best, one could speak of recognizing a state in which one says, "I know what that is." At this point, one can persuade oneself that he is really in possession of such knowledge.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, On Certain

Filipe Marques

Krakow 2000

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