Metareserves 2024 synchronizes viewpoints derived from new ways of connecting in the field of art. The curatorial strategy’s starting point is the paradigm of metamodernism. The first edition of the project (Veliko Tarnovo, 2023) accented the thesis of oscillation, actively applied by metamodernist theorists. The foundations of the current exhibition are the assets of the void spaces, distances and pauses in the parallelism of these same oscillations. Metareserves 2024 embraces and further develops the idea of a periodic change in variations between endpoints of interactions, whereby intermediate states of conscious perception of both the individual artist and the artworks themselves become visible.

The kaleidoscopic idea is in line with the rhetoric of metamodernism. A direct kaleidoscope analogy sets up a view to explore the “beautiful”. As an optical device for observing beautiful forms, the kaleidoscope in our case is radically different from the familiar tube with a mirror system and colored glass pieces. Here “beautiful” is a concept that is in a state of reconstruction, following the postmodernist’s deconstruction, galvanized in the kaleidoscope of the present.

Instead of sticking to the established aesthetic category of “beauty”, we move the discussion into a new field. For us, beautiful is a state of “scientific-poetic synthesis,” a term we borrow from Luке Turner’s manifesto. The formulation is an opportunity to develop the idea by breaking with this specific “beauty” aesthetic understanding – derived from Kant – and by turning to dynamically developing disciplines such as neuroaesthetics1 and radical enactive aesthetics2. These examples can be expanded further with the somatic aesthetics. Although these disciplines have competing views, we do find a shared area between them. The common can be defined as the interaction between the biological neural network, the whole human body, the brain centers, and consciousness extended to the environment, which become (in mutual occurrence) an integral part of our perceptions of both beauty and ugliness. The beautiful in art is not necessarily “that which presents itself without concepts as an object of universal pleasure” in Kant’s words,3 rather it is a neural impulse in the brain centers that coincide with the stimulations generated by things (images, objects, actions) with which we want to connect. Things, real or imagined, that are part of us through and via bodies, are inseparable from the embodied consciousness in the environment. The said cannot be understood unequivocally. It is precisely metamodernism that sets the structure of feeling, which is an oscillation between positive and negative. For this reason, the exhibition presents works that can also be perceived from the perspective of the unbeautiful and the threatening. Sensations and feelings belong to the strictly individual human interactions with the world. It is therefore necessary to discuss the line of connection from the singular to the whole and vice versa. The relationship we seek can be illustrated by the sequence: individual – group of individuals – society. Usually, we approach the mentioned problem holistically, in other words – we observe society instead of its individual representatives. But in the present concept, we follow an atomistic model4,  in which individual monads (individuals, personalities, subjects and objects) are essential. In this context, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben gives a clear definition of such a state referring to the individual. He says: “We are together and most closely related to each other, but there is no incorporation or relation between us that unites us; we are united to each other in the form of our being alone.”5

Drawing on Agamben’s words, we can construct the conceptual apparatus of Metareserves 2024. Being alone with oneself assumes the possibility of touching others or touching things of new order. The void between the one touching and the touched one, in physical and mental aspects, produce the need to actively contemplate the distance, the in-between, or in other words, the actual vacant space in which the contact takes place. It is a harmonious contrast between the mental states of ‘I inhabit myself’, ‘you are not alone’, ‘I am part of a many’, ‘my self is diluted in others’, ‘society desubjects me’, ‘I inhabit myself but I know I am not alone’, ‘others inhabit themselves as I do’, ‘everyone is alone in themselves’. The active perception of the void as it is, or as it could potentially be, gives rise to a complex contradictory feeling in which every nuance of emotion oscillates between fear and ecstatic confidence. The differences are subtle but always saturated. As in establishing contacts between artists, works and institutions of art – it is a harmonization of individual difference, and in the present exhibition a different reception of the intermedia zones in between. We find a direct analogue of the stated in Luke Turner’s manifesto of metamodernism: “Artistic creation is contingent upon the origination or revelation of difference therein. Affect at its zenith is the unmediated experience of difference in itself.”6 Revelation is also the exposure of the void, which is itself a potential and/or actual contact zone.

If we revisit the metaphor of the kaleidoscope, we can clearly comprehend the idea of the “saturation” of the void. Through the kaleidoscopic reflection of what exists, we get a complex optical picture of symmetrical, mirrored images, which are by and of themselves “vacant spaces”. The voids are optically active creating complete pictures. In contrast to the kaleidoscope, the pendulum describes trajectories that show the distance between the peaks of motion. Life in itself does not enable us to think of our actions as a pendulum. Rather it is an ever-moving kaleidoscope into which our own view of things takes place – reflected by our own view of ourselves.

What is available in the kaleidoscope: Fragments of the embodied consciousness of artists in the environment, such as the works themselves; parts of process-oriented group actions that are time-distant from the present moment; purposeful accumulations of spatial and physical elements; repetitive visual patterns that can be interpreted differently; technological interactions with the physical environment and technological simulations of imaginary worlds; evidence of unconscious interventions and intentional actions in public places; artistic ways of interpreting political and economic processes.
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The idea of the kaleidoscope is an idea of the variations and modal transformations of both the singular and the total of separated and distanced parts. To confirm what has been said, we refer again to Agamben. According to him, “the separate existence – the modus – is neither a substance nor a precisely defined fact, but an infinite series of modal oscillations by which the substance each time constitutes and expresses itself.”7 The present exhibition seeks the visibility of a specifically constructed contact zone between contemporary person and the world, including its technological environment. In the perspective of Metareserves 2024, the main theme remains the human being – its sensibility, its ways of connecting with the world and others in ever-changing conditions. The specificity lies in the focused attention to the power of the voids, the distances, the pauses, the missing elements or places where the oscillation of the existing is expressed. Outside the viewer’s gaze in the kaleidoscope that is directed towards the exhibition at the Stara Zagora Art Gallery, automatism and the unconscious remain. In this external space there is no vacuum, rather a dense environment of entangled bodily and technological actions and interactions. A part of them has crystallized in “Bio-automatism/ techno-automatism, AI – automatism”, a parallel program of Metareserves 2024, held in April in Veliko Tarnovo.

Prof. Atanas Totlyakov, DSC
translated by Vesislava Zheleva