NOTES

(1)"A human lives in Space, and Space passes through a human." If I could remember for sure this phrase by Mikhail Matyushin (and if I was certain it was him who said it), I would use it as an epigraph.

(2)The concept of space is a basic one, it is not defined verbally here but is pre-assigned through artistic (visual) media. The "Field of Vision" artistic action which comprises a series of art exhibits and performances is the artistic device designed to manifest (rather than define) space as an entity.
"…as a work of art, sculpture certainly implies working with artistic space. Art and technique deal with space and develop it with two different aims and using two different methods.
But as for space, does it remain the same? Or is it different from the one that was first defined as late as after Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton? Is space that discontinuity which is uniform, showing no specific nature in any possible point, having equal value in any direction but imperceptible?
It is the space that, to a greater and greater degree, with more and more persistence, has been provoking the contemporary man to conquer it?
Isn’t it true that contemporary visual arts are thus provoked into thinking of themselves in terms of the battle with space? Doesn’t art’s temporary contemporary nature thus turn out to be confirmed?
However, it is possible that space as designed by physic and technological means, whatever definitions it might be further subjected to, as the only true space? Could it be true that all spaces constructed otherwise, as artistic spaces, spaces of everyday behavior and communication, are nothing but subjective rudimentary and modified forms of the unitary objective cosmic space?
What if the objectivity of the objective universal space were, fatally, but a correlate of the subjectivity of a mind unacquainted to historical periods which preceded the European New Time?
Even if one acknowledges the different nature of space perception, in the past epochs, could this give one an insight into the essence of space? The question of what space is as space has not even been formulated, not to mention the answers. The question remains unanswered, in what way the space is, and if any being can be ascribed to it at all.
Isn’t space one of the primophenomena whose perception, as Goethe has it, fills the man with a kind of fear bordering on horror? It would seem that there is nothing behind space to what it could be attributed. One cannot transcend from space to some other entity. The nature of space can be derived from space itself. Does it also allow to articulate itself?
The helplessness with which these questions are asked makes one admit:
Until one sees the true essence of space, any idea of artistic space will remain as vague. The way in which an artwork is penetrated by space is suspended in uncertainty at first…" M. Heidegger, "Art and Space"

(3)One cannot help looking back at one of the first experiences of such filtration, namely, the exhibition and the sale of emptiness by Iv Klain in Paris in 1958.

(4)The only messengers from this world to other ones are flies with their rare ability to move from one space to another, which for some reason was overlooked by Lucian in his "Praise for Flies"

(5)These TRAPS made of metal nets can secure space with extraordinary safety; space can neither be scooped nor sucked out of them.

(6)Science has been explaining to everybody for a long time that the space of the Universe is limited but infinite. Like spherical surface, or like circumference.

(7)My Museum TRAP can also be extended, penetrating into any possible infinite space to procure still new "exhibits", like they do in any museum.

(8)It is universally known that it was Pavel Filonov who said that a painting must grow like a living organism.

(9)For instance, a dog exists in a space of odors rather than in a visual space. Different from light beams, odors do not travel linearly. Consequently, even this level of everyday existence is sufficient for non-Euclidean geometry to apply.

(10)Ancient mantic experience tells us that it might be as dangerous to work with space without knowing or feeling its laws, as it is dangerous to work, say, with electricity.

(11)Even in our dreams we retain "our vision". We can see the same forms in unusual combinations, like in a surrealist painting. I have never heard anybody telling that he or she dreamt of something which does not resemble anything else. This is the reason why I stopped being interested in dreaming. My virtual dreams are in my SPACE TRAPS.

(12)It should be pointed out that I am consciously simplifying, schematizing, and I do not mention here the very special space generated around an artwork which is directly connected with the individual space of an artist’s emotions, his or her soul.

(13)Though this idea is trivial, it is very difficult even now for men to sneak into the closest borderline confines.

(14)Both the Absurd and the Chaos are the two worn out horses of art. They have been ridden too long, and too many things have been lost in the race, or destroyed, or decayed, and restoration is needed now.

(15)Many people associate the change of strategy and tactics of artistic practices in the mid-19th century with the invention of photography. The term "virtual realities" appeared when the possibility arose to use the computer for the creation of new forms of visual realities. However, such realities cannot transcend the limitations imposed by the natural definition power inherent in human vision. The computer, like photography, might provoke a new turn in "the art of humans", but not eliminate art.

(16)"The image…is based on the outer vision, lying on the surface. The image is but an impression, a description, and therefore it is insufficient." (from the Manifesto of Biocosmism, early 20th century).

(17)And since that very time, cognition is impossible without slaying actual reality and further dismembering the corpse. To my mind, this is true for artistic creation, not only for scientific analysis.

(18)Life.

* In this paper I am trying to do without any support from contemporary theories of Post-modernism, as those of this ending of the possibilities of art, deconstruction, the defense of kitsch, schizoanalysis, etc. I would like to declare the relative independence of my text. If I quote, I quote people who have long ceased being anybody’s rivals, people who knew artistic creation from inside, from the back side.