Prozessunterbrechungen

Luhmann, Niklas; Bunsen, Frederick D.; Baecker, Dirk (1990): Kunst ist nicht mehr Objektkunst. Wie dem Künstler, der die Welt sichtbar machen will, die Welt immer wieder unsichtbar wird: Ein Gespräch zwischen Niklas Luhmann, Frederick Bunsen und Dirk Baecker. Aus: Bielefelder Stadtblatt vom 30. September, 1990, S.10 Im Gespräch. wayback

**Frederick Bunsen**: I notice that a stimulus is already there, that an expectation is interrupted, that was called not an antenna arises or has arisen, but actually a spine. And this is comprehensible for a viewer who is open enough. And I rejoice in his joy that he has departed from his previous expectation to make this visual experience. For him a new realization. And this is an interruption of the previous, of what was considered possible so far.

**Niklas Luhmann**: You mentioned the phenomenon of interruption. Everyday consciousness has to be put aside. As a sociologist, one would perhaps see this as an indicator of differentiation. Art is no longer a special refinement in everyday use, an everyday object, nor merely decoration, but it obviously wants something else. A differentiation is produced. This could be related to the initial difference between objects and world reference.

**Dirk Baecker**: Mr. Luhmann, you offered a concept that sounds simple, but is not quite simple in thought; but which allows both objects and world to say something from a third point - the concept of form:

**Niklas Luhmann**: In any case, it is meant in a rather unusual way and has the intention of drawing attention to something that one would not see in everyday life if one paid attention to the shape of things. It is therefore not a Gestalt concept. It is not a question of whether a thing is round or square or brightly colored or dimly colored or large or small. But with form I always mean the production of a difference, thus a borderline. This can of course be a circle or a fast or slow, straight or dashed line. But always with the effect that it distinguishes two sides. And with the consequence that one needs time to cross the borders, thus only with a special mental or factual operation comes to the other side. This is the sense of the concept of form, to pose the questions of time, difference and the unity of a context in a somewhat unconventional way.

**Dirk Baecker**: Something is produced as form, which then even in the case of a drama or in the case of a musical composition appears as a simultaneously, simultaneously perceivable entity. In the case of the picture, this is particularly striking. The artist may spend as much time as he likes to set his distinction, at some point the picture is there and one sees it perceptibly in front of him in all its distinctions at the same time. Can one imagine that as an artist that one produces something by a whole series of distinctions and at the same time thinks of the fact that the viewer will see afterwards all that one has made in a long process as simultaneously existing?

**Frederick Bunsen**: If I understand correctly: yes, but only conditionally. It requires a certain education or let's say prior knowledge. You can't just come in from point one and say: now I understand this. A certain training is necessary for that. I understand forms more as a totality. Certainly there is this inner and outer containment, but there is also a three-dimensionality. When I refer to my process, I build up a layer, eventually, and then take that layer itself back to make a correction or a change again. There is a certain sandwitching effect here, a certain layering.

**Niklas Luhmann**: But we still have to ask ourselves whether the intention is actually to present the entire work to the viewer in one glance, so to speak; whether one can then extract time again from the final product or say: That as a whole, for example, is beautiful or successful or interesting or whatever. We have to ask ourselves whether this is a model conception that is still adequate, or whether one would not have to instruct the viewer himself in the production sequence of the work of art, would not have to expect him to take the time to go from one to the other and to come to something again and again, I would almost like to say, to find meaning again and again and no empty places or no external references, where he now sees, aha, that costs so and so much - or whatever meaning he would then have to draw in from the outside? So he would have to be able to circle in the picture, to circulate or to find again and again new interpretations in the history, but just not have to see everything at once.

**Dirk Baecker**: You have formulated the thesis that forms make the world both visible and invisible. What is meant by this?

**Niklas Luhmann**: It is meant that within the form, or following the instructions of the form, one gets to see or, to hear the one or the other. That one is always in the world, never has the world as an object before oneself, but also cannot be outside of the world. Thus, one definitely sees something definite, nothing nebulous or mysterious is meant. But what does not become visible is precisely the unity of the form or that which constitutes the difference between the one or the other side or the before and the after of an operation. The execution makes something visible and at the same time invisible. With this concept of form one thus arrives at a mediation between object and world. One paints objects in such a way that there is something more in them than just themselves. But that which is more inside is at the same time hidden, one cannot treat it like an object; that is the idea behind it.

**Dirk Baecker**: The world becomes observable through forms.

**Niklas Luhmann**: In the world, observations are controlled in such a way that the world withdraws into that which is not observable. And that is on the one hand the observer himself, who can of course objectify himself. But as one knows from philosophy, he succeeds in this only by hiding behind himself again. The world itself, that is the last unit of every used distinction, is again invisible at the moment. One can designate it again, but always only with a new operation, with a new distinction, with new invisibilities.

**Dirk Baecker**: Is it conceivable then, that was one of our initial questions, that art makes statements about the world?

**Niklas Luhmann**: Here, I think, language is not quite up to par with what should be said. We need to bring the language back into line with our intentions. So I would answer yes and no. On the one hand, everything that can be seen or said takes place in the world, and they are always, in this sense, statements about the world. But just not about the unity of the world or about that which can never be left. And also not about the whole. In this sense the theory is directed against holographic approaches, as they are offered today in the style of the New Age; somehow a trace of the whole is to be found in everything individual, somehow every element is a part in which the whole is "inscribed". The concept of form is explicitly set against such a holographic New Age mysticism.

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**Dirk Baecker**: Then it is obviously much more about the process of observation than about the making and signifying of an object of whatever kind.

**Niklas Luhmann**: Yes, the correlate to the concept of the world lies in the concept of observation. The observer is again someone who handles a distinction and does not see himself when he observes. And art is conceived as a control of observations; also a control of the observation of the observation of others. One wants to see ( what the artist observed when he had decided so and not otherwise, and vice versa the artist wants to steer the observation of the observer.

**Dirk Baecker**: At present, one often finds the impression formulated that aesthetic theory has become bogged down in the concept of mimesis and that this is the last and great concept that Adorno and his aesthetic theory still have to offer in order to do aesthetic theory. Can you imagine exchanging the basic concept of mimesis for a basic concept of communication in aesthetic theory?

**Niklas Luhmann**: Yes. I understand the term mimesis as a traditional term that presupposes something that could be copied, imitated, made better, perfected, varied: Disegno in the Leonardian sense; perspective art and the like. In fact, I think this is due to a basic problem that can also be found in the theory of science or in the theory of economics, namely that the problem of external reference has become questionable, that one can no longer measure objects, achievements of an economic, epistemological, artistic kind by an external correspondence, whatever quality one then demands in addition, but that the whole problem is shifted to the difference between self-reference and external reference; that it is therefore somehow important not only to designate oneself, but also not only to designate something else, but to find a combination. By being what one is, one can also be in the world at the same time. In this I see a structure of modern society or a structure of intellectuality, which modern society would actually require.