COLLISIONISM
INTERNATIONAL ART MOVEMENT
New York-Cologne-Moscow
CONTENTS
- Manifesto of Collisionism
- Objectives and Tasks
- Cultural Programs and Projects
- Foundations and Public Relations
- The CHAIN Group
As in the instance of colliding nuclei, one can expect the collision of ideas to create other new ideas full of dynamic energy. Sometimes this energy is contagious.
I believe that the theory of Collisionism is a school for the present, productive as much in art as it is in science.
"Art being the most paradoxical part of world intellect not only has a right to a logically inexplicable esthetic experiment, but also has an obligation to preserve the achievements of world culture in their original purity," –so think members of the CHAIN group, whose works I have known and seen displayed in the United States, Russia, Germany and Portugal.
Collisionism is a way of exposing new dimensions of human fantasy.
Prof. Dr. Erwin Klein
Berlin, 1993
The traditional value of a work of art is always specific. It presents a combination of the temperament of a professional artist with the formal, ethnical, historical and philosophical level of work interpretation.
A developing society places demands today on religion, science and art, for the creation of more sophisticated dynamic psychological models of the individual. Is it ready to meet the challenges of the 21st century?
The Collisionism art movement presented by an international group of artists, musicians, authors and filmmakers called the CHAIN, works in the following manner:
We consider out of collisions between various esthetic ideas and principles; operating with pure forms and philosophical formulas of well-known schools we reveal new formulas of durability for a basic outlook of the human personality.
The logic of this approach to advancing the personality has long been felt by theorists, scholars and artists.
W. Goethe: ‘As for my sensitive perception, I am so strangely arranged that I hold in my memory all the out lines and shapes in a most distinct and clear way. Without this heightened perceptiveness, I wouldn’t be able to personalize and revive my images’.
S. Rubenstein: ‘The uniformity of the psychological appearance of an individual is diversified by and contradictory, but there always appears to be such an outlook characteristic of a normal personality where these contradictions meet in uniformity’.
K. Jueng: ‘The artist is distinguished by a particular delicacy in selecting the instinctive core of his personality, or archetype’.
E. Gartman: ‘The unconscious is the first and foremost essence of both matter and spirit. Prototypes of all things or their ideas, after the likeness of which real things are created, live in us’.
Collisionism, which is a theory of bringing into collision distinct archetypes extracted from the experience of well known schools, offers an artist the possibility to use all of the achievements of world culture, not limiting them to parameters or styles, technical methods or materials.
Collisionism as a new art movement has an objective of creating new dynamic energies for the development of human society. This emotional energy of new artistic images can be transformed into the kinetic energy of the future.
Any work of art created in the course of collision between active elements and established formulas of art schools should become an energetic base.
Whereas some trends have disassociated themselves from former school, Collisionism incorporates them in order to achieve an optimum result in image creation based on complete intellectual concentration of the artist and spectator.
The collision of archetypes serves as a foundation for new models of artistic thinking which cannot yet be subjected to computation.
This method requires deep professional knowledge from the artist, as well as the spectator. It also requires various technical skills and the culture of perception which determine the purity of artistic experiment and the paradox of the latest research in art.
The CHAIN group projects: as The Renaissance of Constructivism (Moscow, 1989), Vikings in Town (Oslo, 1991), and Barbarians as a Stimulus of Civilization (Cologne, 1991) have demonstrated, the human society, while passing through a continuous chain of staggering events, needs to conduct effective analyses of their essentials.
The CHAIN group’s experiments with open fire conducted simultaneously in Germany, Russia, Scandinavia and Portugal have confirmed the discoveries of the theory of Collisionism, from the scientific point of view. The analysis led the group to the conclusion that it is flame that is the unit of artistic truth.
The formula of flame is virtually identical to the formula of Collisionism: in the unconscious collision of counteractive elements new categories of energy are being born.
Collisionism introduces into creativity as a new dimension, the sphere of art history.
Collisionism actively employs the energy of art schools from the past, the likes of which have not been employed during the previous period of social evolution.
The following equation serves as the formula for Collisionism:
(PE + LE + ME) / ED * IE = CE,
Where PE is the subconscious energy of the artist,
LE is lost energy of the historical achievements of society,
ME is mystical energy of the cosmos,
ED is energy of death and destruction,
IE is the intellectual energy of the spectator, and
CE is the energy of Collisionism.
- To give the spectator an opportunity to participate in creating the esthetics of the future, offering to experience intellectual overloads within the range of visual phenomena of the past and the structural paradoxes of the future.
- To expand the sphere of the use of historical trends in art.
- To merge the models of social concepts under the influence of measured unconscious artistic sensations.
- To view the history of culture in terms of its social expediency through the prism of the present, and the representation of the future.
- To create the work of art while studying the collision of schools, trends and visual attributes of various media (painting, sculpture, literature, theatre, movies, photography, and architecture) in the art.
- To use Collisionism in advancing the level of artistic education of the public.
- To bring into collision directly opposite philosophical concepts and structures of various arts.
- Retrospective of a non-existing civilization, 1994.
- Renaissance of constructivism II, 1993.
- The museum of Earth civilization on a planet outside of the Solar System, 1993.
- Kings for the people, 1995.
- Renaissance of the renaissance, 1996.
- Transfer of energy and new dimensions, 1995.
- Offerings as a stimulus of civilization, 1995.
- Cultural information and absolute truth, 1994.
- STYX International Gallery Foundation, Moscow-New York
- ZIS, Inc., New York
- ART PANORAMA Fine Arts Magazine, Three Arts, Inc.
- Museum of Modern Art, Moscow
- SUNSTORM Fine Arts Magazine, New York
- OPREA & LEVIN Gallery, New York
- RKP Gallery, New York
The first experimental projects of Collisionism were displayed by the CHAIN group at the exhibitions of the STYX gallery (Moscow – Tampere – Cologne – Oslo – Lisbon – Madrid) in 1989-1991.
The task of this international group is to promote the Collisionism art movement at exhibition projects and science seminars, and to conduct seminars for artists and for art school students.
The CHAIN group brings together all existing kinds of art media, publishes the ART PANORAMA magazine which covers the evolution of Collisionism, works on creating the fund of works of art for museums in industrially backward countries.
The CHAIN group also plans:
- to pursue artistic projects in cooperation with scientists, such as physicists, mathematicians, and chemists who study artistic aspects of modern discoveries in the transformation of energy;
- to create artistic projects of new models of civilization, in conjunction with philosophers, sociologists economists, and historians.
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