The Ursonate is a perfect example of how Schwitters perceived art. It is skilfully made, pleasurable to listen but, since the artist is firmly rooted in Dadaist tradition, it is safe to conclude the poem being devoid of meaning in the proper sense of the word. It must have been puzzling for contemporary audience, at least in the beginning.

In the philosophy of Žižek one encounters a similar puzzle: Is there a meaning, a system behind and under his ideas? His philosophy, so he claims, is based on Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist philosophy. This may point to the exceptionally deep understanding of the philosopher in question, but can also mask the author spelling out almost uncontrolled streams of consciousness. In any case, his philosophy is interesting and well written, so even if it has no metaphysical system it is still pleasurable, something like the Ursonate.

Generally, the lack of unified meaning behind art and the lack or diversity of metaphysical systems points strongly to the impossibility of the science of Being. In this sense, art and philosophy have evolved, although one can not predict future directions in either.

I am considering art in relation to time and it's social commentary or as an expression of the time the art is created in. Schwitters was active in the 30's and his work with "junk" or "trash" was revolutionary in the 1930's and followed by artists such Dieter Roth who built a "Schimmelmuseum", a museum of rotting and degrading chocolate.

http://www.dieter-roth-foundation.com/the_schimmelmuseum/main-room-ground-floor

Recently I visited the private Dieter Roth Museum in Hamburg in Germany and the art historian who showed me around was saying, that just now lets say 50 years later on, the work and art of Dieter Roth is widely recognized and appreciated. Now 2012 I am wondering what is the progressive and relevant art of today and how much should art have a relation to the time it is created in. We all admire art which is "timeless" in a sense we listen Beethoven and adore it for it's perfection. Now we hear people say we live in a time of information age, technology, globalization and social media. Art expresses emotion in a way nothing else can. Emotions are timeless. But an art work that is created today but carries the language and character and emotion of the 19th century is it telling about our time ?

I thought this exhibition is very interesting, you can visit online.

http://www.or-bits.com

Here one of my favorite pieces on it, reappearing of Žižek! Is Seeing Believing ?

http://www.or-bits.com/05truth/05c_gt1.php

Interesting in relation:

http://www.furtherfield.org/features/interviews/seeing-believing-taina-bucher-interviews-curator-gaia-tedone

In her book Alone Together Sherry Turkle describes how we hide more and more behind technology, how intimate communications start being something to avoid rather than to look for, how smartphones help us to flee our fear for the other, how we learn to control our relations via interfaces and how we are adapting our behaviour to this new situation.

Facebook for instance teaches us how to simulate intimacy, how to make relations easy, clean, and without danger. Brad Troemel in Why You Should Make Yourself Someone Else Online (page 98), essay no 11 in his book Peer Pressure argues along the same lines: “The process of image management on facebook is already less an outpouring of expression than it is an exercise in omission of information about one’s self”.

So these relations also become superficial and makes us ask: Who are we when we don’t perform? Why can’t we show our vulnerable, messy sides? Why can’t I be boring and cherish solitude anymore?

How can we aim for a Better, Happier World if we don't allow ourselves to exist, if we are not ready to affront our sloppy sides and take them as a departure point for our thinking and actions. How can we pretend to change a world if we are not even capable of looking honestly at ourselves?

Maybe we should answer Guattaris question: “Why have the immense processual potentials bought forth by the revolutions in information processing, telematics, robotics, office automation, biotechnology and so on, so far only led to a monstrous reinforcement of earlier systems of alienation, an oppressive mass-media culture and an infantilising politics of consensus?".

Maybe we should pay less attention to change and say with Boris Groys that "…change is our status quo. Permanent change is our only reality. And in the prison of permanent change, to change the status quo would be to change the change—to escape the change."

Maybe this will be possible if we could be more interested in what he calls weak visibility and weak public gestures. Maybe our humanity can be saved through an attention for simple daily, repetitive always returning actions, for never changing affects and desire.

Maria Chatzichristodoulou also touched upon this in the article she wrote about my show at HTTP (now Furtherfield) gallery in 2010 "Abrahams's Still Life is commonplace, messy and malleable. It is about the 'banal' reality of everyday life, time passing by, people crossing paths in fractured, desperate or indifferent attempts to communicate. This everyday quality opens up Abrahams's Shared Still Life to movement, dust, miscommunication, and shared absence."

In a society where authenticy and privacy become endangered it is important to find ways to access our vulnerabilities and doubts, to make them public, to cherish our messy side, to make place for the beast in the beauty, to go back to reality, to claim the human. "We need to trap reality in order to make it available for thought." (paraphrasing Jaques Rancière)

In silence one can hear the underlying vocal structure that surrounds us. Faint noises otherwise not noticed but nevertheless contributing to the structure suddenly stand out. Paradoxically it is in silence that the most complete collection of voices can be perceived. The complete world of wavelenghts, however, will be unaccesssible for the human ear.

Philosophers have supposed something mysterious under things as they appear to us. This noumenon was the target of much philosophical thinking and eventually Kant declared these things themselves to be extremely difficult if not impossible to reach. But what if all this is error?

In silence there are different wavelenghts, but there is nothing beyond that should be grasped in order to know voice. For most of the time it is even enough to listen with one’s ears. It seems to me that philosophers have for long time confused noumenon with the Real, the totality of things. Just because our intellect cannot have a complete picture of the Real does not mean that there is something behind it.

Adding to confusion is the theoretical nature of the Real. In oder words, the Real have a meaning only to a creature with some form of symbolic expression. The only possibility to approach (but not comprehend) the Real is by what Aristotle called the primary act. From all the above said follows that the a compositions of Cage or a collages of Schwitters say more about the Real than metaphysical discourse because of lack of pretensions to consider things in themselves and appearance.

In the philosophy-nonphilosophy language: The Real cannot be comprehended absolutely, although with the pimary act the understanding can reach out towards the objective. The Real will be forever outside the capacity of the consciousness. The subjective aspects (our reality), however, are in reciprocal relation with the primary act, although only in the case the primary act is universal. If the primary act is physiological, it will be participant in the Real from the point of view of the universal act.

There is frequently some confusion about how purely fictional entities like the golden mountain, Pegasus or a square circle can be said to exist. What is the truth value of a sentence, say, about Anna Karenina? Although some very authoritative logical analysis claims that any statement about the mentioned entities is inevitably false, this is contra intuitive, to say the least. Nor there is much help from talks about meaning and reference. One possible solution could be to utilize the scholastic (from the late 13th century onward) distinction between mind dependent and independent entities. In that context, propositions about mind dependent entities (fiction) are true as long as one does not claim independent existence for the subject. To build on the idea, the sentence “I believe Santa brings the presents” is true as long as one behaves consistently, e.g. puts out a list before Christmas, sweeps the chimney clean etc. On the other hand the sentence “Santa brings the presents” is clearly false, since there is no one particular, centuries old person called Santa Claus and since the sentence is without the word “believe” (itself a mind dependent entity) it is, without further explanation, a factual claim. On the other hand, one is not required always to state explicitly that it is fiction one is talking about. A literary discussion, drama or simply putting up a show about Santa for the sake of the kids are done in the context where most people will understand the game.

A proposition is true if what it states is the case, or more formally: It is true that p if and only if p.

In the case of independent entities truth is determined by the states of affair in the world, while for fiction it is the internal consistency.