TIMO HEINO
In my exhibition Entwinings I have fused the
material manifestations on human and non-human
processes – wasp’s nests and globular pieces of
my own making – so that their boundaries cannot be clearly perceived.
The wasp’s nest resembles ashes resemble each
other to some degree in composition. The nest,
however, has a distinct structure and solid form
held together by the secretion of the wasp.
Similarities can be seen between the structure of
the wasp’s nest and the conception of Antiquity
regarding the structure of the world. According
to the latter, the world was composed of a series
of spheres within each other, with man at its
centre. The wasp’s nest is constructed in
precisely this way in relation to its
inhabitants. At its core are the cells, the
centre of the wasp community’s habitat, and it is
from here that the wasps venture on their
food-gathering expeditions into “outer space” beyond the nest.
In 1964, two years before the earth was
photographed from outer space for the first time,
a textbook of geology noted that “races whose
horizons are limited to tribal territory, a
mountain valley, a small strip of shoreline or
the blocks of a crowded city” cannot have any
idea of the real nature and extent of the world
around them. If true knowledge is acquired only
by viewing the world from outside, this claim is
self-evidently true. It is precisely this
visually based assumption that has provided us
with the image of the world as a globe. It also
gives primacy to knowledge acquired by looking at
globular models in comparison with knowledge that
we obtain by actively taking part in the events of our surroundings.
Unlike solid globes that can be inspected only
from the outside, membranous layers or spheres
must be viewed from the inside. The global
perspective could thus be called centripetal and
the spherical perspective centrifugal. The
spherical perspective also resembles the relation
of a foetus in the womb with the outside world.
Unlike wasps, people do not, in global terms,
live inside their inhabited ball. It is a
noteworthy fact, though, that shelters
constructed for protection against catastrophes
are in caves excavated in the crust of the earth,
which means that safety is ultimately felt to be
found within the globe. As we now know, space
beyond our globe is not a fruitfully beneficent
environment as in the case of wasps. Despite
laborious and ever further reaching exploration
into outer space, life or even any matter
suitable for nutrition has not yet been observed beyond Earth.
In the ancient past man felt that he lived at the
centre of several layers of spheres surrounded by
material ether, while according to modern
knowledge he is travelling in an infinite void,
on the surface of a globe without any
destination, amidst countless planets without
life. What does it mean emotionally to man that
his consciousness of the ultimate foundation of being has changed?