Beyond the Noise, Behind the Cotton Wool. Reflections on truth, silence, and the outward purposelessness of art

Abstract

At age four, I used to secretly squeeze through the cracks in our backyard fence to go and explore the world on the other side. One step at a time, a little further each time, those childhood escapades soon grew into what would become the quest of a lifetime: a relentless and passionate chase for "what lies beyond". Beyond the backyard fence, beyond sight, beyond the human scope - a chase, one might say, for the true essence of the world. So I wandered and wondered, from one country to the next and from mathematics to glass to art. A somewhat winding journey I admit, yet one consistently marked by introspection and punctuated by moments of unexpected stillness, of monumental silence. Could it be, I sometimes wonder, that silence is the expression of the essence of the world? It is with that question stirring at the back of my mind that I initiated my thesis work about a year ago. The essence of the world, however, is not ours to touch, nor is pure silence ours to experience; both forever elude human perception. Yet contemplating the horizon one can still gather a sense of infinity. Hands anchored on matter, stretching my mind to philosophy and literature, I thus attempted to expand my own horizons and achieve a broader understanding of the kinship between truth, silence, and art. The present thesis, alongside my recent artistic work, comes as a result of this investigation. Combining my personal views with the ideas of various philosophers and artists, and inspired in particular by the writings of Virginia Woolf, it explores the nature of art, the human longing for being, and the tenuous threads of silence that span the gap between the two.