Kraftzellen | Syntopia

	[Works]

			Syntopielabor Featured works: • System of Coordinates • The inner Observatory • Banderole 4000 • Lost Connection • Networks • Koenigsbergertafel • The inner Crucifixion Diamond-Graphite
	Abgebrochene Verbindung (Lost Connection), 1990, mounted leafs, synthetic material, iron, cement, lead, copper, glass, 295cm x 60cm x 48cm

			"Sometimes, as in the [Cello for Full Moon] object, Sacharow-Ross manages to combine the two approaches – the “scientific” and the “mystical.” The inverted commas show the nominal and even ironic nature of this terminology: the artist specially lowers the pathos of both discourses. Both are archaicized and even mystified. The “scientific” is represented by a system of lenses likened to an historical optical apparatus. The second, the “mystical”, is theatricalized and stage-directed. A readymade – a cello – is placed in a special cupboard, the analogue of the stage box. The system of lenses catches the moment when the moon enters the full phase and the light floods into the hole specially intended for this. A Kunststück – the miracle of the birth of music in a flash of moonlight! The banality of this metaphor corresponds to its literalization. But, at the same time, is there not, in this radicalness, the reduction of some other, profound meaning? For example, an answer to the summons of Cage? With him, we have the principle of chance, the aleatory. Here we have iron determination, supplied by the movement of the celestial luminaries. In any case, Sacharow-Ross achieves a new quality of the realization of a Gesamtkunstwerk."
	left: Cello for Full Moon, 1987, wood, iron, synthetic material, 139cm x 57cm x 67cm [detail] right: installation view "Syntopia", Deutsches Museum Bonn 2007-2008		-Alexander Borovsky, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. [click here to read the whole article.]

	Dieter Buchhart: For a long time you have been working with the notion of syntopy, devised by Ernst Pöppel, professor of neurophysiology and founder of the Human Science Center at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians-University. How would you define syntopy? Igor Sacharow-Ross: Pöppel’s notion of syntopy developed from his findings in basic research on brain functions and the emergence of creativity. He defines syntopy as the linking of the formerly separate in spatial and conceptual terms, and sees this as a precondition for creativity, which grows from the link between explicit knowledge, implicit ability, and personal knowledge. When today we speak of knowledge, we usually mean conceptual knowledge. But it has been established in neurophysiology that at least two equally important forms of knowledge also emerged in the course of evolution. The second form is pragmatic knowledge, intuitive or implicit knowledge – the experimenter's artistic knowledge and scientific awareness. This intuitive knowledge today has been lost as an educational goal, and has retreated in our society to a secondary position. The third, and perhaps most important form is visual knowledge. We make images of facts, as Wittgenstein put it: half of the human brain is solely concerned with images, not concepts. And these images appear to us in threefold form: current knowledge – for example, the direct presence of the other. And secondly the visual memories that we all carry with us, all the way back to the first decisive memories, always linked to a certain image that in turn is always linked to a certain site, and site and image are always linked to a certain meaning or feeling, with a smell, with an experience. The personal identity of each of us is a sequence, the compound content, the syntopy of images that we bear within ourselves. The life story of each person is something special, and makes us the people we are. And the third form of visual knowledge is graphic and topological knowledge of simple geometric forms, which we use to make factual matters clear to us. In the last three to four hundred years, however, an imbalance has developed in our culture in favor of conceptual knowledge, oriented towards Cartesian rationalism. At issue is thus overcoming partial cultures within our society, like the sciences, the arts, or the economy. This dynamic connection and bridging of limits is expressed by the concept of syntopy, as is the link between various peoples. It is an expression of the linkage of different things in a single place.		Syntopy: the linkage of spatially and conceptually separate entities as a prerequisite for creativity that grows out of the combination of explicit knowledge, implicit ability and personal knowledge. -Ernst Pöppel (founder and chairman of Association of Neuroesthetics, professor of neurophysiology and founder of the Human Science Center at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians-University)
	-Igor Sacharow-Ross in an interview with Dieter Buchhart (Curator, Art critic, Director of Kunsthalle Krems) [click here to read the whole article.]		at the top: three-second timing device for conscious perception (by Ernst Pöppel)


	Untitled, 1994, mixed technique on wood, 81cm x 200cm x 8cm