Teritorry / Metaphorical space

I wonder how I can experience a space when I am inside of it. What means to be inside, including being in my own body. And how to develop the relationship between space (outer) - the body (inner). On one hand, the body is defined both „in“ and „towards“ space, on the other hand, (outer) space might be a translation of our (inner) space, of what and how we feel. Intimate and outer spaces are constantly encouraging each other in their growth.

Situation I am inside of it. There is nothing in here, covered with an ordinary foil. Every single movement of the body defines this space. Outside I stand facing the territory – something that is defining itself and I am defining against. By entering, space is opening up to me. I am diving into it. “Into the cloud. It ́s soft and feels easy.” “Into the water, the waves.” “The open mind.” “Something that sounds like snow.” “Somewhere up north, where it ́s not cold.” My body is constituted as a bounded space. I am a piece of land, a vessel, a room... When I experience it, I say: I feel it inside. I can not go beyond myself. I am filled up. That feeling, that I even have to cry out. I cannot take it… There are boundaries that arise from the relationship of the body and the space. Here and there. Near - Far. Inner - Outer. Full - Empty. Their borderline is difficult to determine - as the two exist both at once and together, both in me and in the world. I am aware of them only when they intensify, in disproportion, and then I perceive them – as a sudden proximity, distance, fullness, void, inner incirclement or external boundary. I usually don't know about them, just as I do not know about the wind until it is so strong that I can not go any further.

Inner - outer

My position is ambivalent, my being "in" space a paradox: I am occupying the space and opening myself to it. I am not “in front of” the space, but “inside” of it, as I am “in” the water, the space surrounds me and permeates me. I am standing with my arms outstretched. In this gesture I suddenly stay freezed: The space remains elusive.

Full - empty

There is always "something" that arises in what we want to be called empty, "something" that appears as a sudden energy and disturbs "nothing". I believe that this exists both in the physical space of the world and the intimate space of the body. The world I'm opening into is full. So is my experience of fullness, in a space that can appear to be empty, paradoxically. I can be filled up to the top.

The space is a verb, it unfolds, extends, the dialectics of the inside and outside, the full and empty is expanding. Such spatiality is fluid. It arises. To try to perceive fully is a challenge, knowing that reality always presents itself not as a cohesive whole. According to  Merleau-Ponty, it is not due to the our imperfect sense of perception, but due to the real itself, which is unstable and incomplete. Everything is dispersed among thousands of “adumbrations”. From non-material (experience) to material (fluid sketch) – and back to

immaterial (experience). As a viewer I am affected through material, but my hand is not necessarily moving towards it. I engage tactility, but more as a “haptic imagination”. The atmosphere penetrates the body and dissolve its borders. I am touched directly, but not literally. This is the moment of diffusion of my own boundaries. The moment in which the outside is interfering and I am “inside” of it.

Photography: Ondrej Urban