Cross-pollination
Kosmorganica can be explored around the globe from India, China, Iceland, America, to the Emirates. For that reason, their philosophical approach to artmaking has no singular original location. Here we briefly trace the cross-pollination of Kosmorganica.
Since the invention of maritime travel, the global exchange of goods and ideas intermingled across East and West borders. Historians often write of the two as being opposite of one another, yet this essentialist division is artificial. A universalist position is not of the present nor future, but the nature of humanity prior to the nation-state.
The East and West have been recipe exchanging for over 3000 years.[1] Pythagoras borrowed from the Egyptians, the Egyptians borrowed from the Greeks, and the Vedic Hindus. The Gnostic Christian sects borrowed from the Chinese Buddhists and Taoists.[2] Plotinus the father of Neoplatonism had a love affair with Persia and Alexandria.[3] The Greek Skeptics echo Buddhists with high mental discipline training (meditation), a desire to not
get bothered by matters (Buddha nature[4]), and accepting that life is difficult (dukka, ‘life is suffering.’)[5] Jesuits brought back tea from China, but also introduced Europeans to Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, breaking the stereotype that the Chinese were primitive savages.[6] In exchange, The Jesuits gave the Chinese hydraulics astronomy, geometry, mathematics, geography, along with their Catholic dogma and rituals. The Jesuits’ scientific strengths go back to the ancient Greeks who in turn excelled through exchange with Babylonia and ancient Egypt. Vedic texts and Ch’an Buddhism parallel concepts of Christian medieval Scholasticism.[7] The sermons of Christian Scholastic professor Meister Eckhart have been referred to as the ‘Upanisads of the West’.[8]
German Romanticism fertilized the ground for Kosmorganica. It reflected a revival of ancient pantheism combined with the Indian Vedic thought.[12] Edward Said called the influence of Eastern philosophy an ‘epidemic of Orientalia affecting every major poet, essayist, and philosopher’ of the West.[13] Despite being a rationalist, Polymath and philosopher, Liebniz was a fan of numerology and the Taoist fortune-telling manual, the I Ching. He believed the I Ching was the ‘key to all symbolic systems and indeed a foundation of a universal science.’ [10] If 18th century French Enlightenment philosophers had a case of Sinophilia, their neighbors, the German Idealists were Upanishadholics.[11]
Across the Atlantic, Transcendental philosophy, a harbinger of Kosmorganica values, was essentially a cross-pollination of Eastern inspiration with the pantheist idea that all beings and nature are composed of the divine. [17] American Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau jumped on the Buddhist Brahman bandwagon.[14] Emerson drew his idea of an Over-Soul or world soul from Rammohan Roy, who had designed a universal theology from Christianity and Vendanta.[15] Thoreau chose an ascetic path not too different from a Taoist mountain man. These mountain men were hermits communing with nature, living a life of solitude in a personal paradise.[16] Although this is not the case for Kosmorganians who aren’t escaping to pure natural sources nor trying to turn the clock back. Locals reinsert nature into digital urban life in their art, rituals, performances, and built environment. [ Explore Kosmorganica rituals and architecture.]
I attempt to give the Light Ballet the naturalness that breathing in and out has for the man who is alive. A nuanced flow of light interests me more than a clash of contrasts. The sound is not music but an accompanying, and at times leading, noise, which among other things has the task of creating a chosen silence, in which the light is then alone.-Otto Peine
[1] Sinoologist J. Needham observed that there has been a dialogue between Eastern and Western cultures for over 3000 years. Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge.3.
[2] Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge.37-39.
[3] Ibid.39.
[4] The concept of Buddha-nature has many meanings depending upon the cultural and religious context. Here is refers to the Mahayana Buddhist ‘luminous mind’. The purity and clarity of mind is developed through meditation according to the Saṅgīti-sutta whereby through meditation training once can reach ‘samadhi’ or enlightened mind. Buswell, R. E., Lopez, D. S., & Ahn, J. (2017). The Princeton dictionary of Buddhism.653.
[5] Ibid.38.
[6] Ibid.39-41.
[7] Scholasticism is medieval theological philosophy from 1100-1700 in Northern Europe. It was a collection of Christian monastic schools that aimed to expand theology into a philosophy. Main figures of Scholasticism include: Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas. Steven P. Marone, (2007). Medieval philosophy in context. In A. S. McGrade, ed. The Cambridge companion to medieval philosophy. 10-51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[8] Coomaraswamy, A. K. (1956). The transformation of nature in art. New York: Dover Publications.notes (56) 201.
[9] Gelburd, G., & DePaoli, G. (1990). The trans parent thread: Asian philosophy in recent American art. Hempstead, N.Y: Hofstra University.16,22.
[10] Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge.47.
[11] Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge.59.
[12] French Enlightenment philosopher, Anquetil Duperron connected Indian philosophy with Schelling, Hegel, Fichte and Kant’s transcendental idealism. Duperron made the first French translation of the Upanishads and made Indian thought available to Europeans. He also translated the Persian Oupnek’hat which inspired Schopenhauer. Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge.56-67.
[13] Said, E. W. (1985). Orientalism. London: Penguin Books.50.
[14] Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge.59-63, 84.
[15] Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge.85-86.
[16] Rawson, P. S., & Legeza, L. (1995). Tao: The Chinese philosophy of time and change. London: Thames and Hudson.7.
[17] Gamwell, L. (2005). Exploring the Invisible: Art, science, and the spiritual – revised and expanded edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.27.
[18] European baroque and rococo imitated or incorporated Chinese decorative elements into their design.(e.g. Watteau and Boucher) They adapted Chinese style of furniture ,pottery and textiles in what was called ‘chinoiserie’. Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge.51.
[19] Clarke, J. J. (1997). Oriental enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge.page.