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  • The Non-Visible Worlds of Art and Performance
  • Praxis (Delia and Brainard Carey) (bio)

As artists we are concerned with the visible and non-visible worlds: we argue they are so intertwined in daily life as well as art practice, that without the non-visible world, the visible one would suffer. And beyond that, there is a world that can only be seen in dreams and hints of parallel realities that are mutually exclusive, so we can never see the other, like dreaming versus waking states. We want to consider how different artists, seen through our own creative lens, contribute to different aspects of these worlds.

When artists work with what we call the non-visible world, it has several meanings, from the spiritual to the magically imagined object. There is also the mixing of the real and the imaginary, such as a hand holding an imaginary apple, or reading a book that has passages so visual you see them in your mind’s eye. In our everyday life we mix the two on a regular basis: when we make a wish on our birthday cake for something we cannot see or when we visualize our future achieving whichever dream we might have. Those are all in the realm of everyday imagination, where we regularly use what we cannot see.

We are two artists looking at the issue of invisibility or the non-visible, through the lens of our own artwork which is part performance and part idea-based, or to use the antiquated term, “conceptual” in nature. As that term is overused these days, we will define it here for the purposes of this article. Artists who consider themselves conceptual are usually working with ideas as the primary focus of their work. If the ideas are not just part of the work, but need to be understood and acknowledged in order to experience the work, then the artists would be considered concept-based in our minds, and are conceptual artists. That definition is loose, though most readers of this journal will understand the parameters quickly. However, there are other examples that would fit this definition.

Mathematicians, for example, often work largely with ideas, and then those ideas are proven with formulas and equations. Occasionally the two mix in this wonderful example that seems to bring the imaginary into the real. In trigonometry and also in the beginning of calculus, students are introduced to a wonderful concept of the imaginary number. It seems incredible at first that such a thing could exist [End Page 100] and that it could actually be used. Briefly, it is the square root of negative one. For example, we all know how to determine the square root of a number like twenty-five. It is five. When we look for a square root, we are looking for a number that when multiplied against itself gives us the original number. So the square root of one is also one, because one times itself is one. However, there is an exception. The number, negative one, which is often shown like this: – 1; which square root does it have? The problem is this—what is the square root of negative one? It is not negative one, because negative one multiplied by itself gives us a positive number one, since a negative times a negative is a positive. There is not a clear answer to this matter. Yet mathematicians and scientists use the number negative one all the time in calculations that are very real. So when you learn the answer, you are told in math class that it is an imaginary number. That imaginary number has a symbol, and it is a lower case, cursive, letter “.” The student must take it on faith initially, that an imaginary number times itself is negative one. A strange idea, a conceptual idea, that can be used in everyday calculations. The square root of negative one is the imaginary number.

In the art world, the equivalent might be Yoko Ono asking us to imagine peace. It is at once a concept-based idea, and also a call to action that can have real results. When Ono and Lennon made posters and billboards...

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