Kurt Hildegard
Und Institute for Art, Culture and Sustainability, Germany
In his teachings at the Bauhaus avant-guard artist Paul Klee emphasized: “In order to bring something genuinely and sustainably new into the world, be it in art or elsewhere, one should not work at the „form ends“, where things are explained, classified, determined, but rather as closely as possible at and with the „formative forces“?” Yet, where and what are these “formative forces”? And how can we work with them? Similarly, Wassily Kandinsky’s writings describe that abstract art intends to go beyond visible things to the living principals from which the physical world originates.
With this as a starting point and drawing on inter- and transdisciplinary ways of working, the paper explores “predisciplinarity” as a new creative approach that connects art and science, while placing both within a wider integrity.
“Predisciplinary work” takes place in an experiential sphere preliminary to the separation of theory and practice. The Greek origin of the word theory — thea, meaning “beholding” — points to this sphere. Here, insight and knowledge emerge from a heightened sense of being as well as from an enlivened practice of perceiving — and therefrom of thinking. Since quantum physics this sphere has become empirically detectable as primordial, creative aliveness.
Based on cultural science and informed by a phenomenological methodology, the research presented aims at identifying ways of gaining knowledge, which provide an expanded understanding of both science and of art.
This “predisciplinar approach” focuses on the “inner space” within every human being as a primary workspace waiting to be explored. The sacred buildings throughout times and cultures — temples, churches, mosques — might be physical manifestations of this inner space, in which what makes the world alive longs to become aware — aware of itself.
Finally, the research explores whether and how predisciplinarity could be a pathway to a possibly upcoming era: an era of “Enlivenment”. Whereas the Enlightenment intended to elevate mankind from its incapacitation by granting it rational agency, the “Enlivenment” would preserve the Enlightenment values such as individual dignity, justice, and equality, while reconnecting them to their roots, which lie in the dynamic, creative omnipresence of what keeps the world alive.