Lena Kocutar

Method

An experience of the world — be it the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of nature, or the kingdom of culture* — is necessarily relational, mediated. Religious, scientific, and cultural epistemologies all involve certain premises that in turn legitimise the generated knowledge. To legitimise knowledge is to justify given modalities of mediation so as to promote its interpersonal dissemination in the construction of shared realities. 

The text, featured in the work in its original format, is excerpted from the 1803 essay On Modification of Clouds by Luke Howard, written following the presentation of his latin nomenclature system for clouds — still in use today. The author presented proposed system to the Askesian Society** for scientific thinkers he was a member of.

*Francis Bacon, the father of scientific method, insists upon a distinction between the kingdom of heaven as the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of nature as that of man, where “the mind may exercise its right” (The New Organon). Jaques Lacan says that, through language, man “superimposes the kingdom of culture on that of nature” (Écrits: A Selection).

**from Asceticism, ἄσκησις.

Installation with video and sound, 2019