#mariko klug

[sad-house-of-mortality]

image one - Klara Mitfoch - the virgin suicides

image two - sara.robin

image three - Mariko Klug - Reverie

[sitting-on-me-bum]

“Sunset Glow,”

Sunset taken from field of barley.

by Mariko Klug

Tokyo International Photo Awards (TIFA)

[sitting-on-me-bum]

The Philosopher (Nature/Pets, Gold)

by Mariko Klug

Tokyo International Foto Awards 2020

[alunah-lalunah]

If we take meaning in the human sense not structural intelligibility, but narrative significance (“my life means something,” “this happened for a reason”) then meaning functions as a defense mechanism. It’s how the mind metabolizes terror.

The raw fact of existence, that one is, that one must persist until one ceases is intolerably naked. There’s no why, no goal, no reward. The psyche’s adaptive strategy is to wrap this necessity in stories that make it feel purposeful family, career, love, even philosophy. Those stories form what Ernest Becker called the “immortality project” attempts to make death not final, to make necessity look like choice.

In psychoanalytic terms, meaning-making is a secondary elaboration, a fantasy woven to contain the anxiety produced by the primary trauma of being finite. The ego’s job is to maintain coherence, so it turns blind necessity into a tale of freedom, suffering into destiny, decay into moral narrative. “I suffer because it’s meaningful” is less unbearable than “I suffer because I exist.”

But if we return to Spinoza’s clarity necessity is not an enemy. The mature intellect doesn’t flee it but comprehends it. In that comprehension, the ego’s defensive “meaning” dissolves, replaced not by despair but by adequacy, seeing what is as it must be.

So, the egoic meaning protects against awareness of necessity. The adequate meaning arises from understanding necessity. When meaning serves defense, it freezes thought inside narrative consolation. When meaning serves understanding, it exposes the defense itself.

Disillusionment here is simple, to perceive that meaning often just disguises our refusal to face being. Once that disguise burns away, necessity stands indifferent, complete, sufficient.

[akiraeffect]

[neweramuseum]

NEM LANDSCAPES 81 - Gianluca Ricoveri Selection

FEATURED LENDSCAPES BY: Sven Podßuweit,Mark N Murphy, Mariko Klug, Stella Oliver, Roger Guetta, Hilary Packard, Rad Drew and Kate Zari Roberts

[neweramuseum]

NEM LANDSCAPES 73 Gianluca Ricoveri Selection

FEATURED ARTWORKS BY: Lydia Cassatt, Douglas Wagner, Mariko Klug, Robi Gallardo, Giulia Baita, Nicolas Xanthos, Vadim Demjianov and Rad Drew.

[neweramuseum]

NEM Landscapes 71 curated by Gianluca Ricoveri

ARTWORKS BY: Mariko Klug, Nicolas Xanthos, Karen Klinedinst, Dan Stone, Candice Ayoub Chidiac, Kate Zari Roberts, Garry Ryon and Marc Devriese