Patmosz (acapella)
Video installation for two voices, 2002

Béla Hamvas: Patmosz II (detail)

/.../ A fully finished and complete world looks upon the Cosmos from the eye and back upon itself; because that which sees reality in its entirety is necessarily reality in its entirety itself. That which we call vision in the eye is the self-recognition of the world in man and the self-recognition of man in the world. Janus, who can see inward and outward, and vision cannot be stopped anywhere, it sees beyond every limit, and it not only looks into the infinite but sees the infinite. The Cosmos looks at man and man looks at the Cosmos, looking at and looking back blend in the eye because, as Böhme says, the world is man’s Gegenwurf, man is the world and the world in the projected image of man. The world is always order. The eye is also a logical, ethic and aesthetic system because to see is to consider and evaluate and render and store, and seeing is placing into a system. The system that sees from the eye sees from every human being, it is unique and inimitable as everything is unique in existence. The system that I see, which looks on the other and looks back is identical with every one since everything in existence is reciprocal. The infinite mirror, the mirror in the mirror, one man in the other, the individual in the common, man in the world and vice-verse. In the centre of everything is the eye, which sees, measures and compares with the system that has been there from the very beginning, which is the system of the structure of the being, and therefore compares it with the secrets of its inner self, which it exposes, and its exposures that it hides, with its light that it gains from the Sun and which it gives to the Sun. The system can be read precisely in the eye and from the eye, but, peculiarly, not from its qualities but from an exposure absorbed in a higher dimension and condensed in the lighted scope of vision. The eye has woken up and opened up fully. Lie (life hid in lying) can be understood in its entirety only from the eye. Lie is not the presence of a demonic fury but the hiding of the demon for some reason. It is difficult to lie because the eye cannot hide. If one wants to see, he has to open his eyes and if the eye has opened it must in every case reveal what it hid, that is, when the eye opens up, the being reveals that his eyes were closed. We see by our eyes but we become visible also by our eyes. The system in our eyes allows us to close our eyes, but then we do not see, nor can we see. He who hides himself will by all means see less from the world equally in measure to the extent to which he has hid himself. Existence hid in lying necessarily sees the world as false. Reality and truth are related - only a true man can see reality. We call truth the system that can recognise reality. He who hides himself excludes himself from truth. Hiding eyes, ones that hide themselves are confused, they cannot see clearly, and the more one lies the less he can see.
The eye sees in a system: one eye sees in the system of the prison, the other in the system of the brothel, in the system of the fair, the children’s room, statistics, double entry bookkeeping or the graph. There are unbelievably few clear eyes, which can see in the system of the sea or the starry sky and live like the brothers and sisters of trees. Upset systems, hazy eyes broken in the lie of life can hardly see anything but money. Probably, we cannot see even the most obvious facts because our existence hid in lying befogs our a-priori vision.
What is it that there is? Man-world, I-you interwoven, one is the eye of the other, looking at each other, two systems that see each other in each other and measure each other and tell everything about themselves, every last word, and the more openly they do so the more they expose the other in what it says about itself and what it sees in the other, and what world it holds inside and, accordingly, in what world it lives. What the eye can see and what I can see in the eye are identical. /.../