The dead are silent

A group of candles hanging from the ceiling, silently, unlit. You would hardly notice them at first sight, even though their place in the corner of the ceiling is traditionally reserved for orthodox icons and was appropriated by Malevich famous painting Black Square in 1915. The rain of candles is accompanied by a quote* from German Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing’s text History as Giving Meaning to the meaningless, 1919. In his quote he states that the human being is the one transforming causality into norm, setting aside any break in this order—miracle, chaos, coincidence—as abnormal. The candles hanging with the wick down refer to a field of meaning, which belongs to magic and pagan practices, a space of “reversed candles.”

* “Is is only the amazing fabrication of mankind to proceed as though casuality is the norm, and breakdowns in causal connections (for example miracles, chaos, crime, coincidence) are actually abnormal, whereas it is the other way around. Causality is Ariadne’s thread by means of which we feel our way through the labyrinth of irrational life.
(…)
The dead are silent. And for the last remaining one, everything that was before him has always made sense insofar as it relates and must relate to his form of existence, which is to say, he and his sense system can only understand from the entire prehistory of the same type. Victors always write the history of the conquered, those who have survived, the stories of the dead.”

Theodor Lessing, History as Giving Meaning to the meaningless, 1919