Mental Arithmetics

Mental Arithmetics

Ovidiu Hulubei

21.9. – 17.11.2017

The only language that is not subject to interpretation is  mathematics. Our language was designed thousands of years ago, therefore it is inadequate and subject to interpretation. As long as there is a language that is subject to interpretation, there is going to be conflict.

The purpose of this research is Ovidiu Hulubei’s attempt to describe the insufficiencies of language and to explore plausible solutions to it. The development of languages was slow and took thousands of years of biological and social evolution, in order to attain the beginning of what we have today. The artist’s concern with language is not so much with how it evolved, rather with how it influences our relationships with other human beings and our natural habitat.

The project also explores the attitudes which are shaped by what we hear, say and read. We react to language in a complex manner and in multiple ways simultaneously, mainly mental, emotional, and behavioural. We call this semantic reactions. In order to reduce the reflex reactions to words we consider ‘bad,’ it would require our attention, so that we understand the speaker first.

Having reached a time that demands an investigation of all aspects of human affairs, the project looks at the evolution of language briefly, in order to emphasise how necessity, along with biological evolution, has brought about more and more effective communication for the events of the time. Then the artist focuses on an overview of General Semantics.

The vehicle of this research is a film based on the script of an autistic young adult, who is one of the artist’s students. Alongside the screening, the exhibition space features condensed scripts of two Shakespearian plays in emoticons, which the artist has produced using drawings by his students, as well as a face mask of the main actor of the film, all part of a larger installation exploring the connection between language as emotion and our private space.