Magdalena Dukiewicz

installation made with empty gelatin capsules, dimensions variable

That which exists, whatever this might be, coexists because it exists. The co-implication of existing is the sharing of the world. A world is not something external to existence; it is not an extrinsic addition to other existences; the world is the coexistence that puts these existences together.

Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural

The Capsules

In existential terms, authenticity is a question of freedom, in the sense of preserving the essence of Being The phrase "to be free" is always followed by a preposition. In a negative sense, one is free "from" something external to one's existence, for example the Other or facticity. In a positive sense, Heidegger proposes that one is free "for" meanings; as he argues, Dasein has the possibility of being free "for the freedom of choosing and grasping itself. In Cartesian dualism, the Self— whether as being-for-itself or being-in-itself—is always the center of reference and presupposes a single subject as the point of departure to the world.

Magdalena Dukiewicz's project Singular Plural (2018), a title borrowed from Jean-Luc Nancy, abandons the subject-object dualism by taking up an alternative ontological perspective, discarding the third person singular pronoun for

"plurally singular" or "singularly plural."

Nancy proposes a "non-subjective" freedom. He asserts that one's freedom does not end where that of the other starts, but that the existence of the other is the necessary condition to be free. Contrary to the belief that one's autonomy stands against alterity, Nancy believes that there is no freedom without the presupposition of our "being-with," and of our being thrown into the existence. Inspired by Nancy's philosophy, Dukiewicz glues thousands of gelatin capsules together to form a large-scale installation in the shape of wasps' nests. In doing so, she intends to create a rhizomatic bio-organism constituted of interconnected singularities that enunciate their essence of "being-with"-being as a part of a hybrid totality.

The term "being-with," or Mitsein, coined by Heidegger, is an essential part of Dasein, which he defines as "entangled-disclosed, thrown-projecting being-in-the-world which is concerned with its ownmost potentiality in its being-together with the world' and in being-with with the others."

This complex, critical definition affirms being-with as a fundamental trait of Being, yet still presupposes a singular subject. Nancy radically subverts the Heideggerian definition by asserting that the "with" is not simply an addition to a prior Being; instead, the "with" is what constitutes Being. Thus, there is no Being without "being-with" and no existence without coexistence. It is based on this premise that Nancy announces that ego sum is actually nos sumus, "it is" is actually "we are," and being is "being singular plural."

Dukiewicz's Singular Plural adopts Nancy's ontological discourse while also depicting his utopian political vision. The installation resonates with his description of a society in which relations are in a way prior to and constitutive of the individual subjects. The transparent, fragile, linked singular capsules are like anonymous citizens that are dependent on, "exposed," and "vulnerable" to one another through their "respective openings."* The whole transformative organism is like a plural, heterogeneous society with no hierarchy, but instead a network of contingent fragments that evolve together.

You have to be able to love the insignificant, to love what goes beyond persons and individuals; you have to open yourself to encounters and find a language in the singularities that exceed individuals, a language in the individuations that exceed persons.

— Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands

by Lux Yuting Bai from Cocoon Exhibition Catalog

singular plural ( 2018/2020)