by Nicola Hoffmann: architect, visual artist, essayist.

The chain of time


                                                                                                                                      (Work in progress)

The Global Complexity Art system




Seizing the synthesis of authoritative researches, seen in the historical perspective of the third millennium the whole humanity has to confront with three interconnected themes: GLOBALITY-COMPLEXITY-EVOLUTIONARY CREATIVITY. Within these themes deserves special mention the new concept of "time creativity" theorized by the Nobel prize for physics Ilya Prigogine: a scientific theory that drives the new cosmology of universal creativity, stimulating a general reflection on the dimension of time, which represents, after the conquest of all spaces on Earth, a "new frontier" yet to be explored. In short this is the paradigm of propulsion, the common denominator in the creation of the future, with which interacts the Global Complexity Art in realizing its expressions, including this text. This artistic approach is based on the neo-humanistic relation between art and science, which follows the way opened by the great german artist Joseph Beuys with his concept of enlarged art.



 The Global Vision



Performance: Shamanic journey trough time
The leading historical context is that of industrial and financial globalization, along with the unfolding of the global network of transportation and medias, melting in a set that drives dense interactions between local and global events, while communication implodes towards real-time as in the "global village" predicted by McLuhan. These circumstances are leading to the image of a world becoming smaller every day. This is also the existential and cultural territory of humanity which moves into the configuration of Global Complexity Art, challenged to look at this magnified panorama of globality to create an adequate picture of contemporary reality. Certainly the global dimension is not only a much larger space than a landscape in traditional painting, actually it is rather a complex set of different worlds generally confused and largely incompatible, which requires multidisciplinary approaches and innovative parameters.  As a response to this need, the most suitable methods had been adopted in the concept of Global Vision, regarding local-global interactions, largely disclosed by Alexander King, a scientist of international fame and member of the celebrated "Club of Rome", generally known for the first publication based on the Global Vision. In fact this international "club" of scientists and creative intellectuals made clamour in the early 70s with the famous report "The end of growth", containing alarming evidence about the rapid decreasing of environmental tolerances and non-renewable energy resources, a process scientifically called "entropy", which was possible to verify for the first time only trough a multi-disciplinary investigation on global scale. The logical conclusion of this report was formulated in the request to start a "global shift", principally addressed to all governments around the world, but also to normal people of good will, all put in charge of changing the current patterns of economic and productive development, not less than leading socio-cultural models and individual behaviours, previously thought indisputable but since than declared of having no future. Decades have passed since then, we entered the third millennium, with a growing public awareness frustrated by delays of the required global changes, made even harder trough the accelerated industrialization of previously underdeveloped countries like China, India, Brazil, necessarily enforcing an anachronistic development which the whole world pays with increasing eco-climatic crises and catastrophic environmental tragedies involving any continent of our planet.  

Coming to consider the analytic methodology underlying the Global Vision, since the beginning a primary tool consists in the Systems Theory, an interpretation of "the world as a system of interactive systems" evolving over time. This was also the method applied by the System Dynamics Group from the famous MIT in Boston (USA), who actually elaborated the above mentioned report. After the inventor of the Systemic, Ludwig von Bertalanfi, the world's most relevant theoretical and philosopher of the General Systems Theory is represented by the charismatic figure of Ervin László. Already a member of the Club of Rome and  proponent of the notorious Report, László founded in his country, at Budapest, the General Evolution Research Group, which points out the essential link between Systemic and Evolution. As a matter of fact the systemic interpretation of the world requires the right tools to define the evolutionary dynamics which systems manifest in time, therefore the System Theory finds its natural complement in the latest evolutionary concepts going under the name "General Evolution". With the crucial conclusion that, similar to how the Systemic interprets each sector of reality, the General Evolution is based on the discovery of evolutionary laws manifesting similarity in all spheres of reality, from the nature of Earth to the nature of the universe, not less than in social and cultural systems of human history. In this way the System Theory and the General Evolution, together enact the Global Vision in viewing the world over space and time.


The Complex

Actually there is still an important element to complete the set of parameters sustaining the Global Vision. The missing point is that evolutionary dynamics are neither linear nor deterministic, but rather show a character of "creative complexity" better described by the Science of complexity, in particular by the new theory of time formulated by Ilya Prigogine, who describs evolutionary processes in relation to specifics dynamics of time. First of all he observes that evolutionary processes manifest themselves objectively by an increase of complexity, just as the evolutionary level of systems corresponds to degrees of complexity. For Prigogine the relevant question in this process is that the evolutionary dynamics are not linear but interrupted by bifurcations with two options: decay or evolution. To be more clear, evolutionary dynamics come to dangerous points of saturation which offer two opposite ways to be overcome, each with a different type of complexity: entropy and syntropy. The entropy indicates the decline of a systems, evident by a state of chaotic complexity inherent to a stadium of confusion between its components, as characteristic of systems in phase of decay, degrading toward collapse or death of the conformation; while syntropy corresponds to the potential capacity of systems to reverse the decline  in renewal, the confusion in a new order of more complexity. The key point is that chaotic instability is suitable for evolutionary creativity, making it possible to reorganize the contrasting components in a new coordination by creating a system of higher complexity, a conformation in which the classical term "union of differences" finds an actual meaning. According to the new theory of time formulated by Prigogine, the degenerative phase of systems, the entropy, corresponds to the traditional concept of "devouring time", while in the creative phase of systems, the "syntropy", shows a complementary function of time before unknown, the "creative time" pointed out by Prigogine. This new way of considering time goes to change the traditional continuum space–time defined by Einstein, opening to the “post-einsteinian” cosmology with important changes for the future. As the relations between dynamics of time and dynamics of evolutions touches far reaching arguments, opening also to new interpretations of ancient concepts of time.


Entrop & Sintrop


The mentioned approaches are the main operational coordinates implied in the Global Vision adopted by the Global Complexity Art. The image of reality they offer is profoundly altered compared to the traditional view of the universe, the earth and man himself. They reveal that growing complexity of chaotic degradation on one side, and development in organizational complexity on the other, are both dynamics interacting in evolutionary creation. They show that everything is transformed under the impact of universal evolutionism and that, trough its indetermination, the universe of all evolutionary processes has essentially a creative character, an aspect described by Bergson long ago with his concept of “creative universe”. One can say that this universal dynamism recalls the statement of Heraclitus "everything flows", now to be completed with “flows towards decay or evolution”.  In conclusion this dynamic vision of universal creativity requires, first of all, to recognize a certain continuity between the creativity of universal nature and the cultural creativity of humanity; in other words, how through human creativity the universal creativity drives, with analogues laws, the cultural evolution of mankind. In particular we must recognize that the socio-cultural evolution on Earth, specifically during the time of globalization, has all the characteristics of a fast-approaching bifurcation: the options are either an entropic catastrophe of incalculable proportions, or the coordination of human creativity leading a global emancipation towards a planetary system of higher complexity. The same logic guided also the conclusion of A. King in his book “Questions of survival” describing the dawn of a “planetary society”, written 20 years after the notorious rapport, edited with his participation, by the Club of Rome.

In the dramatic terms of contemporary evolution of the world, we have the key point giving actuality to all evolutionary projects dealing with a global organisation of mankind, which undoubtedly forms the next historical step of human evolution. Actually there are important indications, on high financial and political level, calling for a “new world order”, while others, like Ervin László and the Club of Budapest, try to spread the idea of a "global shift" towards a new culture based on planetary consciousness. Considering the leading trend of contemporary history, there are also good reasons for concern, since the evolution towards a global system admits potentially different models of a more or less democratic inclination, which can be condensed in two types. One is the evolution of world's power structures coordinating into the high complexity superpower of a Global Empire, fulfilling the "dream of all empires" of the past. The hypothesis of this new pyramidal hierarchy of a centralizes global power system, not legally formalized nor geographically localizable, which delimitates largely national sovereignty and real democracy, has been well described in “Empire” by Antonio Negri, a well known Italian professor of political science. The other option consists in the possibility of an anthropological evolution of humanity interacting with a creative evolution of global democracy, which finds its highest level trough a generalized culture of complexity; in a trend comparable to "The first global revolution and the future of humanity", as entitles a book written by A. King and B. Schneider, describing the evolutionary process towards the “first planetary society”.  This kind of world project, which represents the higher complexity level of a socio-cultural democracy on global scale, vaguely defined as "union of diversity", has one of its most authoritative prophets in the french sociologist Edgar Morin, who discusses all connected scientific and anthropologic questions in his books like “Fatherland-Earth”. In “The way. For the future of humanity” Morin underlines the necessity for a political development towards global cooperation “in the prospective of a new humanism”, on global scale of course. In this context should be referred that for neo-humanistic thought, as for Beuys, any historical prospective leads towards a Global Humanism; so for the Global Complexity Art. Farther on, speaking about humanism obliges referring to European cultural history, from ancient Greek with the invention of democracy and first freethinking philosophers, to Renaissance humanism, which, with the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution, created the bases of  Modern World: the point is that now the new European Union composed of states with different cultures an languages, once enemies now cooperating, on a longer view, with his unique cultural background, has the best premises to develop as first model of a higher complexity system of society called “unity of differences”. However, in conclusion has to be mentioned also a third way, since in a realistic view of the future exist probabilities for a variable combination of the two hypothesized models of world systems, where the first option predominates in the short range of time, while the second option develops to its maturity on the longer term. Ultimately there remains only to say that in a creative connection to this kind of historic crossroads the Global Complexity Art has its larger reason of being.








Window on the world 3


The eyes of Janus             



The range of scientific approaches building the concept of Global Vision, plus contributions from the world of arts and humanistic culture, provides the material with which the Global Complexity Art builds the creative framework of a metaphorical "Window on the world" opening the panoramic site of global changes. On the other hand, considering the anthropological involvement enacted by the Global Vision, the best definition of the Global Complexity Art is "the art of seeing the world". To this creative outlook is fitting well a saying of Marcel Proust: "It is not important to see new landscapes but in having new eyes". In fact the evolving of “new eyes” is what the Global Complexity Art implies, by promoting the correct parameters for a new way of looking at the world. This means to provoke a new sensibility opening the eyes on the reality of our existential dimension, to overcome the typical egoistic nearside trough the opening of mental spaces, as necessary premise to see the world with the real local-global interaction in which we live every day. It is the art of seeing trough the Global Vision over the real world extended in space and in time. The “art of looking at the world” is like creating a mental hologram with images of the world formed by stratified sediments created by time evolving from the past to future. It means creating a virtual image composed by the constellation of archaeological remains testifying historical dynamics, traces of events and signs of changes crystallized by time in drawing the historical topography of the global landscape. It means to create a project with the heredity the world traced in time and which is waiting to be coordinated with contemporary developments to be projected into the creation of the future. In this sense the great Russian semiologist Mikhail Bachtrim called the world a "great chronotope", meaning a topography of time, which evolves from earliest origins by projecting it selves -thanks to human creativity- in the best of possible futures. Ultimately, the Global Complexity Art locates it selves in this time stream, painting the picture of the present situated between past and future, where, in fact, is rooted our true identity as well as the authenticity of any creative project. It’s simply the real human identity recorded in our DNA, as in the genetic memory of any living being, which leads to admit that we are all children of the Earth and members of the human family plus being related to the other inhabitants of this planet. In this view our awareness may rises until the appropriate level to become a real citizen of the world, as people of a global society having in common what Edgar Morin calls  "Fatherland-Earth."


The eye of Janus 
Undoubtedly the Global Vision seems to incorporate the bi-perspective vision of the ancient god of time Janus, but in addition it presents the propriety of a temporal compression, in harmony with the time-space implosion, already defined by McLuhan, due to the rapidity of global transportation and instant information. Therefore we can talk about a historical time-compression, as a culturally activated extension of real-time communication, or a part of the cultural evolution of an "extended present" advancing with global instant information systems. No doubt we are dealing with the generalisation of a new level of conscience, but surprisingly similar to an ancient biblical text: “Thousand years are for you like one day”. In this new vision of time-compression, just to make an example, the contemporary melting of glaciers, caused by atmospheric warming connected with industrialisation, appears to be the last phase of the dissolution of Ice Age which started 10.000 years ago with the rise of present Solar Age. Similarly the contemporary destruction of the last archaic tribal communities represents the end of the primal social form of humanity, in force during the Palaeolithic Ice age until the Neolithic revolution gave rise to city-states, in fact the destruction of tribal communities began with the grow of historic city-state systems which, by evolving, gradually came to dominate the entire world, and still continues to eliminate the remains of archaic cultures near to extinction. In conclusion it is with the same Global Vision of space-time compression that the Global Complexity Art composes the dynamic image of contemporary humanity, to paint a virtual fresco depicting the advent of "global man" and the renewal of his habitat in scale of man and nature.


-The felt hat-
Performance "The art of seeing  the world"

For the interdisciplinary approach, together with the Global View on humanity inspiring its creative activity, one can say that the Global Complexity Art continues the path indicated by the great German artist Joseph Beuys. “Passing on the torch” was an image he used to refer at. Along with its charismatic figure of shaman and great teacher, his work of great complexity is considered the highest artistic expression of the second half of twentieth century, while his teaching continues to be basic to the future of art in the world. According to Mario B. Montandon "the entire third millennium will have its roots in the thought of Beuys". In summary the work of Beuys is based on the interdisciplinary relationship between art and science elaborating the connection nature-culture; with an approach definable neo-humanistic not only because it recalls the versatility of the genial artists-scientists of Renaissance Humanism, but also because it involves equally the varied issue of human emancipation. "It is important  -says Beuys- that humanity emancipates to a new humanity." Also if the language has changed between old humanism and the neo-humanism of Beuys, for both the anthropological evolution of humanity is seen in proportional relationship to the development of human creativity; a creativity not to be induced but to be "liberated" as a innate and therefore natural human faculty. "I try to bring to light -he said- the complexity of creative areas."  Therefore Beuys gives great importance to the relationship art-man, demanding the development of social systems the necessary cultural space to exercise what is a peculiarity of mankind, his free will, to which Beuys referrers as a prerequisite to release the innate creative potential that is rooted in the anthropological identity of every human being. What is well expressed in his famous motto "every man is an artist." In logical connection with his evolutionary view of humanity’s potential creativity, Beuys developed the concept of "extended art", a generalisation of human creativity, aimed to involve the entire spectrum of human activity in a evolutionary dynamic that elevates human labour to the level of art. A comparison could be seen in the relationship between art and handicrafts in the Middle Ages. For Beuys the new concept of "extended art", since it involves progressively the whole society, in a historical perspective it will equally engage a creative evolution in the global conformation of human habitat, trough which the entire world will turn into a "work of global ecological art". In this sense Beuys considered each of his works a conceptual step farther towards the collective “global art work” of the future world. According to Beuys only in this direction of creative evolution will gradually fades the contrast culture-nature, the alarming ecological situation build up by modern industrialisation and associated positivistic frame of science. In fact the matching of natural creation and cultural creation is a basic pattern of humanistic thought. The originated can be traced back to the Platonic concept of nature "as a work of art", quoted also by Lorenzo de Medici in one of his sonnets, to be considered a basic paradigm for the beauty of art and architectonic structures in ancient Greek and renaissance, created to mach the beauty of nature by adopting the “golden proportions” that underlies natural world: this reflection between natural or divine creativity and human creations achieved the great harmony between culture and nature in Ancient world as well in Italian renaissance. In a contemporary view, elaborations of this kind of concepts are sustained by the Science of complexity, trough which the Global Complexity Art gives particular relevance to evidences of creative continuity between the natural universe and the artificial world of humanity. For more details I advice to read "The felt hat" written by Lucrezia De Domizio Durini (Secret Cards Editions 1991). 



The Psiche
(from the video: "Veil-Unveil-Reveil")

What can be defined as the neo-humanist utopia of Beuys finds some interesting comparison and anticipation within the Renaissance humanism. Starting with the enlarged artistic creativity extended in many different fields, with the creation of an admirable set of works generally considered an utopian model of the future; where has to be considerate that renaissance imaginary went from the beginning to the end of history, meaning that the utopia regards a world project. This historical experience represents exactly what Beuys called "concrete utopia", since it was an utopian model that in reality created the foundation of modern European culture, which trough its colonial exportation extended in the evolution of the Modern World. In addition it is not said that the propulsive energy of Humanism come to an end, considering that neo-humanistic thought involves many intellectuals and artists who believe in an humanistic evolution of the future. Similar comparisons apply to the relationship between creativity and human evolution, considering that for Renaissance humanists the artwork has the effect to stimulate and cultivate our five senses, raising man from the gross state to higher levels of refinement. In practice, the senses are called "gates of the soul" through which the works of art refine and purifie the soul from obsolete remains of animal instincts, raising the emotional impulses over the sphere of reproduction, trough that the soul enlightens to universal creativity in the likeness of the Creator. In that sense Renaissance artists, as universal creators, were considered closer to the human model defined by the Bible "in the image and likeness" of the Creator. In fact some great painters of the time painted themselves in the likeness of the Creator; see Perugino, Dürer, Leonardo etc. In practice the artist is the anthropological model of humanism. In fact, under the anthropological profile, it is exactly the visual creation, the imaginative creation of images, to find a specific relevance in humanistic thought, trough the evident connection between human creativity and the capacity to create images, where imagination is the faculty enabling man to create images. The old texts speak about the basic function of the "Imaginatio", operating through an inner eye similar to the enlightened "third eye" in Hinduism, which in the Western culture finds analogy with the "Eye of God", equally represented as only one eye, denoting the Creator, in whose likeness artists create their images. In fact, the inner eye of imagination, sensitized and cultivated to interact with all senses and therefore defined as "common sense", meaning all senses concentrated in the sense of vision connected with the light of consciousness, that illuminates the perception of images created out of the invisible reality behind the phenomenological surface of things: here we have the human creation as intermediary of divine creation. Not surprising that in all traditional cultures it was with the works of artistic creativity that people honoured the Creator, which made the ancient relation between art and religion. While the psychological existence called “soul” is securely in a main consideration of all religions, not the less the soul is a central reference in the world of art, starting with inner inspiration to conclude with artworks involving our emotions. As the soul is the object of religions defined “way of salvation”, so in humanistic art the soul is the object to deal with, to awake, cultivate and refine its emotional pulsation, to “sublimate” our animal instincts said Freud; in other words the artistic input reconditions conditioned reflexes by recoding the lower “appetites” moving the soul, as taught Plato and Aristotle. Those ancient philosophers wrote important books on this subject, elaborated in humanistic thought, by defining the structure of the soul like a pangenetic memory, we could say a semi conscious DNA, interacting with the analogous “soul of the world”, another important segment of traditional cultures. One can conclude there is no anthropological evolution without involvement of the interior world, the deep going layers of the psychic sphere. No surprise if Joseph Beuys, in his neo-humanistic intends, enacted particular emphasis on involvements of the soul by interpreting his figure as artist projected in the image of a Shaman, the prototype of healer in archaic animism to which the underlying reality is composed by interacting souls; it is also the common ground from where evolved historic religions, between which Beuys imagined to create interaction of epistemological renewal. With this complex meaning Beuys symbolized the Shaman with his gilled as “fisher of souls” and his famous “felt hat” as guiding healer of mankind on the path of evolution.





The Total History



Hand of fate

With the complexity of interdisciplinary tools employed for a larger space-time vision of the world, the Global Complexity Art wants to stand out from the superficiality of much post-modern aesthetics. To this purpose goes the attempt to create an artistic imagination of contemporary world trough a deeper perceptions and a more consistent anthropological profile of the past, with the objective to guaranty an essential continuity, not only in stylistic themes, with the history of visual arts applied on global scale. Using the parameters of Global Vision also in detecting the global history of visual arts, the Global Complexity Art finds its most suitable ally with the concept of Total History. This term was coined in the 30s by one of the masters of historical research, Fernand Braudel, who applied it to his new multidisciplinary approach to historical research, the Novelle Histoire; while more recently the concept of Total History has been reformulated in the practice of research by the Italian archaeologist Emmanuel Anati, who added the connotation of global space and the totality of human history. Of course, similarly to the global space, also the approach to global history implies a mental shift. Practically the research of global history requires a different outlook than used by traditional history. The first peculiarity of Total History appears in its little interest on ethnically or historically differences and its causes, to say emperors, kings, generals, religions and the infinite numbers of connected battles. Instead the main effort goes to detect common denominators and main streams of cultural patterns interconnecting events over time and space, dynamics which underlies the whole of cultures appeared on Earth since the existence of mankind, connecting beginnings and ends. Well go the words of Roger Caillois: “Every civilization appears as a part of a totality” because “a community of destiny embraces the entire humanity”; something that Teilhard de Chardin called “the great irreversible spiral of Live that rises, from age to age, following the mainline of evolution”.
Coming to speak about common denominators, by observing the whole of pre-modern cultures, to say ancient cultures and “traditional” cultures of our days, a first common pattern appears in the fact that the ancient and traditional art forms, always and everywhere, represent explicitly or implicitly the mythological-religious system of the respective ethnic group.  In other words, ahead the circumstantial motive of representation, the true subject of artistic creation is always the founding mythological pattern. More in detail has to be considered, first, that single mythological stories are segments of a whole which is the respective cosmological concept, the vision of the universe, really of high complexity and known only by initiated, in respect of which the artistic representation have to be understood as popular images of divulgation. Secondly, within the cosmological structures, essentially static, there is a dynamic component of greatest cultural importance that is the cosmogony, the story about the creation of the world. Of course, the idea of creation or procreation of the world implies the divine figure of the Creator, demiurge, great mother and/or great father, ancestors, hero, etc.. The myth of "creation" or "birth" of sky and earth, occupies an absolute central position because it is only trough this pattern that every traditional culture recognizes its particular significance in terms of ancestry, identity and relevance in the world. Therefore it should not be surprising that the creative act which gave birth to the world, the cosmogony, was everywhere reactivated in the rite of "fertilization-foundation" of any sacred space, as in the foundation of a city, temples or palaces, as in mere settlements, huts, etc.  Everywhere "human creation mimics the divine Creation,” pointed out the well-known historian of religions Mircea Eliade. In fact, this relationship cosmology-company calls the old saying "down as above," which is reflected in the analogy between social hierarchies and celestial hierarchies, not the less than between the connected urban structures and the “holy mountain” of the planetary system, the reason why many old cities were called "mirror of the sky ". The same homology between cosmic creation and human creation is largely covered by the system of diagrams going under the concept of "Mandala", a pattern that the great Italian orientalist Giuseppe Tucci called "psycho-cosmogram". The Mandalas trace the spatial scheme used in above mentioned rites of foundation and following ground plans. The principle of Mandala, for Jung related to the “collective unconscious”, has been traced worldwide and since most ancient times; as in India still now there are governing the configuration of all traditional arts and buildings. One may consider also that the Mandala system is part of the ancient and universal conception regarding the analogical relation between the microcosm of the human body and the macrocosm, linked to the idea of a living universe, to which goes the specularity between human soul and the World soul, which is equally underling the Mandala. In this complex network of interactions is also to be found the logic of analogy between cosmic creation and human creation, so that Mircea Eliade could write that in the Ancient World  "human art imitates the art of God." This kind of concepts, which under varies formulations related to different cultures in different times, originated from archaic animism and terminated as leading idea only, but specifically, with the evolution of modern science from Galileo Galilei to Albert Einstein, with the mathematic formulation of a mechanical universe similar to a “great machine”, actually a “mechanical clock”. But also this leading configuration of modern science, partially in crises, has in the science of complexity a potentially different future. It is exactly the new concept of creation, with the laws of creative evolution discovered to be similar in natural cosmologic systems as in human cultural systems. In other words, the science of complexity rediscovered in new terms the ancient continuity between universal creativity of nature and human creativity, as explains the concept of General Evolution. The same scientific pattern, considered in terms of art, are projected in the expressions of the Global Complexity Art, along with its view towards a possible future and the re-evaluation of common denominators underlying the arts of the past. 


Speaking hands

Another particular aspect of Total History is that its investigation reaches back in time long before the development of "civilization" described by “written history”, to explore with equal attention the immense time laps of cultural evolution in territories inhabited by mankind during the First Age. With other words, the Total History includes, besides the history of civilisations, the cultural becoming of humanity during a period categorically discriminated as pre-history. Equally the Total History includes the relative continuity of First Age’s social and cultural patterns extended in archaic tribal communities, which, always fewer in number, have lived next to the great historical developments, discriminated as "primitive". A more correct definiscen wuold be "primary", which implies a different connotation of value in respect of the “secondary” evolution track, that of urban civilisation. In the view of Total History the ideological barrier between prehistory and history begins with the invention and diffusion of the social system based on the city-state, whose origin lies in Mesopotamia around 3.500 years BC with the foundation of the temple-city of Ur, dominated by the pyramidal construction of the great Ziggurat; an architecturally elaboration of the “sacred mountain” as perfect symbol of the new hierarchical structure of power destined to dominate the world. Afterward, with a mythical transliteration, this construction has been identified with the "Tower of Babel", built by the Babylonians who where the direct heirs of the Sumerian culture. In terms of Total History the city-temple-state of Ur is a great common denominator of the world history.  It is the original model of the city-state system, a set which developed as a new social-cultural organism, at the same time urban organization of living and material structure of hierarchical power. It is exactly the history of evolution of this system that is the real subject of "history" defined as such. In fact Ur is the prototype of a city-state, which from the Latin word for "civitas" is the etymological origin of "civilization," born with the declared vocation of creating a "new world order", trough a growing in complexity and enlarging in space which ultimately is the "history of civilization." The present world order, as many common aspect of our daily life, have their origins in Ur. To give some short examples: at Ur was compiled the first systematic computation of time based on the sexagesimal system, the same we use practically everywhere, with twelve months a year, 2 times 12 hours a day, 60 minutes the hour and 60 seconds the minute; to the same concept goes the circle of 360°, not the less the systematic use of the wheel; from Ur came also Abraham, the common father of the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Islam and the Judeo-Christian tradition of the West, besides the stately structures and metropolitan concentrations, deriving from the ancient city-state, that govern the whole planet. Coming back to consider Ur and its evolution trough city-state systems as the chronological border between history and prehistory, the first most visible aspect is the considerable imbalance existing between the two shores of time, with only 5,000 years of history compared to about 50.0000 years of the prehistory of our species. What is even more remarkable in our context relates to the fact that "written history" of civilization has its precursor in a “description” of prehistoric time transmitted by the great world heritage of works of art created by our “primitive” ancestors anywhere they lived. This is the most surprising aspect of primeval time, that its main heritage consists of objects and sites of highly artistically expression, that have lasted over thousands of years, not casually but because created manly on rocks, many protected by caves, or objects made of ivory, coming to form an immense archive of pictographic character that describes the history of prehistory. It is exactly the global documentation of this artistic heritage from which the Italian archaeologist Emmanuel Anati could draw his conclusions on Total History seen in a global prospective.  In his role as director of the Camunian Centre of Prehistory, from the headquarters in Valcamonica (Italy) he used to organize numerous international symposia among archaeologists, anthropologists and paleoanthropologists from around the world, besides his interaction with the World Archive of Rock Art on behalf of UNESCO. In this context, given by the development of technological means of communication and storage of digital documents from all over the world, where Anati was undoubted a leading central organizer, it become possible  for him to gain a global vision, finally appropriate, to trace a first approach to a Total History of the world.


Traces of becoming


The considered prehistoric time goes from Neolithic period back to the Upper Palaeolithic, starting about 45,000 years ago, with the first forms of art together with the first genetic appearance of our specimen, the homo sapience-sapience. The humanity of this first age lived in communities of hunter-gatherers, adapted to the cool weather o the Ice Age, dislocated in lands at the edges of the last Würm Glaciations.  With the raise of present Sun Age, which created great climatic changes with melting of ice and biblical floods, about 10,000 years ago ended the long lasting Ice Age, giving start to the New Stone Age as an adaption to the new climatic situation. The main event of this time segment is the “Neolithic revolution” with the invention of farming and breeding, creating a new social-cultural pattern which evolved over about 4-5 thousand years, creating the base for the grow of city-states signing the end of prehistory. This evolutionary step was first local than expanded in a long lasting contrast with primal cultures, as the not written part of history. 
By over viewing the remains from prehistoric times, a first stunning fact is that over 90% of the finds show expressions of visual art. The represented images are in part figurative and in part abstract symbols and diagrams. Taken together, those artistic findings represent, better than any historic annals, the coded illustration of their cultural worlds. To the more tempered New Stone Age belongs a large production of pottery art, plus megalithic sculpting and graphite made on rocks in the open air. While the arts of the Old Stone Age have been found mainly inside natural caves, dominated by the most fascinating animal paintings and reliefs, such as in the great cave of Altamura described as the "Sistine Chapel of prehistory"; together with micro-sculptures and engravings on boons and ivory, with the most beautiful female sculptures known as "Venus". But what appears as naturalistic figurations of animals and woman body, in reality is based on symbolic structures of high complexity, like the dominating binary system discovered by the great french paleoanthropologists André Leroi-Gourhan, or the evident use of the “golden proportions”, plus cosmologic connotation of the “holly mountain” connected to shamanic trances. Many are the aspects of primeval art expressions. From the more general view of Total History the most important aspect of the Upper Palaeolithic Ice Age is that the great manifestation and the expanding of visual arts during this period is synchronic with the birth and territorial diffusion of the present day’s human gender, the Cro-Magnon called also sapiens-sapiens. For the relative speed with which visual arts appeared and expanded on our planet, Anati speaks about an "explosion of art"; while the famous paleoanthropologist Richard E. Leakey, considering the cultural centrality of art in this period, defined the Upper Paleolithic as the "Age of Art". Thos aspects underline at best the deep ancestral connection existing between artistic creativity and anthropological identity of mankind. This facts testify that visual arts where originally a determinant factor in cultural humanizing of our most distant ancestors. Rather, we should speak about this founding artistic culture as the first "humanism" in the world. Equally important is to realize that this primary cultural layer of our species contains not only the common root of human creativity but is also the “mother culture” of all mankind. In this context, André Leroi-Gourhan described the Palaeolithic culture of art "the roots of the world." There remains only to point out the significance of promoting awareness of this common anthropological identity: since the Primal Age underlies all cultural divisions created trough history, it represents a common reference for the anthropological evolution of humanity towards a planetary society, composed of citizens of the world who feel united by a common origin, similarly to any ethic group.




Per concludere si può ribadire che la Global Complexity Art si definisce neo-umanista anzitutto per il fatto di porre l'arte implicitamente in rapporto all'emancipazione umana. Non per dare una finalità all'arte che sia esterno alla sua natura, ma al contrario, per liberare la naturale creatività dell'uomo che sottende ugualmente all'arte, facendo leva su questa relazione di reciprocità. Oltre al fatto che l'immaginario creato nella dimensione globale, in quanto traduce una realtà comune ma non acquisita comunemente, mette in moto una potenziale elevazione di coscienza collettiva, insieme a quella di una nuova sensibilità caratterizzata da un più ampio raggio di empatia. Ciò che in vari ambiti si definisce "global shift", ossia una "svolta globale" per intraprendere il percorso evolutivo verso una coscienza planetaria. Parlando, invece, del più stretto legame tra umanesimo e arte,  il problema artistico a cui si vuole dare risposta -come già indicato da Beuys- è quello di creare "l'immagine dell'uomo", non il modello antropologico di una cultura in particolare, di un'epoca o di un settore sociale, ma l'icona dell'umanità intera, a sostegno, appunto, del percorso evolutivo verso una futura cultura globale. In tal senso la Global Complexity Art procede a comporre l'immagine dell'uomo inseguendo la sua metamorfosi nello spazio e nel tempo, per comporre un ologramma cronotopico che, per le sue interazioni globali, include tutto lo scibile.  Ovviamente è un'operazione complessa che richiede l'ampio spettro multidisciplinare indicato dal connubio arte-scienza. E' in questi termini, sia per l'obiettivo sia per il metodo, che la Global Complexity Art tende a riattualizzare l'antica impostazione umanistica che sottese alla fioritura rinascimentale del XV sec. 

Homo Schizofrenicus
A questo punto va chiarito che i ripetuti riferimenti alla multidisciplinarietà dell'Umanesimo rinascimentale è una scelta calibrata che si associa a uno sviluppo significativo avviato dalla Scienza della complessità, quella di coniugare cultura scientifica e cultura umanistica sotto l'emblema "scienza come arte". Si può dire che è in atto la tendenza a risaldare la storica separazione tra scienza ed arte che subentrò con la fine del Rinascimento. In effetti, la situazione fa pensare ai "corsi e ricorsi" teorizzati da G.B.Vico. Il fatto è che con la fine dell'Umanesimo rinascimentale, l'Europa fu l'epicentro di una epifania storica che, sul piano politico militare sospinse la colonizzazione del mondo intero, mentre sul piano scientifico culturale dette luogo ad una progressiva specializzazione settoriale delle discipline che, dopo un'evoluzione di circa 500 anni, è giunta all'apice della sua funzionalità. Questa è una convinzione diffusa, espressa sia da Beuys che da Prigogine, mentre da anni è stata dibattuta dal noto sociologo francese Edgar Morin, argomentando come la differenziazione sistematica delle conoscenze innestò un crescente suddivisione del saperi, parcellizzato in discipline sempre più specialistiche, per cui l'immagine del mondo e dell'uomo si è frastagliato nei tasselli d'un mosaico di cui nessuno è più in grado di vedere l'insieme. Si è perso il sapere del sapere. Dalla constatazione di questo stato di contraddizione tautologica si è sviluppata la tendenza di invertire il processo dissipativo, avviando un processo implosionale che sostituisce le divisioni disciplinari con approcci interdisciplinari propri alla cultura della complessità. A questo processo di  riconversione dell'organizzazione disciplinare s'innesta un altra inversione di rotta, per sopraggiunta saturazione, che riguarda la tematica complessa della progressiva distanza tra cultura e natura. In pratica l'avvento dell'universo meccanicistico inaugurato da Galileo Galilei e gradualmente sviluppato tramite Newton fino ad Einstein, aveva sancito la fine dell'antica cosmologia dell' "universo vivo" dando forma concettuale all' "universo macchina". Secondo il famoso biologo francese  Jaques Monod, in questo modello cosmologico la fenomenologia della Vita non ha una sua collocazione logica come tale, ma solo nella attraverso la sua riduzione omologata al modello universale della "macchina". Con una tale impostazione di fondo fu inevitabile il progressivo contrasto cultura-natura fomentato dall'evoluzione dalla civiltà industriale, le cui ripercussioni drammatiche coinvolgono ogni aspetto della vita, tanto nella natura ecologica quanto nella natura biologica e psicologica della vita umana. Anche in questo campo dominante, che è la cosmologia, la Scienza della complessità e in testa Ilya Prigogine, hanno provocato una "rottura epistemologica", un ribaltamento epocale che porta a spostare il baricentro concettuale dalla interpretazione meccanicistica del mondo a quella termodinamica che, avendo il calore della Terra origine nel sole, comprende chiaramente i parametri della vita terrestre. Deriva da questo ribaltamento anche una nuova relazione cultura-natura, ciò che uno scienziato come Prigogine ha sintetizzato nel titolo del suo libro "La nuova alleanza", con una visione del mondo indubbiamente neo-umanistica, indirizzata verso un rinnovato connubio di arte-scienza e cultura-natura.


This introduction summarizes the basic concepts of the Global Complexity Art, to which the following documents relate as a progressively more detailed illustration of what has been mentioned until now.