Mart Stam’s “Space” (1925)

Translated from the Dutch by C. v. Amerongen.

From Mart Stam: A Documentation of His Work, 1920-1965.

(Royal Institute of British Architects.  London: 1970).

• • •

Space is without dimensions, it has no height, no depth, no width.  Space is — is everywhere, penetrating and surrounding everything.

Space is unlimited, indivisible, indissoluble.

Space is expansion — spreading in every direction, point by point.  Light is a purely spatial phenomenon.  Like space, light is shapeless, untouchable, extension.

Space is dispersed.

Time is without beginning and end. Time has no boundaries time crosses all boundaries.

Time is progression — but progression without any particular direction or any particular velocity.  Time is movement — sound is a phenomenon that corresponds to it.  Sound is like time — reproduction, progression, movement.

Time is consecutive.

(See Lissitzky, “K und Pangeometrie,” Europa, 1925).

Our task is:

1.  to perceive our relationship to this specific space, to this specific time;

2.  to give this relationship of ours, through our work, a form that everyone can assimilates.

[From ABC 1925, no. 5]

~ by Ross Wolfe on October 23, 2010.