Les Larmes de Peter Pan was exposed in Macro,Rome 2015

Embarking for Syntopia

from How Beauty Masters In nite Regress by Alexandra v. Stosch

"Peter Pan is the eternal inhabitant of a mysterious island where children rule: Neverland. If you have ever watched children play, you get the idea that Neverland is by no means paradise. It is just a place where a “higher order” has no say. Where there are no limits to playful, impulsive action and childish egoism. Like any utopia since Thomas Morus or even Platon’s Atlantis, it can be a scary place. The absence of adult life leads to totalitarian order and reflects a rule that philosophers like Augustinus and then later Husserl have described in terms of their consideration of ‘ me’: That closed systems must ultimately lead to in nite regress. The “endless regression” that Peter Pan stands for is a symbol for that process.

Cyril de Commarque’s latest works stand in line with these observations: by designing an “Ever-Neverland”, where ultimately children become aggressive against themselves and destroy what they really love, he draws an eerie picture – not of a gloomy future, but in fact of our present societies. Once you think of it, it is so obvious: The growing dependency on technical devices, which govern our daily life, become our instructors, masters, controllers increasingly hold us in a state of immaturity. Has anyone thought of Larry Page as Captain Cook?

For the last five years I have made it an exercise to reread Kant’s famous answer to the question of “What is Enlightenment?” twice a year, which he wrote in 1784, exactly 230 years ago: Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude!"