Bob Kalivac Carroll and Stuart Mather Gibson

If, as Adi Da Samraj (1939-2008) wrote, “The living body always wants (with wanting need) to allow the Light of Perfect Reality into the room,” how does his video art, engage or allow this? The fact that Adi Da described his art as “Reality-art” and the title of his anthology of art commentaries is »Transcendental Realism: The Image-Art of egoless Coincidence With Reality Itself« signals his orientation to reality. “There are two dimensions to Reality--the conditional and the Non-conditional,” Adi Da wrote, subsequently explaining that both dimensions are exhibited in his own art via a distinctive aesthetic. Adi Da's entire oeuvre, including his videographic work, magnifies aspects »Non-conditional« reality such as prior unity, aperspectivity, beauty, ecstasy, and light. Reality as light becomes both primary means and ultimate purpose in his work. “My images are created,” Adi Da wrote, “to be a means for any and every perceiving, feeling, and fully participating viewer to 'Locate' Fundamental and Really Perfect Light--the world As Light, all relations As Light, conditional (or naturally perceived) light As Absolute Light.” This paper uses resources from consciousness studies, neuroaesthetics, and art theory to address the ontological significance of how reality is presented in the video art of Adi Da. Also, this investigation uses a methodology that accentuates phenomenologist Edmund Husserl's epoch, a process of bracketing out ordinary cultural presuppositions in order to more directly receive and elucidate what is appearing in consciousness, especially image consciousness, or »Bildbewußtein«, also translated as »depicting consciousness«.

Bob  Kalivac Carroll is a published writer, book editor and lecturer. He worked at Parsons The New School for Design, New York City (1969-1972). He holds a PhD in philosophy of Art from the Institute for Doctoral Studies of the Visual Arts. Among his papers and journal essays are »Towards a Husserlian Aesthetic: A Transcendental Phenomenological Orientation to Kandinsky’s Creative Process« and »The Transcendental Eye: Abstract Photographic Imagery as Sacred Art«.

Stuart Mather Gibson has over twenty years of experience in promoting the development of museums in particular and the culture sector in general in Central Asia, Caucasus, Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic’s, Balkans, the FSU (former Soviet Union), and the Middle East in all areas of museum planning and operation, resource management and enhancement, organization development, international relations, and public/private financing. Also he is experienced in lobbying activities in the United States, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, including invited appearances before the U. S. Congress, public speaking, and university lecturing.