Serge Venturini - The Transvisible

The Transvisible

The transvisible is a theory according to which there is a passage between the visible and the invisible world which lasts no longer than a flash of lightning, no longer than a vision.

To fully understand this theory that is still in the making, it is necessary to refer to other key notions of the transvisible; we still haven’t found the way out of Plato’s cave and we still mistake the appearance of reality for reality itself, in a world trapped in the fallacies of images and when the absence of such images is accepted as a token of un-reality, of untruth and consequently of falsehood, a world in which reality itself has become fiction; in "a world truly turned upside down", as Guy Debord once said, the virtual has become a reality.

The first of these notions is the posthuman which witnessed the death of the old Humanist movement that was born out of the Italian Renaissance. Beyond this notion, as in a second step, one could refer to the transhuman as the necessary move to go beyond the notion we have just mentioned. Dante’s transumanar remains a major reference in the issue. "Transhumaner" would mean "to go beyond what is human", "beyond Good and Evil" as Nietzsche once said.

On a symbolical level, the transvisible could be epitomized by an arrow shot from the visible and that would vanish in the invisible. As the symbol of a philosophy of destiny and of evolution, the transvisible is the moment between what is already no more and what is yet to come, a moment with dreamlike qualities, when the mind itself passes from day-time subconscious to evening slumber and sometimes premonitory dream. According to Henri Bergson, it is the first function of consciousness to hold onto what is no more in order to look into the future.

Water too would seem to be an excellent metaphor between the liquid word (the visible) and vapour (the invisible). So would the wind when you don’t even notice it rustling the leaves or conversely, when nothing seems to move, when it comes and sweeps across your face like a ray of light. Or quite differently, money now that the banking rules have disappeared and that monetary value has become more and more immaterial, if not totally virtual and transvisible

This is why it is so difficult to explain how quick the passage is between what is visible for the eye and the mind and what is not, as is revealed by the notorious fade in-fade out effect used in the movies when one picture succeeds another: as one picture gradually vanishes, the following one gets clearer and clearer. And the same goes for music when one theme succeeds another.

When science and art intertwine, the Florentine engineer Maurizio Seracini, provides another fine example. As a specialist in reflectography and infra-red techniques, he pioneered the restoration of the works of Leonardo da Vinci and was able to use the latest technology to uncover The Batlle of Anghiari and to reveal one of the first drawings of the master from under the current unfinished The Adoration of the Magi. To see another reality under the appearance of representation is to be confronted to the transvisible. To see beyond our senses is a problem Pablo Picasso had already pointed out when he declared: "it would be necessary to reveal the paintings beneath the actual painting".

Therefore, between being and non-being, in a world in which communication is increasingly being dematerialised as time goes by, the supporters of rationality see in all this nothing more than just an expression of what is not determined, improbable or unmentionable, thereby refusing to get involved in the whole issue. All that is not clearly expressed doesn’t hold water and is consequently deemed irrelevant.

However, there were people like Merleau-Ponty, who at one time happened to be passionate about the links between the visible and the invisible. As a philosopher, Merleau-Ponty even discovered in it some sort of "profondeur charnelle". Poets too have also attempted to meet the transvisible in the flesh. What is void, empty and unthinkable offers countless possibilities in this respect. To see, to pass from what is opaque to what is transparent is required before reaching the transparency of the invisible. The openness of such worlds should also be emphasised for people with too rational a mind have chosen not to trouble themselves with such interactions. As media of transvisibility, poets act as torch-bearers in charge with the fire of eloquence; they are walkers between worlds. As we cross from the visible to the invisible, the transvisible transfigures Time itself.