Artwork Title: Earth&Sky
Material: colour photographs
Dimension: 56 cm x 42 cm
Date: 2012
On Martin Heidegger, Earth and Sky:
Dwelling on the earth (auf der Erde) Dasein thus saves the earth as the earth; by dwelling under the sky (unter dem Himmel) he receives the sky as the sky; by dwelling before the divinities (vor den Goettlichen) he waits on the divinities as divinities; and finally by taking upon himself his own essence of mortality, by accepting death as death, he preserves the fourfold and thereby dwells among things. In so doing Dasein builds things in their essential being or spares Being in beings. “Dwelling inasmuch as it keeps the fourfold in things, is, as this keeping, a building.”271 Dasein, by his fourfold sparing of the things, by dwelling in the fourfold, lets things be things in relation to the four facets of Being, viz., the earth, the sky, the divinities and the mortals. In this letting-be of things, Dasein does not attempt to manipulate, master or compel things, but instead builds things in their essential nature, i.e., in relation to the fourfold. It is not an indifference or lack of interest in things, but rather a letting-be which allows things to manifest Being (Sein) in their essence
For Heidegger the mirror-play of the simple onefold of the earth, the sky, the divinities and the mortals constitutes the world. The fouring, i.e. the unity of the four in the appropriating mirror-play, is the worlding of the world.72 Thus, the ‘thing’, as that which gathers the fourfold in their appropriating mirror-play is what, Heidegger calls the thinging of the thing. Since, world is the inter-relation of the fourfold, the thinging of the thing is the worlding of the world. Heidegger writes on this point:
“The four are united primordially in being toward one another, a fourfold. The things let the fourfold of the four stay with them. This gathering . . . letting-stay, is the thinging of the thing. The unitary fourfold of the sky and earth, mortals and divinities, which is stayed in the thinging of the things, we call — the world. Thinging things are things. Thinging, they gesture — gestate — world.”
Thus, for Heidegger, ” Things bear world. World grants things.” The presencing of the world in things in the unity of the fourfold is the worlding (das Welten) of the world. The mirror-play of the four-fold into onefold, Heidegger calls “the ring-dance of appropriating.”
(Ref. Council for Research in Values and Philosophy)