"We press a button on the ground and a giant red hand pushes from there. If we do it again, the same thing will happen to us again. Here an action takes place (with us) that extinguishes itself. We do something and then we can't do what we want. Here in Eastern Europe, this is very familiar, especially when paired with a red hand. For 45 years in Hungary, we were powerless to do things that were nice to the system. It is about communism or dictatorship.
The big red hand was usually hovering over us when it came to vital questions, thanks to which we always asked about the limits of freedom. Less freedom comes with more questions. Who can do it and what? Does it make sense to act, or does the act make sense?
And this is where self-triggering action is interestingly connected to the Taoist concept of wu-wei. Not acting, waiting, watching, flowing with the order of nature. If we take non-action out of the historical context, leave it between the white walls, it holds up a very cruel mirror in front of the European man, the European thought.
Action is focusing on something, the work of art frees you from this. The ego decides to do something, but the hand thwarts this, so it teaches us to tune in to the pulsating world around us, to that which we do not control, it makes us move together with it without any kind of transformation or intrusion, it puts the focus outside of us, but so, that we change after all. We do not mold the world to ourselves, but the other way around, so this creation is nothing more than an anti-ego machine." Peter Rizmayer
