M.P.: There are myriads of invisible paintings in existence. We succeed in capturing a negligibly infinitesimal part that is absolutely necessary for human life. This invisible reservoir constantly nourishes and supports us, on the one hand; on the other, it provokes us and imposes a certain sense of weightlessness, regardless of the particular circumstances in which we live.

An infinite sea of images – simultaneously appearing and disappearing – that is impossible to perceive, so we content ourselves with distorted depiction-fragments and, insofar as these fragments succeed in suggesting the fullness of the whole/the unfathomable, to that extent they are also convincing. It is clear that events allow only a small part of themselves to be captured; in this sense, reproduction of the invisible becomes an instrument (limited in itself) of cognition and, regardless of whatever technical or scientific progress, the main content becomes lost in conjecture. Cognition, for its part, irreversibly changes the world and thrusts us into the unknown – where the essence of reproductions proves to be: the successful always include the thrillingly unknown, whether they narrate or synthesise. Irrespective of the extent to which a final form (in this case, the reproduction) embodies something infinite, questions remain open as to whether this final form is a fragment of the infinite, whether it is variable, to what extent it is cognisable, and whether it can act outside the parameters it has communicated to us, viz., beyond its own description. Myriads of unpainted pictures exist. And the more we draw them, the more numerous they become.

P.Z.: The question is: where do these depictions exist? Is it consciousness that shapes them into an image, or are images deciphered by consciousness? Of course, in the latter case, the level of deciphering, which is most probably a variable quantity, cannot in the least be determined. And it is precisely the ‘X’ part of this equation that represents the reservoir of invisible paintings. The most faithful analogy remains the allegory in Book VII of Plato’s The Republic: humanity resembles a group of people who spend their entire lives in a cave and perceive reality only in the image of the shadows that the light of the world outside casts on the walls of the cave. In the previous Book, however, there is the Analogy of the Divided Line representing the exemplary ratio of the visible to the intelligible sections of the universe, thus postulating transcendental relativism and the boundaries of cognition itself. In this sense, each painting turns out to be an image consisting mainly of its ‘unpainted’ elements, of an innumerable number of doors on the latch, each ready to be opened, and leading to new images. The art of our times in the wider scope of the ‘modern epoch’ has imposed three of the most aggressive methods of travelling (or sinking?) into the maze of the ‘story within a story’: conceptual art and its derivatives (Marcel Duchamp), actionism (Yves Klein) and ephemeral structures (Christo).

M.P.: In the context of this conversation, we cannot escape the question of whether time is information or communication: what part is possible to perceive, or to realise a priori that information is, in fact, misleading. Deformations are a superficial element, without which, however, any sort of communication is impossible, whereas it is existentially necessary. Art becomes possible at a point of ‘communication breakdown’, namely, in a state of paradox. The objects are the same, and at the same time they are not: they speak a language that we understand, but that is impossible to trace logically.

I do not remember the motives that, in 2005, made me begin dating in the future, but the exhibition milkopavlov-thelargesizedrawings 2012–2030 at SCAG [Sofia City Art Gallery] was the first result of this process. The pretension of mapping different points of the unknown produces images that would in no way be different from those that are dated ‘in our days’. At the same time, the artwork usurps the right of ‘bilocation’ – to be simultaneously here and now, and where it came from – a right inherent in everything in the observable world. Thus, the notion of contemporaneity extends its parameters beyond measurable time; it overcomes the syndrome of periodicity expected of it, without any danger of self-destructing.

P.Z.: This tactic in itself contains a paradox. It is not possible to determine with certainty whether time informs owing to the possibilities for communication it provides (consistency, causation) or whether it communicates with the information it contains. It seems that this state is identical to Heisenberg’s equation illustrating the famous principle of uncertainty in quantum mechanics: ‘The position and momentum (the product of the mass and the velocity) of an elementary particle cannot be simultaneously determined; if the position is determined, the momentum cannot be found; if the momentum is measured, it is not possible to determine the location.’ The game of dating ‘in future time’ is probably closest to manipulating the conditionality of what we accept as a reference point (the Christian chronology system, the Islamic, Jewish, Roman) because the starting point is always different (and strictly personal). This also applies to the pretension of mapping the points of the unknown, as, at the instant of their ‘mapping’, all unknown points become known, i.e., already discovered.

On the other hand, I am not convinced that art is being created in the zones of disintegration of the possibilities for communication, because art consists of 100 per cent communication, mostly as a means (or experience) of the author, the artist, to communicate with himself. (This reminds me how, at the time, on every cover of the adolescent magazine, Cosmos, Marx’s popular notion that there was nothing else in the world but moving matter, stood out prominently). The very process of communication, for its part, whatever it may be, becomes pointless without causation, while the hypothetical, parallel bilocation of aesthetic or intellectual communications can have its closest analogue in a time traveller who encounters himself. Regardless of the incognoscibility of time-space, it implies the theoretical possibility of containing a potentially self-destructive paradox – for example, if, in the encounter with himself, the traveller in time kills his avatar, then he would not be born, and the meeting would not be (have been) possible.

M.P.: In Plato’s cave, ‘the light of the world’ (to use your expression) causes the existence of shadows. In the same allegory, it is also mentioned that there are people who go outside and see the light. When they return and try to convince the others that there are only illusions inside, they are put to death because they have become uncomfortable for the system, which, for Plato, is called the Republic. In his concept of the ideal republic, he recommends that the poets be expelled, i.e., the art provoking public communication is discriminated against and subsequently declared a harmful illusion. That is why I prefer to call art the moments, the actions of ‘communication breakdown’, contesting the established communication system inside the cave. Perhaps it is not accidental that, at approximately Plato’s time, the ancient Judaic doctrine prohibiting images was also formulated. In that epoch, they were already exhausted of meaning by Egypt and Babylon; besides, in Egypt, the archetype of the matrix is contained, about which, even to this day, discussions are held at different levels. It is interesting to me that the new ideas for the world of that time appeared in marginal spaces – a principle that seems to be valid even to this day. We all know that, in a broader sense, the wars forand against the image (relevant both to the painting and the art of painting) continue, even now. Conceptual tendencies are essentially Platonistic, excluding the depiction of rational formulas. They are interesting in those cases where they succeed in overcoming their own borders, when they progress beyond their own concept and allow for ‘the light of the world’ to be seen – when, through non-pictorial means, the sense of a painting is achieved, and the hegemony of the shadows is disputed. However, the general level of these quests actually turns out to be a rather hollow and easily digestible conceptual academism (again, Plato!). At the profane level, the coincidence imposes itself that those radically against the painting (as a means of cognition) prove to be the Protestants, Nazis, Communists and Islamists. Their concepts accept the painting solely in its capacity as a combative (doctrinaire, dogmatic, propagandist) device, and virtuosically manage to use it in this direction. It struck me that if Plato chases the poets out of his Republic, to Lenin the artist is ‘an idiot, but useful’, while with the Nazis and Islamists, variants are lacking.