"MSW"
seeker,
explorere,
creator
MARTIN SWOBODA
INSTAGRAM: @msw_paintings
"Straight lines and circles are ... not only beautiful ... but eternal and absolutely beautiful."
About 2400 years ago by PLATO, Theory of Forms
The Challenge
What remains of the human being in a technocratic society formed by patterns, algorithms, and efficiency? My work poses this question—without offering final and easy consumable answers.
Constructivism?
The term "constructivism"—beyond its political dimension—has many faces. In the social sciences, it implies that truth, power, order, and society are not natural givens but human constructs—and thus subject to change.
In philosophy, it posits that reality is not objectively “given,” but subjectively constructed—through language, perception, and cultural conditioning. In art, "constructivism" refers to a movement of the early 20th century characterized by radical formal reduction, geometric clarity, and technical rationality. Form was no longer merely a vessel for content, but an expression of social utopias. Art became functional, systemic, almost machinic—and yet sought a new kind of freedom within that logic.
Exkurs: Historical Context
In the early 20th century, belief in the visible world fractured. Painting freed itself from the image; perspective lost its authority.
In the Manifesto del Futurismo (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti), there was a call for speed, machines, revolution. One consequence: Constructivism. In Russia and Europe, artists sought a new aesthetic—based on functionality, clarity, structure.
Form was dematerialized, geometrized, transformed into a tool for a new image of humanity: rational, technical, modern. Art no longer wished to reflect—it sought to shape. Intervene. Participate. Architecture became the culmination of this idea, especially at the Bauhaus, where art, craft, and technology fused.The right angle became an ideology. Efficiency became an ethic.
Constructivism aimed for more than art—it sought society. And therein lies its dilemma. What began as a movement of renewal ended, in part, in authoritarian systems. Soviet avant-gardists like Tatlin or Rodchenko were first celebrated—later co-opted.
What was useful remained. The rest was banned.
The functionalist principle—“form follows function”—was politically exploited. In fascism and communism alike, form became an instrument of control, order, propaganda. The machine, once an emblem of freedom, became a tool of oppression.
An attempt to find meaning in a progressively modernizing world
"Objectively measurable realities—together with subjective, cultural perception—form our worldview: a construct."
In the constructivist theory of international relations, this thought serves as an interpretive framework for political action. The theory identifies building blocks of social reality—on the one hand, measurable facts; on the other, culturally shaped perception. Only their interweaving generates a worldview of political relevance within a society.
Society becomes increasingly measurable where it operates under competitive conditions. Where scarcity prevails, efficiency, data, and performance dominate. States and their actors are compared, evaluated, ranked—according to standards and scales. New opportunities continuously produce new patterns, procedures, and technologies.
A prime example: industrial goods production. Constant optimization, modernization, variation. Always in pursuit of new methods, lower costs, larger markets—all in service of one goal: to maintain the lead, to prolong the advantage. This logic has become global. It is now universal—not merely a tool, but an emerging natural law. One must ask:
Are societies still in control of these processes—or merely driven by them?
Compelled to subordinate their cultural narratives to the rhythm of competition?
Progress came at a cost
"Opportunity is just another name for a creature we believe we are in control of."
Today, we live in the aftermath of a mindset that made humanity the engineer and the world a machine.
The 21st century is the result of an efficiency-driven industrial society. Everything becomes measurable, comparable, repeatable: architecture, products, processes, communication. Everything follows patterns. Everything is a grid.
Technology—once a promise—now isolates us increasingly. Information overwhelms more than it enlightens. Societies lose cohesion and direction. Societies age, and they fragment. Global bonds are eroding.
On a deeper level: Our societal systems—democracy, capitalism, the welfare state, and technocratic hybrids—are showing signs of internal fatigue. They rest upon foundational assumptions that are steadily dissolving: stable demographics, shared cultural narratives, enduring institutions, and peace. These assumptions are no longer self-evident. Populations age and shift, cultural cohesion unravels, traditions erode, and coherent life paths fragment into short-term improvisations.
Meanwhile, what can be measured, quantified, and processed by algorithms continues to expand.
Yet in the same breath, the space for subjective experience, for storytelling—the unquantifiable cultural and human factor—shrinks.
A fundamental paradox reveals itself:
The more precisely we measure the world, the less we seem to grasp its meaning—the less we seem to be in control.
Every system—and therefore every society—reaches a moment of rupture, where its fundamental logic no longer holds.
What if progress, once our guiding force, no longer leads but overruns us?
What if the grid that once promised liberation has become a consumer’s cage—fractured and uncontrollable?
The Human Factor
Despite all technification: the human being remains central—not as a controller, but as a conscious, questioning presence - prepared to intervene.
Precisely because our reality is increasingly shaped by technology and machines, we must give it an image.
My works condense the byproducts of our technicized society. I use real industrial patterns as stencils.
Through repetition, variation, and rhythm, images emerge that reflect aspects of this otherwise hidden world — perhaps offering a glimpse.
To the viewer, the result may resemble something familiar. Machines, reactors, architecture but eventually it remains open to interpretation, disruption, and insight.
by MSW, 2025
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