NATASZA DEDDNER
conceptual artist
Scholê Kosmía — σχολή κοσμία
The Free Space of Thought in the World
Art + Philosophy + Self-understanding = Social Development
- Art is the starting point
- Philosophy is the space of thought
- Self-understanding is the form in which impact emerges
- Social development is what follows from it
For many years, I have been engaged with questions that lie beneath the visible world:
- How do we understand ourselves
- How do identities break apart and how do they emerge
- What meaning does dignity hold in a fragmented society
- How does perception change when we allow ourselves to think
These questions are not separate from my life. They form the space in which I think, work, and exist. My artistic work is a mirror of social and political realities. It is a form of ethics in which I examine, question, and reveal structures, not a judgment, but a space for dignity; not a dogma, but a question; not an answer, but an openness.
From this stance, a larger field of thought and experience has developed over the years: Scholê Kosmía. It is not a predefined format, but a process that becomes visible only as it unfolds, linking my artistic practice to an expanded form of learning. I understand “school” in the sense of scholê: a free space of thought, beyond institution, instruction or the transmission of knowledge. A space that opens perception, invites self-recognition, and shapes inner stance through dialogue with the world. A place of inner movement and shared reflection.
The term refers to its original meaning: thinking requires time, space and freedom. Scholê Kosmía continues this idea and carries it into a contemporary, global context.
Its foundations resonate with four archetypal forms of thought:
Agora
open encounter → dialogue, exchange, shared thinking
Plato’s Academy
questions as method → a space without predetermined answers
Aristotle’s Lykeion
thinking in movement → process, not result
The Stoic School
self-work as the basis of action → self-understanding → stance → effect
These historical forms serve not as models, but as resonant fields: encounter, question, movement, stance, translated into the present. I understand self-understanding as movement: an inner movement that opens perception, and an outer one that enables dialogue. It grows from the same questions that shape my artistic work and extends them into a wider social space. This field requires a departure from a culture of consumption. It is not a place of receiving, but of discovering. Not of following, but of forming an individual stance.
Thinking, for me, is a process that does not cling to certainties, but emerges from perception and experience.
A movement from which freedom arises, a freedom that comes from within.
Art is the point of departure: it raises questions, opens spaces, destabilises habits and creates the conditions for processes of insight that exceed linear knowledge.
A central element of this approach is a stance based on tolerance, acceptance and respect:
- Tolerance opens the space for the other
- Acceptance gives this space depth
- Respect creates connection and makes encounter possible
Scholê Kosmía is an extension of my artistic work into a living reality. It creates spaces, conceptual, dialogical, structural or artistic, in which people are invited to broaden perspectives, to question habits and to develop forms of thinking that are neither standardised nor predetermined.
This field remains intentionally in process.
It grows through reflection, through projects, through encounters and through the questions that arise from my work and my life. In it lies the sense that has accompanied my artistic path for many years: not to display art, but to open it and from it create a global field of learning that expands perception and strengthens dialogue.
My intention is that self-understanding contributes to what has become necessary today:
- the development of awareness
- the development of perception
- the development of inner stance
- the development of human integrity
I want thinking not to be consumed, but to enable people to recognise themselves and the world anew. This is not a wish, it is a necessity.
A shift in perspective requires self-recognition.
From it arise perception and judgement.
Only those who think themselves can act freely.