Paradoxes of abstraction

"Our central thesis may be summed up as a statement of the necessity of the paradoxes of abstraction. ... Rather, we believe that the paradoxes of abstraction must make their appearance in all communication more complex than that of mood-signals, and that without these paradoxes the evolution of communication would be at an end. Life would then be endless interchange of stylized messages, a game with rigid rules, unrelieved by change or humor."

(Gregory Bateson p .193; 1972)

How meanings can be produced, shared, and exchanged?

(First image from www.sayho.org) The phrase sprayed-written, it reads "we are happy". it is part of all kind of protest-notes posted around the Korea Art School. This one appropriated the work 'We Are Happy' by the late Korean artist Yiso Bac. The original work was produced in a huge advertisement board painted in the pastel orange color (the second image). The protest is against the current neo-liberal government's "non-ideological but just pragmatical" policy and its decision to remove the program of theory and inter-discipliniary study in the curriculum of the school.