https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=cpXYcWDowFM
Now next question is given that the honor given to an icon passes through to its prototype, what do you think about the medium and context through which icons are presented? So what is the appropriate for veneration and honor of a saint presented in the icons? What do you mean by medium? You mean by what’s you? Well it’s a way where you like you can put it on a wooden panel. Yeah. You can print it on a postcard, a stamp or something like this. So just what is it? I think there’s a hierarchy. I see everything in hierarchies. I’m sorry. I think there’s a hierarchy. I think that we need to be able to aim towards the best version of the icon, which is this version that was developed in the tradition as it painted in with egg colors to make it very permanent, to make it last a very long time, to have it on a wooden panel for the same reasons. So all of these reasons were developed in the tradition, but it’s also it’s like there are also miracle working icons that are just photocopies. There really are. Like there are miracle working, mirror streaming icons that are xeroxes basically. And so we have to be careful like to still it’s like we can aim. It’s almost like you could say what’s best? You know like a church in a basement or Hagia Sophia? Well the answer is Hagia Sophia, but the sacrament is still valid in a church that’s in a basement, right? So we can at once say that yes there’s something we’re aiming towards. Like there’s a quality we’re aiming towards and there are reasons why we’re aiming towards that quality and still recognize the possibility of lower forms manifesting themselves even though like there is a problem with mass production of icons. There’s a real theological problem because like just imagine like these images of Christ being printed out in China and like being shipped to Europe and then distributed all over the place and put on mass production on postcards and things that end up in the trash. And so it’s like there’s this problem of our throwaway culture and how we understand the sacred. And even though I wouldn’t say that those aren’t icons, I think that as a larger phenomena it’s definitely having an effect on our perception of what is sacred and how to interact with what is sacred. Yeah, yeah that’s the sort of thing I was trying to draw out in the sense that I think sometimes we’re so used to putting icons on postcards etc. That we forget that every image of it, and I think this is why the Xerox is as much miracle working as the painted one, because it’s not the fact this nicely painted icon that makes the miracle working, it’s the fact that it’s the image of the saint that makes it a miracle working. And therefore we need to make sure we treat every image as equally venerable. And the reason to put it on a particular material medium is so that it is treated well. Yeah, but it becomes so complicated Father, I mean because people, even people who go down that line usually won’t go as far as to talk about images of saints online, because I don’t know what to do with that. Like what do you do with streaming down Facebook and seeing an image of a saint and then seeing an ad for something that’s slightly off key? Like how do you deal with that? It’s right now we’re flooded, like we’re so flooded with mismatched chaotic images that it is affecting our psyche, that is for sure, but it’s very difficult to, there is no easy solution out of this problem of the icon in terms of mass production. But you know, it was told that it was going to happen, like there’s a theorist in the early 20th century, his name is Walter Benjamin, and he was a Jewish communist in Europe, and he said we need to go towards mass production of art. And he said because we need to destroy the aura, that mass production will destroy the aura of art, will destroy its sacredness. And he knew right in the beginning of the 20th century what was going to happen, and now we live with the consequences of that. Right, okay next question is what do you think of the relationship between Orthodox art and the inner spiritual life of a faithful in both the context of portable icons and also frescoes and mosaics in the churches, as well as what you mentioned before, the design of the church itself, the location of the images, but actually even the structure of the interior of the church, the structure even the exterior of the church, the whole effect that may have on the spiritual life of the faithful? Yeah, I mean I think it’s you can’t put it into words. Like anybody who’s been in a proper church that is decorated with frescoes is completely transported, you know, and I think that even someone who’s an atheist or an agnostic would be hushed, you know, to move in to walk into these amazing churches that are covered with images. And to me it’s really that is the pinnacle of iconography. The pinnacle of iconography is really not the portable icon. The pinnacle of iconography is this grand symphony that we find in the churches and this representation of the stories of Christ and of the saints and of the Bible, you know, in the architectural space as they reflect each other and they discuss with each other and there’s this and the really good churches, they’re all theologically placed. It’s not a 100% of the system. There are some guidelines, but they’re all, they are theological place. You don’t put anything anywhere and there’s a relationship between, let’s say that what type of image would you put on the western wall, you know, put an image of the falling asleep of the mother of God, you put an image of the last judgment, you put an image of Saint Christopher, you put it, so what are these images that we put on the west are these images of the end of death of this transition and then what are the images we put in the east? We put the images of Christ in the, you know, coming out of the mother of God as her being this vehicle for the incarnation or we put an image of Christ returning in glory and kind of revealing to us, you know, the incarnation and so that’s just one, but all the images, not all, but most of the image in the church would have this kind of theological thinking in the way that they’re represented. Right, yes and what do you think, my personal thought as well, a lot of Orthodox churches, the dome, etc. and the size is a sense of enclosing into the heart, which is sort of an interesting symbolism, a lot of gothic architectures reaching up into the sky, whereas a lot of Orthodox ones, it’s actually sort of enclose you into the space and it’s like going into the heart yet at the same time revealing the glory of heaven to you at the same time. Yeah, well the the Orthodox church is really is microcosm in the way that it’s designed, so it’s like a little reality and so it has heaven and earth and so it’s not as much, like you said, it’s not as much pointing towards heaven rather than like participation in this cosmic story, so there definitely is a difference between the gothic spire, let’s say, which has its own kind of glory and its own kind of power to it and the more, yeah, this dome on a square, which is more this incarnational model, let’s say.