Vers l'Orient (Late Early Obsessions)

“The festivals of the Bairam….in the midst of which, like a pale sun, can be discerned the endless ennui of the late sultan.” (Baudelaire, L’Art Romantique) 

Five letters of the heart to 

the eye

Five equal and opposite letters of the

eye to the heart

“La querelle des yeux et du coeur” (Giordano Bruno)

equals

The flaming heart

The flooded eye

“Eros, Eros, whose yearning poison drops in the

eye and wakes sweet sighs in the beleaguered heart. 

Never lead me along the tangled roads of limitless craving.” (Hippolytos, Euripides)

Ratzo  and Shov

Impossible Love-Kabbalah

The dialectics of love and craving

Love breeds tranquility

Craving breeds intranquility

Tranquility craves the full intranquility

Intranquility craves the empty tranquility

And so they turn and circle invert and reverse

almost forever.

Mathematical lovers would probably agree - the

best chaos comes from a slightly tarnished precision. 

Our work should give the viewer a gnawing sensation

of incompleteness. The bad infinity of the incomplete 

series.

Scene: The crowded quadrangle in the morning.

The clock tower on the bridge always points 

to ten o’clock.

In the distance, the forest of geometry.

Nothing is ever short enough or far enough not to be possessed by the reversed eye of the crowd. When reversion breaks loose into the universe, against the planets, anywhere could become the scene of fatal lucklessness. Any object - its prop. So much of it is sleight-of-hand, now you see it, now you don’t, eventually an exquisite corpse or a disappearance. The more unsentimental, technical or sudden, the better. Just like any accident.

The reversed eye is satisfied only by mass collisions. The imagination is a second select mass. There the collisions are so disconnected from desire or appetite.

Forward counting numbers are expanding.

Backward counting numbers are contracting.

Time going by is the expanding age.

Time ago is contracting, shrinking back to a point

out of which forward time can expand again.

Forward numbers are an expanding universe.

Backward numbers are a contracting universe.

Hope is the shape of forward counting numbers.

No hope is the shape of backwards counting numbers.

No hope has more promise

than hope.

One shouldn’t have to wait for nature’s spectacles for that acute sense of a missed opportunity. In a work of art one can miniaturize the intervals between those exceptional moments of sensation and multiply them as well.

It could possibly give the willing pliable spectator the feeling of having more and other lives and more and other worlds to squander them in.

Our fortune testing machines resemble accidents more than anything else because they promise so many ways of escaping all destinations. Hence effectively a rescue. When all chance has been suspended - risk lies in the law of the favorite. Symmetry is only uncertainty. The law of the favorite is both ancient and modern. Unlike horse racing, the favorite in the reversed world is most unlucky. The higher the odds in your favor the unluckier you are. We would far rather have an uneven than an even set of odds. How else could one always have ‘one more chance’?

We have been perfecting our grand theory of accidents and philosophy of risk based on the laws of shipwrecks. There is no mystery in chance. Chance abolishes it. We would rather be an enigmatic toy of fate than some fingered throw of the dice. The same trigonometry which one uses to calculate navigation of shipping routes can be used just as well to calculate the accidents upon these routes. With one small addition - one calculates how the desired port of destination should under eternal circumstances never be reached. How hard and how mysterious never to arrive.

Coincidences are a species of groundless phenomena which happen only once.

Risks are little nothings which could happen any time. It is quite plausible that there is a grain of madness at the heart of nature, a primary vertigo of the universe, a folie des grandeurs or a consuming dread which makes us believe all things are possible. Fortunately or unfortunately most of the time they are not.

The accident is nothing special but it might be sometimes less, sometimes more than the normal case. It is a normal case with an unknown plus or minus. The unknown too much or too little also follows laws. The same law simultaneously establishes the force of habit and through the accident cancels it. That is the first provisional axiom of the shipwreck. An accident is always rare and equally very common, because it follows a law, or in other words, there are only common accidents which are rare. That is the second provisional axiom. Therefore anything can happen most any time. Not only theoretically.

Even in ‘life’ how often does one only hear someone or something but never sees them? Or something silent like a place seems to look back at you? How much more is one driven to understand?

A cold heartless person is likened to a cicada in the poem of Miwa No Sugikado - which can be heard, but is nowhere to be seen. The heartless voices of a broken-hearted piece.

Spiritual Topography

Our ground floor is the tongue.

Between the tongue and floor of the mouth is

the lower inner sky, the most vast,

also the top of the next world,

hence - highest and lowest pitch of this one.

The body’s impurities are twinned with heaven’s purities.

People clutter the memory. The memory of the empty place

is strongest. The soul likes to remember the empty places - empty of people. The echo - pitch of the soul is the reverberation of the empty place it remembers.

Never to Arrive

2nd April 20..

Dear Panamarenko,

We visited your exhibition on Wednesday at the Hayward Gallery and have felt compelled to write to you. Please forgive us intruding upon your privacy but we assure you the reasons are purely immanent.

For many years we have been working on a grand theory of accidents and philosophy of risk. We were quite excited to discover some corroboration for our theories in your own toy model of space. Your lecture on the subject caused some strange somatic reactions. After a while we were transported into an irresistible sleepiness although not the kind which excludes perception. Then we woke up very hungry exactly when you were writing E=MC2 on the blackboard. But the hunger which followed the stupor was the sort which left unheeded might lead to rapid loss of consciousness. Fortunately we could dash out of the gallery and eat some provisions. By the time we returned you were again writing E=MC2 on the blackboard. But we could follow your argument somewhat more consciously. Although we think its effect on the unconscious intelligence is far more powerful. You remark about your Hazerug or Schelpvormige Rugzak that it created so much noise the people around your test site fled in fear. Although obviously the object when activated is quite dangerous its noise serves to diminish the danger by warning of potential harm. Not so your lecture. The hermetic character of your theatre of proof which inspires the spectator with the intense desire to understand but withholds understanding in a tantalus-like fashion is far more dangerous. The stupor followed by utter depletion of blood sugars in the brain could be as fatal as being caught up in exploding motors.

We resolved not to want to understand — out of banal survival motives but also not to surrender to obfuscation either.

The part of your theatre of proof which seemed to glide effortlessly into our grand theory of accidents and philosophy of risk has to do with what you call “rolling on the space field”. Trying to be as brief as possible, one could say rolling elevates the “Stabilitätsunfall” or capsizing to one of the fundamental principles of motion in the universe. If one could imagine motion without bodies then what would be left in the universe is its constituent and primary vertigo (Schwindel). Your results seem to confirm something we have suspected for years. There is an occult correspondence between the laws governing the maritime accident and this constituent and primary vertigo of the universe. The maritime accident contains the secret to the construction of space.

We live in an area especially suited to the study of accidents at sea. Under dry dock conditions. Seafaring is almost forgotten but the accident at high sea has been preserved for tradition’s sake. The accidents are the last connection to the real life of the seafarer. The secret rule of thumb regarding accidents is one should never treat them as an exception. We were very intrigued by your explanation of the “containing force” -  one wonders why explosions don’t happen spontaneously more often.

The same trigonometry which one uses to calculate navigation of shipping routes can be used just as well to calculate the accidents upon these routes. With one small addition - one calculates how the desired port of destination should under eternal circumstances never be reached. In this way one can quite easily transform the laws of navigation at sea into the laws of shipwrecks. Following a similar logic one can transpose the theorems of geometry into the theorems of the physics of rigid objects especially their change of positions. Einstein invented this transposition logic calling it “gravitation geometry”. “When we add only one proposition to the theorems of Euclidian geometry, that two points of a practically rigid body always correspond to the same distance (Strecke) whatever changes in the position we undertake with this body, thereby the theorems of Euclidian geometry become theorems about the possible relative shifting of practically rigid bodies. Geometry extended in this fashion would be treated as a branch of physics (...). The practically rigid body turns the straight line into a natural object.” (Einstein)

What is a better example of “possible relative shifting of practically rigid bodies” than the “Stabilitätsunfall” or capsizing of ships. Following your expositions of rolling one can imagine the circular motion of stars, sun, etc as the equivalent of the capsizing motion prolonged indefinitely on a gravityless field where there is no up or no down - hence no question of buoyancy. If a ship capsizes it is because its two essential centers of gravity are not aligned — the center of gravity of the ship’s total mass (M) and the center of the submerged part of the ship (F). In essence it is out of gravity when it capsizes. The one side entering the water at greater speed than the other as in “rolling”. But it usually rolls only once - as the capsizing leads it back to gravity or balance or rest. If it were in the space field presumably it would capsize forever like the other space bodies.   “Un coup de dés/ jamais/ quand bien même lancé dans des/circonstances éternelles/ du fond d’un naufrage (…)” (“A throw of the dice/ Never/ Even thrown in/ Eternal circumstances/ From the bottom of a shipwreck (…)”, Mallarmé)

The accident is nothing special but it might be sometimes less, sometimes more than the normal case. It is a normal case with an unknown plus or minus. The unknown too much or too little also follows laws. As Kant writes - “Der Zufall hat Gesetze, zum Beispiel Schiffbrüche.” (“Chance has laws, for example shipwrecks.”) The same law simultaneously establishes the force of habit (Macht der Gewohnheit) and through the accident also cancels it. That is the first provisional axiom of the shipwreck. It is also a paradox. One does not imagine that a law can be confirmed and annulled in the same instant. But that happens in every accident. Not even just the unusual ones. An accident is always rare and equally very common, because it follows a law, or in other words, there are only common accidents which are rare.  (“For the common is rare, and the common measure is, a rarity for the rare (…)” Jacques Derrida, “Loving in Friendship: Perhaps – the Noun and the Adverb” in The Politics of Friendship, London, 2005, p. 43)

That is the second provisional axiom. Therefore anything can happen at any time. Not only theoretically. The accident in the aquatic element still counts as the noblest sort of accident. But since going to sea is becoming almost extinct all manner of holiday accidents must suffice. One would think that the holiday accident would not qualify to be included in the grand theory of accidents because of the obvious absence of the “force of habit”.
But the holiday itself is an immense force of habit and as Horace says “you can change the skies but not the ideas” thus the grand theory of accidents and philosophy of risk can be extended to cover holiday accidents as well.

The exhibition of your fortune testing machines resembles an accident more than anything else because it promises so many ways of escaping all destinations. Hence effectively a rescue.

Yours sincerely,

Mallarmé's 'Grand Jeu'

"The automaton moon above the forest of numbers - every star an official secret"

What does the game of dice mean for Mallarmé?  ('Today's game has blinded me' - Hafis)  His premise: no throw of the dice can abolish chance.  Isn't that obvious?  Why would a game of chance be designed to suspend or destroy its own conditions - chance?  If it were possible - would that be desirable?  Is it a tragedy that chance survives all or any throws of the dice?  Wouldn't life be even more boring without chance?  Isn't chance the only guard against  ennui and tyrannical habits?  One often speaks of pure chance.  Although chance has nothing pure about it.  Chance is indiscriminate and banal and reeks of the mechanical.  I would rather abolish a duty than leave it to chance.  Chance is something which interrupts a set course.  It is a non-intelligent intelligence which surpasses and limits the 'Absolute'

"faux manoir
              tout de suite
                        évaporé en brumes

                      qui imposa
                           une borne à l'infini"  ("Un Coup de Dés")

- yet chance and law are never far apart - if only the law of probability and stochastic processes.  Chance refers commonly to all phenomena which appear to take place without the interference of some sort of conscious Will - as if of their own accord.  But chance itself interferes in the phenomenon of Will.  The reasons for things called 'chance' are simply unknown.  Chance is just another name for the unknown or not yet known or semi-unknown.   Chance is not necessarily unforeseeable or even surprising. Otherwise how would one be able to predict some sorts of chance to a fairly accurate degree - like the movements of the stock market or the outcome of horse races.  Successful predictions do not abolish chance either.  The idea of risk is a limit to chance - it implies those circumstances when chance outweighs predictability - one risks the difference.  Risk is on one side - chance is on the other. 

Someone who has no chance is a person whose situation is probably completely known.  As Odilon Redon says in a journal entry dated 1908 "Le peintre qui a trouvé sa technique ne m'interesse pas."(An artist who has found his technique does not interest me. "à soi même, journal 1867-1915", 1989, p.110)  There is no lingering remnant of the unknown or "l'imprévu", the unforeseen.  All is lit up.  Curiously this situation is considered hopeless.  Humans associate hope with the unknown - when much is still in the dark and vague.

Vagueness is a great inducement for thinking.   Once Wittgenstein began to contemplate the properties of vagueness he became disenchanted with the clear-cut world of logical atomism.  "Grammar", the demiurge of his later philosophy, is the epitome of vagueness.  The real futility, the exhausting kind, is the attempt to efface certain iron rules of logic.  Unfortunately, one never knows exactly what these are.  But even the most unassailable logic can never compel belief.

What is the relation between vagueness and chance?  Is chance vague?  Are bodies vague or is vagueness only an attribute of language or other forms of representation?  Does vagueness occur first in thought?  Thoughts can be very vague - as can perceptions.  Every thought, says Mallarmé, is a throw of the dice.  Then are throws of dice also vague?  Vague thoughts, perceptions and language are on one side and on the other side are bodies which are not vague.  Vagueness has no empirical substance.  Although memories of empirical reality can also be very vague, especially memories of feelings. 

The exactitude of language camouflages the inexactitude of thoughts - one can substitute vagueness for inexactitude - feeling, memory or perception for thought .  Only rarely, does inexact language disguise exact thoughts.  Novalis says though - the vague or indeterminate moods augur happiness.