Random Reflux

“Chaos under control” – a book I dreamt about when I was a teenager

Rules are intellectual objects that help ordering functions in systems. The way this happens is based on the forced descriptive coincidence of the behaviour of that function with a cycle or with a constant characteristic. This usually applies to large scale scientific studies of the universe, periodicity of history (the largest scale we can study culture) and any other macroscopic sequence of events. On the other hand randomness, chaos, and the lack of what we would call rules are the basis of quantic systems. The relevance of this is that we live in between these two scales of events. If on one hand we live long enough and have a language that helps us realise the rules of long term weather (not just on the scale of summer and winter but for glacial ages as well) on the other hand most of the time our “rules” only give us a few days of forecast becoming completely irrelevant for the description of our daily lives where all particles (including our bodies) are chaotically shuffled into what we usually call our cultural melting pot.

If we try and relate these simplistic thoughts to art and other creative productions we will realize that language is what we use to define rules and patterns. Even when we think about creative writing as stream of consciousness we will realize its main function is to define the breaking point of order. It almost touches the unsayable / unwritable but it doesn’t obviously overcome that because even if interpretation becomes absurd the object was still written or said. Chaos is somehow interconnected to intuition, deconstruction, explosion, randomness, high temperatures, microscopic objects and the apparent impossibilities that actually happen.

“This video is so random!”

The observer’s reflux

– relational aesthetics, the pathway around the work and gallery is the same as a reflux of liquid
– The need to be critical for certain types of work to be effective such as the gallery wall ripped off. The waste of gallery space being the subject matter of the work implies that if people just believe that is good work it stops being good work at all. To write about this project would be enough if people just though it was a good piece. It wouldn’t be enough. The fact that the realization of the project is beyond the language capability of communication is essential. It produces an effect maybe an affect (check Deleuze’s definition) on people that react critically and realize they start being upset because of the opportunity to do something with the rest of the space. The truth is that if the artist had done anything else to space this hole discussion wouldn't have happened. Because people feel irritated and provoked I believe this is still a good work – but it is only good while there is someone that sees it and hates it.

Conceptual reflux

– Hegel, Eternal return (Nietzsche), Deleuze
– Temperature – scientific definition (functional) – the temperature of art movements – post modernism is dead and it didn’t have a long life. People are trying to feed on a corps. What is beyond language being helped by language – Fridge installation – the permanence of the work – the counter-intuitive environments – the open system (it is receiving electricity) – the way cold is produced – YBA’s Mark queen and Damien’s lack of depth and energy – there isn’t one machine with a 100% efficiency rate – the notion of self (the inside and outside are one single space) – politics (cfc –recycling- environment-public property). The diagnose of he creative death – temperature based