Will Holder: For the blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. by Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

For the blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t there.

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

I B E G I N in Ancient Greece,

with Socrates announcing

Suppose that someone asked you to keep a record of your thoughts, exactly, and in terms of the symbols given, when you are making an effort to multiply XVI times LXIV. Also suppose that, refusing to give up, you finally arrive at the right answer, which happens to be MXXIV. I’m sure that it would’ve been easier for you to solve this problem, if you would have found that 16 times 64 equals 1024.

ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα*

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

I B E G I N in Ancient Greece,

with Socrates announcing

ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα*

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

* We find that confusion has always been at the heart of wisdom.

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

* We find that confusion has always been at the heart of wisdom.

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

Centuries later comes a statement many have attributed to Charles Darwin:

“a mathematician is like

a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.” 7

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

Centuries later comes a statement many have attributed to Charles Darwin:

“a mathematician is like

a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.” 7

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

As a scientist committed to cataloguing, explaining, and drawing a clear picture of nature, he was mocking a mathematician’s inability to describe the physical world in anything but abstract and speculative terms. 8

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

The confusion of a blind man, however, is an experience of restless curiosity and relentless speculation.

Despite

his blindness, the darkness of the room, the cat’s blackness and its well-known elusiveness, [and the possibility that there might not even be one there], the blind man pursues his appreciation and understanding of the world.

Knowing that he knows nothing is precisely what keeps him going.

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

The confusion of a blind man, however, is an experience of restless curiosity and relentless speculation.

Despite

Knowing that he knows nothing is precisely what keeps him going.

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

As a result, Diderot didn’t seek to abolish it, but imagined that

II EVEN DENIS DIDEROT,

(the inventor of the Encyclopedia), did not consider confusion to be the enemy of knowledge. He saw, beyond good or bad, confusion as the condition that defines all of us.

confusion could lead us to a new realism!

and identified positive and productive forms of confusion:

xviii

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

As a result, Diderot didn’t seek to abolish it, but imagined that

II EVEN DENIS DIDEROT,

(the inventor of the Encyclopedia), did not consider confusion to be the enemy of knowledge. He saw, beyond good or bad, confusion as the condition that defines all of us.

confusion could lead us to a new realism!

and identified positive and productive forms of confusion:

xviii

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

Letter on the Blind

In his (1749), Diderot embraced the confusion of the blind man,

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

for if understanding the world required “breaking down (‘démêler’ and ‘décomposer’ […]) any subject

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

Letter on the Blind

In his (1749), Diderot embraced the confusion of the blind man,

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

for if understanding the world required “breaking down (‘démêler’ and ‘décomposer’ […]) any subject

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

to its original, elemental components and then putting them back together again

in an orderly fashion (‘composer’) without skipping any steps,” then the blind man—

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

to its original, elemental components and then putting them back together again

in an orderly fashion (‘composer’) without skipping any steps,” then the blind man—

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

In 1817, the Romantic poet John Keats spoke of

NEGATIVE CAPABILITY , the ability to tolerate—and even enjoy—the experience of confusion or doubt.

All of a sudden it struck me what quality went to form a man of acheivement: I mean negative capability, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. The sense of beauty obliterates all consideration. with his superior powers of abstraction and speculation— can do it best. 24

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

In 1817, the Romantic poet John Keats spoke of

NEGATIVE CAPABILITY , the ability to tolerate—and even enjoy—the experience of confusion or doubt.

IN A DARK ROOM…

A century later, in the 1950s, French philosopher Georges Bataille would go further still and insist that the experience of not-knowing is one that causes not only laughter, but an exhilaration similar to a religious experience. He would call this beautiful thing nonknowledge, using a term that places not-knowing inside the fabric of knowledge, and not outside of or in contradiction to it. Nonknowledge is “the passion for not-knowing,” which is not ignorance, but a type of knowledge, one of the ways we come to appreciate, enjoy, and know the world. If Bataille resisted the oppressiveness of moral idealism and absolute knowledge, we rise up again today against the omnipresence of information and stand in defense of the blind man, his speculative and inquisitive spirit, his endless curiosity, and his nonknowledge of the world.

The best explanations might be the ones that keep us somewhat in the dark.

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

III I N 2 0 0 2 , a gallery of over 20,000 square feet*, artist

David Hammons simply shut off all the lights and handed visitors small keychain flashlights. Although it would probably take hours or days to be absolutely sure of it, equipped only with their tiny blue light, most viewers soon realized there was nothing at all in the space. Some joked it was a visual art exhibition that blind people could relate to. Others feared they would get lost in the vast darkness and never find their way out. But as Walter Benjamin taught us and Hammons reminds us, the only way to fully present is to be lost.

*Bill Gates’s new mansion comprises 20,000 square feet of living space, with another 20,000 for guest house, sports courts, gardens and garage. The Natomo family of Kouakourou, Mali: 11 people (father, two wives, eight children), 990 square feet. The wives live in separate houses, but do most cooking and childcare together.

IN A DARK ROOM…

The best explanations might be the ones that keep us somewhat in the dark.

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

III I N 2 0 0 2 , a gallery of over 20,000 square feet*, artist

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IV IN A MUSEUM OF HIS OWN INVENTION,

Musée d’ ArtModerne,Departement des Aigles

, the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers sought an explanation of a painting by interviewing his cat.

The answers he receives leave him somewhat in the dark:

e u q e , c u t a e Es l b a t n o b n u c’est …? est-ce qu’ils celui-làond à ce que vounscorresp z…de cette trate attendeion toute récen rt formatdu Conceptual Asion qui va te nouvelle ver raà cet certaine figu e? d’une ourrait-on dir tion, p – Is this one a good painting…does it correspond with what you expected… this recent transformation from Conceptual Art to this, one could say, new version of a certain kind of figuration?

Meaow

– Me-ow

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IV IN A MUSEUM OF HIS OWN INVENTION,

Musée d’ ArtModerne,Departement des Aigles

, the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers sought an explanation of a painting by interviewing his cat.

The answers he receives leave him somewhat in the dark:

Meaow

– Me-ow

IN A DARK ROOM…

We could only be in Broodthaers’ own conceptual museum, a place he created to evoke, dissect, and ultimately puncture the categories of knowledge.

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

Inside it, asking a cat for its opinion on the merits of a painting is an entirely plausible exercise.

. w w o o o o a a . a a h a h e h e h e Me mmmmm . MmmeeAAAAAow M ? z e y o r c s Vou – You really think so?

IN A DARK ROOM…

We could only be in Broodthaers’ own conceptual museum, a place he created to evoke, dissect, and ultimately puncture the categories of knowledge.

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

Inside it, asking a cat for its opinion on the merits of a painting is an entirely plausible exercise.

. w w o o o o a a . a a h a h e h e h e Me mmmmm . MmmeeAAAAAow M ? z e y o r c s Vou – You really think so?

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

V I N 1 8 8 2 , well before Malevich, the poet Paul Bilhaud

made the first monochrome in the history of art, a small black painting entitled “Negroes Fighting in a Cave by Night.” Appropriating the concept, the humorist Alphonse Allais made a series of illustrations for the Salon des Incohérents in 1883 and 1884, including a blank white piece entitled “First Communion of Anaemic Young Girls in the Snow,” and a red piece entitled “Apoplectic Cardinals Harvesting Tomatoes on the Shore of the Red Sea.”

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

V I N 1 8 8 2 , well before Malevich, the poet Paul Bilhaud

IN A DARK ROOM…

Happy coincidence: Bilaud and Allais’ favorite haunt was Le Chat Noir, epicenter of Parisian bohemian life. Other patrons included artists, writers, and musicians such as Paul Verlaine, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Paul Signac, and August Strindberg.

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

Sad coincidence: the biography by Alphonse Allais, written by François Caradec, was the last book Marcel Duchamp read before he died.

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

Sad coincidence: the biography by Alphonse Allais, written by François Caradec, was the last book Marcel Duchamp read before he died.

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

VI Michel Foucault tells us that curiosity “evokes ‘concern;’ it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; a readiness to find strange and singular what surrounds us;

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

VI Michel Foucault tells us that curiosity “evokes ‘concern;’ it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; a readiness to find strange and singular what surrounds us;

IN A DARK ROOMâ&#x20AC;Ś

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT â&#x20AC;Ś

a certain relentlessness to break up our familiarities and to regard otherwise the same things; a fervor to grasp what is happening and what passes; a casualness in regard to the traditional hierarchies of the important and the essential.â&#x20AC;?

IN A DARK ROOMâ&#x20AC;Ś

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT â&#x20AC;Ś

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

...Which reminds me of a story:

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

Urs Fischer had been invited by a Swiss art museum to suggest a work of his that it could purchase for its permanent collection. The invitation was not to immediately include a work of Fischer’s in an exhibition, but to buy it and commit to preserving it as part of the museum’s collection and incorporate it into the heritage of Swiss culture. 41

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

...Which reminds me of a story:

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

The artist considered the request and then told the museum that he would like to offer a new piece for them to acquire, rather than to recommend an existing work. He told them he had conceived a new piece for the occasion: a cat.

An unspoken reason might be that collections are better off when they sit still, without needing to be chased after in the dark. Ironically, however, a museum is an institution intimately and historically tied to the impulse to—and obsession with—chasing things that are hard to find. The Museum’s Renaissance ancestor, the Wunderkammer, or curiosity cabinet, was born out of the insatiable desire to own exotic, alien, rare, and almost-impossible-to-find objects. 16th and 17th century collectors would travel extensively to far-off lands, in search of the extraordinary and the miraculous. They would return with prized curiosities – animals, plants, tools, but also paintings and artifacts – and display them in dedicated rooms, filling every spare inch. Guests would visit and wonder in amazement: they had no idea what they were looking at. Crucially, the key to the cabinet’s popularity lies in the fact that its visitors could inhabit a place they didn’t understand. People simply enjoyed the experience of not knowing and not understanding.

* In order to permanently own a work by Urs Fischer, the museum would need to commit to caring for, feeding, protecting, and maintaining a living cat. Security guards might have to race down museum hallways, motion-sensors might trigger night alarms, and a litter-box might tip over and spill on a Giacometti drawing. With this simple gesture, the artist exposes and short-circuits not only the realities inherent in the institutionalization of art, but the nature of art itself. Perhaps he also did it because he was curious to see how the museum would handle it. After much internal deliberation, the museum didn’t go for it, citing technical and administrative reasons.

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

VII C H A R L I E C H A P L I N comes to mind. He made

cluelessness, confusion, and walking in circles seem endlessly fun. He was also fiercely opposed to the “talkies” and chose to keep making silent movies long after the industry had adopted sound. For Chaplin, the silence allowed more space for speculation, and he was convinced that people flocked to see a silent film of his because it gave them that exhilarating experience of nonknowledge and invited them to imagine what the characters might be saying. If there were a hundred people in the movie theater, there would be a hundred different movies. There is an awesome power, beauty, and generosity to that kind of confusion. In the face of tragedy, Chaplin managed to stay funny. Not only did he live through the First World War, the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, the Second World War, and McCarthyism, he also made millions of people laugh about it. Humor can be the Great Flattener of opposites, confusing good and evil to delightful effect. In Modern Times (1936), the alienating conditions of factory work are opportunities for clumsy but thrilling rides through mazes of machinery. In The Great Dictator (1940), we manage to laugh at Hitler. Humor allows for an exaltation or a sublimation of the real. 46

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

VII C H A R L I E C H A P L I N comes to mind. He made

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

As different as they may seem, humor and the sublime both:

• derail the smooth functioning of reason;

D• construct a rupture between expectation and comprehension;

F • ignite an “agitation” of the mind by compelling it to reconcile incongruities;

G • involve an experience of coming-to-terms with something unrecognizable and indeterminate.

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

As different as they may seem, humor and the sublime both:

• derail the smooth functioning of reason;

D• construct a rupture between expectation and comprehension;

F • ignite an “agitation” of the mind by compelling it to reconcile incongruities;

G • involve an experience of coming-to-terms with something unrecognizable and indeterminate.

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

While thinkers from Edmund Burke, to Immanuel Kant to Jean-François Lyotard

philosopher Simon Critchley reminds us that

Sublime! less

i m al , n i m e n or is a m f sublimatio r o m u h form o heroic

Sublime! Sublime! Laught is the fouer rth dimension

The way to cope with a lapse of cognition all celebrate the aporia of the sublime,

and the glitch of non-understanding, it turns out, is not only by expressing awe and wonder, but also by laughing. Georges Bataille and Robert Smithson would surely agree. 51

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

While thinkers from Edmund Burke, to Immanuel Kant to Jean-François Lyotard

philosopher Simon Critchley reminds us that

Sublime! less

i m al , n i m e n or is a m f sublimatio r o m u h form o heroic

Sublime! Sublime! Laught is the fouer rth dimension

The way to cope with a lapse of cognition all celebrate the aporia of the sublime,

and the glitch of non-understanding, it turns out, is not only by expressing awe and wonder, but also by laughing. Georges Bataille and Robert Smithson would surely agree. 51

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

Humor, though, can’t change the world or the way we see it. Despite its reliance on disruption, humor is permitted, as Umberto Eco has noted, because at no stage does it truly threaten any rules. Obviously “absurd,” the of the mind that it creates is gone after a few seconds, as soon the laughter dies down.

That initial , however, is something artists often use to jump-start a more serious proposition. Art can change the world and become a significant threat to the rules, and when made part of the spirit of a work of art, humor can ignite an initial thought-rupture—a first break or incongruity with the real and the sensible—that helps the aesthetic and political qualities of the work take flight, inspiring us to reflect seriously on new ideas.

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

VIII F O R T H E I R V I D E O The Right Way (1986),

Peter Fischli and David Weiss dress up in rat and bear costumes, and walk through the infinitely beautiful Swiss countryside, through streams and glaciers, stopping to consider existential questions along the way. With humor and anguish, Fischli & Weiss’s rat and bear insert themselves into the history of literature and its tradition of tragic-comic pairs struggling to understand the world—Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet, Shakespeare and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon.

RAT: Can you understand me? Do this [grunts] if you can understand me. [Söili grunts twice]

RAT: I’m so pleased we’ve found a little place where we feel at home, where time goes by really slowly. [Söili grunts twice]

RAT: No, twice means ‘no’. once means ‘yes’. [Söili grunts once]

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

VIII F O R T H E I R V I D E O The Right Way (1986),

RAT: Can you understand me? Do this [grunts] if you can understand me. [Söili grunts twice]

RAT: I’m so pleased we’ve found a little place where we feel at home, where time goes by really slowly. [Söili grunts twice]

RAT: No, twice means ‘no’. once means ‘yes’. [Söili grunts once]

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

RAT: See, it’s not hard. [Söili grunts twice]

RAT: [notices a tortoise] He’s turned over on his back. Looks cross. BEAR: Awful – at everyone’s mercy like that.

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

RAT: Shall we turn you over? BEAR: He can’t speak. [turns tortoise over]

RAT: How kind you are. I’d have done that too. BEAR: Small effort, big payoff!

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

RAT: See, it’s not hard. [Söili grunts twice]

RAT: [notices a tortoise] He’s turned over on his back. Looks cross. BEAR: Awful – at everyone’s mercy like that.

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

RAT: Shall we turn you over? BEAR: He can’t speak. [turns tortoise over]

RAT: How kind you are. I’d have done that too. BEAR: Small effort, big payoff!

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

RAT: ‘Bye mate. Look how pleased he is. He can hardly believe it. BEAR: Good job we’re here.

RAT: Let’s do it again sometime. BEAR: Makes you feel good.

Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet were the most learned of men: a pair of copy clerks who flee to the rural countryside so that they could read as many books as possible and thereby learn the world’s knowledge. After hundreds of volumes of scientific research, historical scholarship, and even technical manuals, they experience only catastrophe after catastrophe, and realize that the endless pursuit of knowledge can only be a journey of missteps and contradictions. In what he called his “encyclopedia of human stupidity,” Flaubert was revolting against the laziness of accepting “received ideas” without question, and he paraded his protagonists as archetypes of a world where misguided “sophistication” obstructs the freedom of independent thought. With its assault on, and ridicule of the Enlightenment’s encyclopedic ambitions, scientific discoveries, and age of Reason, Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet (1880) signaled the beginning of modernity. The fact that the modern age of skepticism, irreverence, revolution, and progress began with two idiots is more than a funny detail: to understand the world, there is a lot to unlearn. 59

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

RAT: ‘Bye mate. Look how pleased he is. He can hardly believe it. BEAR: Good job we’re here.

RAT: Let’s do it again sometime. BEAR: Makes you feel good.

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT â&#x20AC;Ś

â&#x20AC;Ś T H AT I S N â&#x20AC;&#x2122; T T H E R E .

X O N C E there was a journeyman, who, instead of wandering the world to gather new information and cure the ignorance of mankind, is plagued with knowing too much. To help himself categorize and organize the vast knowledge he has of the world, he makes his head bigger by wearing a very tall hat.

Inside the hat are hundreds of small drawers, each containing a small relic of a recollection. Weighed down by too many memories, he walks from village to village with a walking stick, a carpet, and a megaphone, trying to share as many stories he possibly can, so as to relieve the confusion in his head/hat.

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT â&#x20AC;Ś

â&#x20AC;Ś T H AT I S N â&#x20AC;&#x2122; T T H E R E .

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

Assembling the inhabitants of each town, he unrolls his carpet and tries to express and unravel the millions of memories that clog his mind, hoping that passing them on to others will help him leave them behind, forget them, unlearn them.

IN A DARK ROOM…

XI F A C E D W I T H the unruly contradictions in nature

and the unpredictability of human fancy and intuition, man has long sought the secret harmony of a theory of everything. Somehow, the thinking goes, everything is connected, and there must be a single characteristic that underlies all phenomena. Einstein tried, and failed, to reconcile the differences between the behaviors of things very large and those very small, but one day, perhaps, we will have an eloquent equation that explains everything in a few strokes on a chalkboard. In the meantime, there are Matt Mullican’s five worlds, spanning the material to the symbolic. Albeit rooted in idiosyncrasy, obsession, and personal experience, his neat dissection of reality includes what he calls the subjective, the language, the world-framed, the world-unframed, and the elemental worlds. Each one has its color, its flag, and its place on a diagram. In all, they form Mullican’s personal cosmology, his response to the demand for a universal language: “the impulse to make a new language is a strong one. Kids do this all the time.”

or 62

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

XI F A C E D W I T H the unruly contradictions in nature

or 62

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

XII We all share a basic human urge: to select, collect, categorize, organize, and make the world more manageable. Over the course of history, there have been different methods of doing so, in the context of different sociopolitical and historical realities, ranging from Diderot’s encyclopedia, to Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, to a child’s seashell and marble collections. A trait shared by all of them, however, is that they’re incomplete. No matter how many libraries they fill, the vast majority of thought and phenomena known (and unknown) to man will be missing—an idea quite poetically addressed by Borges’ Library of Babel (1941). No matter how many million pages are created on Wikipedia, they contain only a fraction of what exists. Take, say, a strawberry. Beyond general characteristics such as size, smell, taste, biological make-up, evolutionary genealogy, agricultural history, nutritional data, and so on, there is also the blunt reality that there are no two identical strawberries. As John Cage warned us, “it’s useless to pretend to know mushrooms.” Bumping up against its own inherent incompleteness is part of what knowledge is about. Hans-Peter Feldmann, as much an obsessive collector as he is an artist, wants to come to terms with our relationship to things and to pictures of things, in an age dominated by images, by favoring the trivial, the common, the stupid, the illegiti64

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

mate, the human.

“Photography, whatever its source, is about never getting the whole picture,” a critic astutely noted. Taking and collecting thousands of pictures of thousands of things, Feldmann creates meaning by widening—not narrowing—the gap between knowledge and its image. It seems appropriate, therefore, that Feldmann’s response to an interview request from Avalanche in the 1970s, consisted of photographs.

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

… T H AT I S N ’ T T H E R E .

mate, the human.

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

XIII With that in mind, let’s recognize the importance of not understanding—or at least of not forming a consensus around understanding—a work of art. Not-knowing is not only part of knowledge, but also part of learning, and being confused encourages speculative thinking. A work of art, thankfully, opens up that world of nonknowledge and helps to make sure we don’t lose sight of it, keeping us curious.

IN A DARK ROOM…

ballooning out, slipping out of their hands, as though they had made a solid into a liquid. Fully understanding what they made would like cutting off its wings. “Maybe we could consider the practice of art as being an other kind of knowing, a kind of knowing that operates against itself – an always slippery yet confrontational process of daring to touch what can never be entirely know. […] I tend to think that an artist does not know, at least not apriori nor in an absolute sense. An artist unstitches knowledges or unearths others, uncanny or para-knowledges. […] The artist has an unknowability: the ability to unknow.”

Bruce Nauman once noted that artists don’t solve problems, they invent new ones. Joseph Beuys stated, quite plainly, that art isn’t here to explain things. Robert Rauschenberg told us he couldn’t live without confusion. Bruno Munari, even more to the point:

Artists—like all of us—have the urge to understand the world, but “in order to think new thoughts or to say new things, we have to break up all our ready-made ideas and shuffle the pieces.” An artwork can help us unlearn by taking something we’ve learned and understood about the world and puncture it, compromise it, complicate it, making a solution into a problem again. Artists often talk about when they stop knowing what the work is about, or when their own explanation doesn’t exhaust the work, and they feel it going elsewhere, 66

FOR THE BLIND MAN…

IN A DARK ROOM…

L O O K I N G F O R T H E B L A C K C AT …

XIV Once again: “in order to think new thoughts or to say new things, we have to break up all our ready-made ideas and shuffle the pieces.” As makers and thinkers of new things, many artists today consider part of their responsibility to be the disorganization of knowledge and information. In the traditional diagram of information theory, for example, a transmitter sends a signal—information—over a channel to a receiver. On its way, however, it encounters “noise,” or “entropy,” which is considered a natural inevitability. Communication science is essentially an exercise in noise-management, and engineers hope to design transmission channels that prevent noise from obstructing the messages.

In the field of information disorganization, however, noise is a friend, not a foe. Art that inserts noise into a system of knowledge will, hopefully, succeed in breaking up its ready-made ideas and in reshuffling its pieces. What emerges is a noisy kind of knowledge, one that embraces the playful unruliness of the world. Research, in art, is a noisy research, where explanations are necessarily flimsy, provisional, and always subject to change. Dave Hullfish Bailey’s sprawling installations are a 68

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form of noisy research. Often set up like a laboratory, they contain in their physical form the reality of being flimsy, provisional, and subject to change: ladders balance on buckets; lights hang from strings; water flows through aluminum trays; metal clamps kind of hold things together. His research topics mirror this reality as well, and Bailey examines the makeshift solutions, provisional structures, self-organization, itinerant living, and do-it-yourself manuals of survivalist tactics. Life off the grid, he implies, involves a higher tolerance for noise, and therefore creates an inspiring context for making art.

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As information theory shows, noise enters a system while a signal is in transit. In the context of art, an object might be exposed to a similar vulnerability when it transforms from one category to another. During a performance, for instance, a sculpture might turn into a word. A category’s most fragile moment—when it’s most susceptible to being broken apart—is when it’s caught in mid-motion between one identity and another. This insight has informed Falke Pisano’s questions about how language wraps itself around abstract ideas. Drawn to the alchemic state of transformation between artistic forms, she has performed, for example, Turning a Sculpture into a Conversation (2006), literally making abstract sculptures into abstract ideas. In Chillida (Forms and Feelings (2006), she follows the trail of a businessman, the photographs he takes of sculptures, a book he published of them, and the emotional responses she experiences as its reader. The act of interpretation—where one subjectivity interferes with another— takes on a visual form, and, like a radio dial caught between two stations, things gets noisy.

And again: “In order to think new thoughts or to say new things, we have to break up all our ready-made ideas and shuffle the pieces.” To break and re-shuffle ideas is an intensely political project. Change, as Barack Obama promised, is necessary, but never easy. Accompanying every revolution and emancipatory movement is a process of exposing and breaking the habits of learning, and is a challenge to its power structures, conditions, and infrastructures. At least in part, a political protest declares the urgency of unlearning.

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Art can become relevant to this political process without necessarily involving any explicit political representation. In his foreword to the well-titled exhibition Things We Don’t Understand, curated by Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack, Generali Foundation President Diedrich Kramer notes that

A work of art establishes a state of potentiality, challenging us to change or readjust the way we understand the world. Faced with an object or image we don’t understand, we seek an explanation within our existing epistemological map. When none emerges and our confusions aren’t reconciled, we can then turn to 72

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the map itself—our own consciousness—and begin to examine our own assumptions, question what we have learned about the world, and consider unlearning part of it and reshuffling some of its pieces.

Slightly redrawn, our map might then provide a place for the art object and allow us to appreciate and understand it better. As an agent that can demand and effect this shift in perception, awareness, and consciousness, art can be a powerful political force.

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XVII B E Y O N D P O L I T I C S , the concept of learning,

unlearning, and re-learning has often been tied to the process of liberation and emancipation. While John Dewey, in the 1890s and the early 20th century, insisted on an anti-authoritarian and democratic education based on active student involvement and experiences, his call for pedagogical reform remained outside the context of radical politics.

The final responsibility, however, lies with the viewer, as only he or she can be the one who uses this newfound awareness to enact political change and remake the world. In the headlining quotation of the brochure that accompanied Buergel and Noack’s much larger “version” of the aforementioned Things We Don’t Understand, namely, 2007’s Documenta 12, Buergel writes:

However, his work influenced the Brazilian Paulo Friere, whose ideas were conceived in the wake of a military coup that overthrew the socialist government in Brazil in 1964. During his exile in Chile, and in the face of a military dictatorship in his home country, Friere wrote 75

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XVII B E Y O N D P O L I T I C S , the concept of learning,

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Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), an influential treatise on self-empowerment through education, with political freedom at stake. Building on Dewey’s case for antiauthoritarian teaching and for a student’s active involvement in his or her own education, Friere believed it was the experience of political unrest that made people want to learn, as they find themselves bound by the urgency of playing an active role in (re)making their world.

our “tools for conviviality.” Schools, in his view, represent an institutionalized monopoly, thereby sustaining the institutionalization of society in general, and need to be eliminated in favor of learning networks and informal one-on-one arrangements. As the title of his 1970 book indicates, he called for “deschooling society.”

Fighting an even larger battle, Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich sought to expose the dangers of modern industrialization and its effects on education, medicine, energy, transportation, and economic development. Unlike Friere, Illich believed in capitalism—albeit of a smaller scale than the one we know today—and rather than pronouncing its failure, he warned of its perversions. Unchecked industrial monopolies, he wrote, destroy 76

This line of thought culminated, in 1987, with Jacques Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. In it, he argues how the traditional teacher-student relationship does nothing but reinforce inequality, “stultifying” the learner: a non-emancipated student “is the one who ignores that he does not know what he does not know and ignores how to know it. The master is not only he who exactly knows what remains unknown to the ignorance, [but] he also knows how to make it knowable, at what time and what place, 77

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according to what protocol.” A student is held captive by his or her reliance on explanations, because “the child who is explained to will devote his intelligence to the work of grieving: that is to say, to understanding that he doesn’t understand unless he is explained to.” Rancière insists on the equality of all intelligences and

In their essay for Things We Don’t Understand, Buergel and Noack claim that an

considers the central goal of education to be the revelation of an intelligence to itself—and not the gift of a preordained “knowledge.” Rancière discusses the emancipatory potential in teachers remaining ignorant of what they teach, and act instead as enforcers and verifiers of the student’s own will-to-learn. It is the experience of learning— the doing—that matters, not the knowing of teaching. Moreover, “the student of the ignorant master learns what his master does not know, since […] he does not learn his master’s knowledge.” John Dewey would be proud. 78

Freedom and equality, in other words, occur when a learner is made aware of his or her own capacity to know. So please: be an active learner, be wary of the oppressive forces of institutionalized society, and stay away from the knowledge of teachers. To stay free, make sure you keep learning, never stop at what you’ve understood, and stay curious about the things you don’t understand. 79

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In their essay for Things We Don’t Understand, Buergel and Noack claim that an

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By insisting on keeping all hundred of them, the Reggio Emilia method allows the child to insert a beautifully impossible cacophony into the fabric of knowledge. Working concurrently in Italy and also working with

cator Loris Malaguzzi. Soon after the Second World War— as a primary school teacher near the Italian city of Reggio Emilia—he started a child-care program that became a pedagogical method used in kindergartens around the world. What is now known as “Reggio Emilia” sees children as little researchers who strive to understand the world, making their own theories to explain it, and it is the teacher’s responsibility to guide a natural curiosity rather than replace it with a knowledge of his/her own.

children, Bruno Munari was an artist, graphic designer, industrial designer, poet, and illustrator, among other things. Incorporating basic shapes…

basic materials… If a child has a hundred theories in a hundred languages, Malaguzzi lamented how the theft of ninety-nine of them and left the child with only received ideas. 80

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children, Bruno Munari was an artist, graphic designer, industrial designer, poet, and illustrator, among other things. Incorporating basic shapes…

basic materials… If a child has a hundred theories in a hundred languages, Malaguzzi lamented how the theft of ninety-nine of them and left the child with only received ideas. 80

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and everyday objects…

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IXX W E T E N D N O T T O T H I N K T W I C E about the

overly familiar, like a chair. An idea, object, or image, when thoroughly commonplace, tends to slip by unexamined and ignored. But like a sleeper cell, it tends to keep one side in the shadows. We might be well-served by “look[ing] around corners in search of the unknown parts of the known.” …Munari stayed curious about the most common things in life. For example, in Searching for Comfort in an Uncomfortable Armchair (1977), a series of twelve grainy black and white photographs, he shows us a man trying twelve different ways to sit in an armchair and read his newspaper.

So what is a chair? My favorite answer is not Joseph Kosuth’s, but goes like this: A philosophy professor puts his chair on his desk and instructs the class to write a paper that uses every applicable thing they’ve learned to prove that this chair does not exist. All of the students immediately start writing their essays, except for one. He turns in his paper to the professor after only a few seconds. His answer: "What chair?"

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and everyday objects…

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IXX W E T E N D N O T T O T H I N K T W I C E about the

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In the old days, we used to say we understood what a chair is.

Soon enough, phenomenology made it

aPerceptual Uncertainty 84

and semiotics made it

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In the old days, we used to say we understood what a chair is.

Soon enough, phenomenology made it

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and semiotics made it

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Quantum physics then linked the chair to the space around it, as made up of a different configuration of identical wave-like particles.

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And Schrödinger’s cat made it impossible to even look at the chair, since our very presence effects the configuration of its particles.

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Quantum physics then linked the chair to the space around it, as made up of a different configuration of identical wave-like particles.

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And Schrödinger’s cat made it impossible to even look at the chair, since our very presence effects the configuration of its particles.

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XX I N T E R P R E T A T I O N can be a dangerous thing.

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Clearly stating her position against it in a short but seminal 1964 essay, Susan Sontag reminds us that interpretation makes art more manageable, more comfortable, and therefore less potent. She writes

“If interpretation is the modern way of understanding something,[...] then art must be

[...]motivated by a flight from interpretation.” *

Sontag’s good friend Donald Barthelme, a writer and frequent contributor to The New Yorker, agrees: “Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing,” and

* my italics

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XX I N T E R P R E T A T I O N can be a dangerous thing.

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“If interpretation is the modern way of understanding something,[...] then art must be

[...]motivated by a flight from interpretation.” *

Sontag’s good friend Donald Barthelme, a writer and frequent contributor to The New Yorker, agrees: “Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing,” and

* my italics