3 pieces written for the opening of Ingrid Kerma’s Blushing Brides
Broadbent Gallery
November 2005
Du hast wunderschönen Augen.
You have lovely eyes.
Ich mag deinen Humor.
I like your sense of humour.
Kommst du mit zu mir?
Do you want to come back to my place?
Nein, das geht mir zu schnell.
No, that's too fast for me.
1. Debord says: Une science des situations est à faire, qui empruntera des éléments à la psychologie, aux statistiques, à l'urbanisme et à la morale. Ces éléments devront concourir à un but absolument nouveau : une création consciente des situations.
2. Žižek says: Chion hypothesizes that the fundamental matrix, the paradigmatic case, of this discrepancy between action and reaction is the sexual (non-)relationship between man and woman. In sexual activity, men ‘do certain things to women’, and the question is: is woman's enjoyment reducible to an effect, is it a simple consequence of what a man does to her? From the good old times of Marxist hegemony, one perhaps remembers the vulgar-materialist ‘reductionist’ efforts to locate the genesis of the notion of causality in human practice, in man's active relating to his environment: we arrive at the notion of causality by generalizing from the experience of witnessing how, every time we make a certain gesture, the same effect occurs in reality.... Chion proposes an even more radical 'reductionism': the elementary matrix of the relationship between cause and effect is offered by the sexual relationship. In the last analysis, the irreducible gap that separates an effect from its cause amounts to the fact that ‘not all of the feminine enjoyment is an effect of the masculine cause’. This ‘not-all’ has to be conceived precisely in the sense of the Lacanian logic of ‘not-all [pas-tout]’: it does not in any way entail that a part of a woman's enjoyment is not the effect of what a man does to her.
3. Wittgenstein says: “Wenn man aber sagt, wie soll ich wissen, was er meint, ich sehe ja nur seine Zeichen”, so sage ich, “Wie soll er wissen, was er meint, er hat auch nur seine Zeichen.”
4.• Limit, going for the. The question of the minimum limits of literary form was of particular interest to François Le Lionnais. He devoted two articles to its exploration. This first is from CP1:
1. A poem comprising a single word:
2. A poem comprising a single letter:FENNEL
3. A poem based on punctuation:T.
Concerning (2), Le Lionnais wrote: “I fear that the reduction of a poem to a single letter may lie on the far side of the acceptable limit. But there's nothing wrong with having fun, is there?”:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
6; 7; 8; 9; 10.
12?
11!
5. That sounds interesting.
6. It's in the Oulipo Compendium. You can borrow it, if you like.
1. In Deianira a dinner is defined as an assemblage of 12 persons.
1.1 The person convening the dinner must provide a plate for each person from
outside the household.
1.2 In a city of 12 individuals, each living alone, each person must own 12
plates, for a society total of 144.
1.3 In a city of 6 couples each couple must own 12: 2 plates for personal use
and 10 for hospitality, for a society total of 72.
1.4 If the number of persons in the city were to rise to 13, the city would
require 169 plates if each person lived alone and all members of the city must
be invited to every dinner.
1.5 If the definition of the dinner party is immutable 1 person must be excluded
from each party. The city then requires 156 plates of which 143 are dedicated
to hospitality.
1.6 Surplus capacity is inseparable from the institution of the dinner party.
1.7 If 2 persons form a household, a wedding is held. The difference between
the requirements of the couple and those of the institution of the dinner party
is supplied by persons attending the institution for furnishing the institution
of the dinner party.
2. In Ocandryx a friendship is defined as a circulation of books.
2.1 Words are spoken within the home, of course, to members of one's immediate
family.
2.2 An exchange of books outside the household may be followed by:
2.2.1 Silent return of the books by both parties;
2.2.2 A written request to keep the book.
2.2.2.1 If both parties issue such a request, a brief verbal exchange may follow.
More extended verbal exchanges follow exchange and retention of a larger number
of books.
2.2.2.2 If A issues a request to keep the book of B, but B returns A's book,
no words are spoken, but A has the right to send B a second book whose selection,
of course, is made in light of the book of B which has been retained.
3. In Szrgää a dinner is defined as an assemblage of 12 persons and
a friendship is defined as a circulation of books.
3.1 Each plate bears the name of a philosopher.
3.1.1 Two jars stand at the head of the table. One contains porcelain discs,
each bearing the name of a philosopher. The other contains glass discs, each
bearing the name of a diner.
3.1.2 The head of the household draws a disc from each jar and places the pair
of discs upon the table, repeating the procedure until the jars are empty.
3.1.3 The plates are set out on the table, matching each to the name of the
philosopher on the disc.
3.1.3.1 The drawing of discs and placement of settings is performed at the beginning
of the week.
3.1.3.1.1 Guests are not told which philosopher they have drawn: it would be
a breach of courtesy to imply that a guest was uneducated, and the educated,
of course, are assumed to have familiarity with the arguments of all philosophers.
3.1.3.1.2 It is recognised, however, that this assumption dates from a time
when there were only 4 philosophical schools: the Academics, the Stoics, the
Epicureans and the Cynics.
3.1.3.1.3 It is recognised, moreover, that the relations between any philosophical
position and any 2 other philosophical positions are complex. To ignore the
fact is to trivialise philosophy in the name of social nicety.
3.1.3.1.3.1 The number of possible pairs of philosophers which may be drawn
from a pool of 11 is 55.
3.1.3.1.4 It is therefore a matter of philosophical decorum to permit each guest
to discover not only the allotted philosopher but the two adjacent philosophers.
3.1.3.1.5 Each guest devotes the following week to the study of the allotted
philosopher in order to debate the adjacent philosophical positions in accordance
with the allotted philosophical position.
3.1.4 Statistics are compiled on the correlation between philosophers and unexpected
illness. A last-minute Hegelian is always in demand.
3.2 The distinction of a family is marked by the antiquity of its philosophers.
3.2.1 A set of plates that has been passed down for 5 centuries produces dinner
conversation of antique flavour. Any aspirant to social distinction, of course,
acquires a set of antique philosophical plates.
3.2.2 It is not uncommon, though contrary to the philosophical aleatorianism
of the city, to have 3 or 4 sets of plates. The younger generation has no patience
with Plato and Aristotle, but it is occasionally neceessary to invite one's
parents to dine.
3.3 The number of permutations of n distinct objects is n!, where
n! = n x ( n-1) x (n-2) x .... x 2 x 1
The number of permutations
increases very rapidly as the number of objects being arranged gets larger.
4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
but
8! = 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 40 320
and
12! = 12 x 11 x 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 479 001 600