Michel de Broin
24 Mar - 09 Apr 2006
Michel de Broin
Reverse Entropy
Studio 2
24.03 – 09.04.2006,
If you devoted yourself to art because science was never one of your strong points, you are now being given a second chance to develop a deeper, heartfelt relationship to physics. Michel de Broin’s exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien is an entertaining, educational presentation about the second main thesis of thermodynamics and how the insights of physics can offer us more freedom.
While even as late as 1865 Rudolf Clausius remarked pessimistically that no cyclic process was possible without frictional loss - meeting with the applause of Max Planck, for example -, de Broin optimistically strives for a reversal of entropy. He aims to reverse precisely that state with which physicists describe a system’s sinking energy level and thus to transform a useless potential into a positive quality.
De Broin, an expert in metaphors of resistance, not only uses this concept of 'reverse entropy' to oppose the melancholy of modern physics; above all, he wishes to put an end to the dictatorial cycle of profiteering and the exploitation that results from it. "Like the sun, which radiates and distributes its energy without demanding anything in return, this energy released from work is a kind of letting-go“, the artist explains, "something like free time or a holiday, a liberation that cannot be revoked."
Among other things, De Broin illustrates this utopian claim at the Künstlerhaus with the help of a bicycle with an added exhaust pipe; steam is released from this when pedalling. Viewing the two installations and a series of drawings, even those who are not quantum mechanics will grasp how a holiday away from frictional loss is conceivable – or that ultimately our socio-economy does not have to be a perpetuum mobile.
Reverse Entropy
Studio 2
24.03 – 09.04.2006,
If you devoted yourself to art because science was never one of your strong points, you are now being given a second chance to develop a deeper, heartfelt relationship to physics. Michel de Broin’s exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien is an entertaining, educational presentation about the second main thesis of thermodynamics and how the insights of physics can offer us more freedom.
While even as late as 1865 Rudolf Clausius remarked pessimistically that no cyclic process was possible without frictional loss - meeting with the applause of Max Planck, for example -, de Broin optimistically strives for a reversal of entropy. He aims to reverse precisely that state with which physicists describe a system’s sinking energy level and thus to transform a useless potential into a positive quality.
De Broin, an expert in metaphors of resistance, not only uses this concept of 'reverse entropy' to oppose the melancholy of modern physics; above all, he wishes to put an end to the dictatorial cycle of profiteering and the exploitation that results from it. "Like the sun, which radiates and distributes its energy without demanding anything in return, this energy released from work is a kind of letting-go“, the artist explains, "something like free time or a holiday, a liberation that cannot be revoked."
Among other things, De Broin illustrates this utopian claim at the Künstlerhaus with the help of a bicycle with an added exhaust pipe; steam is released from this when pedalling. Viewing the two installations and a series of drawings, even those who are not quantum mechanics will grasp how a holiday away from frictional loss is conceivable – or that ultimately our socio-economy does not have to be a perpetuum mobile.