(EN) 3 POSSIBLE APPROACHES TO THE WORK OF JORINDE VOIGT
3 Possible Approaches to the Work of Jorinde Voigtby Adina Popescu
I
In “The Library of Babel”, Borges describes a palace, the architecture of which represents what is inconceivable and unimaginable in every possible system of order. It stands for insanity, since it consists of temporal and spatial flexions that create an inescapable infinity, an absolute interior. Borges says: “This palace is a structure of the gods. The gods that built it are dead.” And then he corrects himself: “The gods that built it were insane.” When man, caught in the labyrinth of his own interconnection, is no longer able to believe in a higher logic – in the Divine Eye and its overview –, that is insanity.
In this world made of language, Borges creates a reality, a primary existence, which has being as such. This story is not an image of the world; it is a form of reality in itself. It is about someone who sets himself the task of copying out the world in its entirety, until he finally realises that he will find the outline of his own face in it.
This doubling of the world on a second level that appears to reflect it – the absolute reality of representation - was the illusion and aim of the Baroque.
It is only by producing models of reality that we make it accessible to us at all. We cannot make any valid statements about the world, because first, we always need to make a model of the world, about which we can then arrive at a statement. Thus the search for a visualisation of what is hidden is an excess that opposes the infinite, merely creating its own conditions of reality.
II
How long is Great Britain’s coastline?
This question was the subject of an article that appeared in the magazine Science in 1967, an article that was to revolutionise mathematics. The author, Benoit Mandelbrot, was a French mathematician who worked for IBM in New York. The answer was that there is no correct answer. Mandelbrot came to this conclusion on the basis of the following argumentation: supposing we measure the coast from an aeroplane at a height of ca. 30,000 feet. From this height, it is impossible to discern a large number of smaller bays and projections. If we make the same measurement from a small plane at a height of 1,500 feet – many additional details become visible. Now let us imagine that we set out on foot to measure the coastline precisely from only 3 feet away: irregularities that are not visible from the air will now lead us to a far better result than the two first measurements. One rapidly ends up at the scale of a pebble, a grain of sand, even a molecule - and the resulting measurement grows into the infinite.
III
In physics, a continuum means that the physical quantities within extended matter display no discontinuity. However, when viewed in a higher “resolution”, a continuum may consist of individual, separate elements, ranging from molecules to atoms. The only “indestructible” continua seem to be time and space.
In Leibniz’ work, the concept of the continuum is based on the supposition that the continuum does not consist of a sequence composed of an infinite number of points - for otherwise, the same problem would arise as it does with the coastline of England. According to Leibniz, the infinite lies in the concept of virtuality, and not in the infinite reduction of size.
Leibniz makes use of the concept of force, which he borrows from Aristotle’s concept of entelechy . Force is a quality inherent to extended matter that should be imagined beyond movement. It continues to have its effect when things are no longer in motion. Leibniz now suggests relating this concept of force, as a potential, to the concept of actuality. One can imagine a potential as something that is folded-in. It exists latently and only needs to be actualised, that is, unfolded. In their entirety, all these inversions and folds, all these fields of possibility, amount to what constitutes reality – as a continuum. They may be activated, or they may not be. An infinitely large number of possibilities emerges from this and determines our reality. Hereby, the potential (virtual) is just as real as the actually accessible.
In Leibniz’ writing, the Divine Eye is that which is able to smooth out the page of knowledge with all its infinite folds and indentations; that which possesses an overview of all the possibilities of the actual. Because the aspect of time plays an important part in understanding the relationship between the actual and the potential, the dynamising or temporalisation of this process is very important in Leibniz’ writing. Every unfolding creates a large number of new infolds, and every actualisation alters the execution of the existing order. If I smooth out a fold in my skirt, I create many new folds at the same time. It is the dynamics of this process that creates an ever-new futurity and configuration of what exists, in a way that cannot be foreseen or calculated.
Every model is a sphere of possibility, in which the potential to be world is immanent. In this respect, it is – potentially - a mirror of the entire universe with all its actualised and non-actualised variants.
Adina Popescu
is an author and curator who lives and works in Berlin.