'Before starting work I walk around it several times
accompanied by myself. '
Between 1890 and 1898 Erik Satie lived
at 6 rue Cortot : "in a wardrobe." Satie was a collector
. . . . After his death his wardrobe was found to contain 84 handkerchiefs
besides 12 identical velvet suits and dozens of umbrellas.
Trois morceaux en forme de poire .
. .
three pieces
in the form
of
a pear [
pair ]
The title of a piano piece
in seven parts by Erik Satie. They are
manière de commencement
prolongation du même
Morceau
1
Morceau 2
Morceau 3
en
plus
redite
Satie composed
this piece in response to Debussy's criticism that his works lacked
a 'sense of form'. What exactly did Debussy mean by this? Where
and what actually was this scene of formlessness? Was the quality
that Debussy felt that Satie’s music lacked a sense of 'historical
form'. Probably Debussy was referring to the lack of reference to
sonata form with its inherent experience of 'development', of the
experiencing of time through a series of interlinking episodes which
would result initially in a 'resolution', and consequently a sense
of 'returning'. An example would be that of Beethoven's 'Les Adieux'
sonata, whose three movements are entitled Le depart, L'absence
and Le retour. Was he referring to more technical matters, the arrangement
of intervals, the minutiae of chords, of sequences, of 'passing
notes', of parallel fifths? Or was Debussy speaking in a more 'philosophical'
sense, feeling a lack of a 'raison d'être', a lack of forward
momentum that a particular harmonic vocabulary produces, hence therefore
the lack of 'form', the lack of forming and its subsequent lack
of 'goals'. Satie parodies the notion of 'composition' by substituting
it with 'organisation'. An organisation of time with an elaborate
titling of divisions. Satie seems to attempt to subvert the Kantian
view of time as subservient to movement into a situation where movement
is subordinate to time, the path of which no conventional figure,
whether it be circle or spiral, can mimic. It becomes a single thread,
indivisible, stealth-like. Satie is defying the bar-line. Time is
no longer related to the movement which it measures, it is related
to the time which conditions it. So the very nature of music, that
is, succession, is challenged. This renunciation of division produces
difficulties in the creation of necessary forms, ingredients needed
to create contrast, repetition, reminiscence and memory. But though
divisions create forms, these do not in turn necessarily have the
qualities of what I will later discuss as what Heidegger might call
‘the thingly’.
Debussy's comments
on Satie's piece open up a debate about the nature of form. What
is meant by 'form' and 'forms', and how form and content or expression
relate to each other. The argument can be viewed from various points.
Firstly the order of perception versus the order of creation. Secondly
the nature of the containing element of the notion of 'form' and
the necessary oxymoron of 'formless forms’. Imagine: concrete cube
/ wax cube : the form is the same but the matter is different. Plato,
in his Theory of Forms, talks about classification: and also about
definitions. Definitions can operate through comparisons. 'Redness'
can be judged in terms of 'blueness 'and 'greenness', nothing in
the 'sensible' world is beautiful or, say, large without at the
same time having the qualities of ugliness or smallness. But definitions
can also be judged in their own terms, as parts of Forms. Forms
can exist or not exist, but not at the same time. The Theory of
Forms concerns itself with Definitions, that is, the understanding
of a term as distinct from its mere usage. The sensible world is
seen in terms of opposites. But these opposites must exist separately,
and they must have definitions. Take a word such as 'Satie'. There
is no  opposite
to 'Satie'. But there is the  possibility of there not being
a 'Satie'. But not at the same time: but perhaps . . . Satie. But
Plato would only accept evidence that was 'eternally' true, i.e.
not merely the result of observations of the world. Nothing in the
sensible world could actually qualify as an object of knowledge.
Our experience is founded on information collected by the senses,
as Diderot emphasised in his Salon of 1767 , and Condillac [
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
(1715 - 80 ) ] elaborated
on in his Traité
des Sensations |
|
.
. . . . . . You will understand how easily we are led to make systems
if you consider that nature itself has made a system of our faculties,
of our needs, and things related to us. It is in accordance with
this system that we think; it is in accordance with this system
that our opinions, whatever they may be, are produced and combined.
[Traité des
systèmes, in Œuvres Phil. de Condillac, I, p.216 ]
Sensations give birth
to the whole system of man, a complete system all of whose parts
are linked and mutually sustaining. It is a sequence of truths:
the first observations prepare the way for those that follow, the
last confirm those that preceded them.
[Extrait raisonné
du traité des sensations, in Œuvres Phil. I, p325 ]
In his Traité
des sensations and Traité des systèmes, one of Condillac's
stated objectives was 'to reduce to one single principle all that
concerns human understanding'. His approach was to reconcile descarte's
and locke's philosophies - to achieve a synthesis between Descarte's
'natural', methodical reasoning and Locke's 'natural' sense-data
based thought. In doing so Condillac aimed to combine the naturalness
of intellectual procedures with the naturalness of the physical
world. Logical analysis could function in both mental and material
worlds. The mind/body distinction is still maintained otherwise
the need for analysis to bridge the gap would no longer be needed.
Condillac's question, a recurring one in the 18th century [ see
in particular the 'Molyneux Problem' as described in Diderot's Letter
on the Blind ] centred on whether the primary data received by the
senses produce by themselves the coherent image of a physical world
that we have in our consciousness, or whether some additional organising
faculty was required to complete the process.
Condillac's "Statue-Man"
was an attempt to create the hypothetical experiences a statue would
undergo as its senses were developed one by one. Starting with what
he thought was the least informative of the senses, smell, he surmised
whether, without innate ideas, reason and reflection can prevail.
He went on to discuss the relationship of the senses to each other,
and the crucial role of touch and movement in the awareness of the
self and the discovery of the outside world. Condillac observed
the statue now with its senses and movement. Excited by the prospect
of pain and pleasure and steered by the mechanism of association
of ideas, the statue-man acquired practical knowledge,
formulated abstract
ideas and developed a morality. He had the mental capacity of a
man, limited only by his lack of a language and contract with humankind.
Condillac saw the statue-man as an ideal, a model from which all
irrelevant and extraneous factors had been omitted to that the essential
features were clearly displayed.
Nature gives us organs in
order to show us by means of pleasure what to seek, and by means
of pain what to avoid. But there it stops; and it leaves to experience
the task of making us contract habits, and of finishing work which
it has begun. This is a new view, and it shows the simplicity of
the ways of the author of nature. It is not cause for wonder that
it was only necessary to make men sensible to pleasure and pain
to generate ideas, desires, habits and talents of every kind in
him?
[Traité des
sensations, in Œuvres Phil. I, p222 ]
Condillac's originality
is seen in his views on the environmental and physiological origins
of personality - that man is the result of the reactions of the
sense-organs to the stimuli provided by the physical environment
[for Locke, man still possessed a spiritual faculty, reason, which
existed independently of the senses, though it could not function
without the stimuli they provide. For Hobbes, man was regarded as
matter in motion. For La Mettrie [in L'homme machine ], man was
a purely physical being like an animal or a plant and totally dependent
on physical sensations gathered by his senses. For Diderot [Lettre
sur les aveugles ], man's ideas are relative to their senses and
would be different if they were deprived of any].
The principal
object of this work is to show how all our knowledge and all our
faculties come from our senses, or, to speak more precisely, from
our sensations; for in reality, the senses are only the occasional
cause. They do not feel if it is the mind alone which feels through
the agency of the organs; and it is from the sensations that modify
it the mind draws all its knowledge and all its faculties.
[ Extrait raisoné
, in Œuvres Phil. I, p323 ]
In the Cartesian system
reason is capable of development without reference to sense experience
- only pure thought is clear and distinct. Passions are seen as
disturbances in a rationality that humans suffer as a result of
having a body. Descartes' realisation that we are not in direct
contact with the surfaces of things led him to recognise that our
perceptions take place within our minds and are made up of ideas,
and that ideas are not the same stuff as the physical realities
that cause them. In this he was perpetuating the dualism suggested
by the 'New Science', and he accounted for our experience of a physical
world by a theory of representative perception. Our perception of
secondary qualities is caused by the physical attributes of things,
but there is no necessary resemblance between them : in other words,
the sensations we experience represent physical reality but are
not identical with it.
For Locke, thought divorced from experience
did not exist. reflection could not function without experience.
reflection enabled simple ideas provided by the senses to develop
into more complicated ideas, though this was dependent on the mind's
innate ability to reason without experience. 'Uneasiness', a sense
of discontent, of unfocused desire is the motivator of all actions,
the will, the determination to act. Reason is the servant of the
will, 'the sensitive soul contemplating its ideas' and suggests
the best way to placate this uneasiness, and to imagine the likely
outcomes of pain and pleasure. [Descartes puts the will in the service
of reason. The will is the source of error, which can only be avoided
if the former waits on understanding and refrains from making judgements
until the outcome is clear. The will must control the passions,
by siding with the rational.]
Condillac saw that empiricism
required an analysis of the mind itself and not just a knowledge
of external substances and relations. He saw desire as the motivating
force behind the whole mind - as the root of both the will and understanding
[Extrait raisoné
, in Œuvres Phil. I, p325 ]
. . . . . . first
ideas and experiences are sensations . . . . . . some will be less
pleasant than others
resulting in uneasiness . . . . . . memory
of the pleasant changes uneasiness into desire - to return to a
state of pleasure . . . . . . which in turn activates love, hate
fear etc. . . . . . this takes the mind beyond the mere recording
and feeling to the heights of reason . . . . .
[traité des
Sensations, in Œuvres Phil. I, p228 ]
While the understanding
provides the ideas towards which the will moves, the will selects
the ideas that the understanding focuses on. It is a physical need,
not a rational logic that decides the association of ideas. Condillac
concludes therefore that it is need not logic that is the foundation
of reason. This analysis of reason was mirrored in his analysis
of the self [ or how we get the idea of the self ]. The self is
not intuitively known - when the Statue comes alive it has no knowledge
of itself - it can only be discovered when change has occurred.
"What we understand by this word {I} seems to me applicable
only to a being who notices that in the present moment he is no
longer what he has been. so long as there is no change, he exists
without any reflection upon himself; but as soon as he changes,
he judges that he is the same as he formerly was in another state,
and he says {I}"
[Traité des
Sensations, in Œuvres Phil. I, p238 ]
Condillac therefore
rejects Locke's theory that one can perceive without knowing that
one perceives. The Statue does not receive anything until it has
been endowed with touch and movement. It is only aware of itself
through change. The 'self', the { I } is the sum of its movements,
its changes : there is not anything outside these sensations and
memories. The next stage in the awakening of the statue is the discovery
of the non-self, through touch and the revealing of its physical
dimensions and limits [edges]. The statue is seen to have sensations,
rather than being a sensation.
In Traité des sensations
Condillac asks if all knowledge is derived from sensations. He confirms
that we are aware of the spatial world around us, and are able to
fit different sorts of sense - data into a coherent picture of the
world. As we see objects, we see them as totalities, we do not see
their various separate qualities first and the whole later. Condillac
found that none of the sensations of smell, taste, hearing and sight
would reveal to the statue-man anything outside himself. Even the
sensation of touch, if unaccompanied by movement, would not indicate
an outside world. Tâtonnement . . . . . the vibratory continual
touching and retouching that establishes experiential research -
the 'innocent' study that requires almost no preparation of the
soul. Both Condillac in 'Traité des Sensations' and Diderot
in his 'Interprétation' describe touch as the beginning of
the process of 'distinguishing'. For Condillac the touching had
to be continuous. The statue describes 'limit' and 'otherness'.
The hand moving across a surface is mirrored by the bodies sensation
of being touched. Condillac was interested in the linear logic in
sensation. Diderot was not interested in origins (which suggest
laws and rigidity) but ways of adapting to a world in continual
transformation. For Condillac, movement introdu
ces the perception
of space, 'otherness', and solidity. Statue-man can ascertain that
there are at least two things in the world, himself and the space
around himself. Secondary qualities such as smell, sound , taste,
cannot provide any knowledge of the world on their own, they can
only function by way of an experience of space and movement. Statue-man's
next task is learning to perceive the different sense organs. Through
experiences of touch and movement, sensations are seen to be located
in the body, not the mind. Different sense-organs would result in
different sensations. the final act is the statue-man's ability
to relate sensation to objects, therefore leaving reality behind.
he realises that sensations are in objects not in himself, and as
sensations are a mass of chaotic feelings, they are also capable
of being transformed into a diverse range of utterances.
As
many are our needs, so many are our different enjoyments, and as
many are the degrees in our needs, so many are the degrees in our
enjoyment. In this lies the germ of all we are, the source of our
happiness and of our unhappiness. . . .
The history of our
Statue's faculties makes the growth of all these things very clear.
When it was limited to fundamental feeling, one uniform sensation
comprised its whole existence, its whole knowledge, its whole pleasure.
In giving it successively new modes of being and new senses, we
saw it form desires, learn from experience to regulate and satisfy
them, and proceed to new needs, to new knowledge, to new pleasures.
The Statue is therefore nothing but the sum of all it has acquired.
Why would it not be the same with man?
[Traité des
Sensations, in Œuvres Phil. I, p314 ]
Condillac made a distinction between the senses, which belong
to the body, and sensation, which is a function of the mind. It
is sensations that we owe our development to. Condillac's work on
the statue-man announced his departure from total agreement with
Locke. Pain and pleasure looked forward to the mind and ultimately
understanding [attention] and will [desire]. The nature of the will
- passion, love, hate, fear evolve out of desire and experience
in the same way that understanding evolves out of attention. Whereas
Locke had analysed the mind as a static entity, Condillac looked
at the activities inside the mind, specifically between reason and
the will, and the will and passion.
|
Plato held the view that humans understood eternal forms
before they were born, when our experience of the world is purely
intellectual. He sees Forms as being more substantial than eternal
objects, but relates the two notions together in terms of hierarchies,
in the sense of the archetype and the copy. These copies are kept
in ‘space’. A divine artificer copies these in different places,
therefore creating many things from the same form [printing / moulding
/ casting ].
Heidegger restates and then
develops Aristotle’s Theory of Forms. Take a block of granite: there
is a form, the block, and there is the substance, the granite. Form
determines the distribution of the matter in space, resulting in
a particular shape. But with an object such as equipment [tools,
say], the shape is not made by a prior distribution of matter: On
the contrary, form controls the arrangement of the matter, and also
selects the matter, and its arrangement. The relationship between
form and matter is dictated by the usage, the tool-like qualities
of the object, and this 'usefulness' is not something that can be
added at the end. The 'usefulness' is
paramount. A made object is
self-contained, but its shape has not taken place by itself, like
the granite. The tool, like the art-work, is constructed. But Heidegger
then links these two notions by suggesting that art has a 'self-sufficient
presencing' that has a similarity with the granite. Tools therefore
are half art-work: they have thingliness, but they lack the self-sufficiency
of the art-work. Tools have a position between 'thing' and work.
To continue
with Heidegger. Was Debussy questioning Satie’s commitment to the
‘thingly’? For Heidegger, Works are 'things'. There is a 'thingly'
element in works of art. [colour in painting, stone in sculpture].
But the work is more than the 'thingly'. It has an artistic 'nature':
the aesthetic value is superimposed on it by our subjective views
of it. The artwork is a thing that is made, but it says something
other than the 'thing' itself, it is an allegory, a symbol [gk,
symballein - to bring together]. It is the 'thingly’
feature of the work that the artist 'makes' by his labours. For
in the Trois Morceaux there are 'things' that show themselves [chords,
durations, timbres ] and there is the 'thing in itself' - things
which do not appear [progressions, cadences]. Heidegger’s 'thing'
therefore designates everything that is not nothing. This ‘thing’,
this ‘form’ is something around which properties are assembled:
the core of things. [Gk. hypokeimenon ]. For Heidegger the core was something
at ground level . .  the plan. It is these properties such as colour and
texture that give things their consistency and quintessence, their
sensuousness. This matter is encapsulated in the ‘Form’. The Form
has a consistency of matter: it is formed matter: it is what we
see in something. But this thing-concept applies to nature and tools,
not to Art. The thingly element in Art is the matter of which it
consists.
The 'mere thing' has
its quality of self-containment. 'Equipment' has both the qualities
of self-containment and specific use. But the Artwork has neither
of these qualities. By its very nature its boundaries lack self-conviction
and its lack of 'specific use' is ingrained in its own texture,
grain.
Heidegger then asks the
question ‘With what essence of what thing should a Greek Temple
agree?’ and follows this with ‘Who could maintain the impossible
view that the Idea of Temple is represented in the building? And
yet, truth is set to work in such a work, if it is a work’.
Heidegger paints, he
sculpts this Temple before our very eyes, but at the same time as
he builds this image, he questions its foundations, its right to lie on the earth . . . . This Temple in
a building . . it is not representational, it is not a model, it
is not an imitation . . . . . Heidegger separates the building,
the form, from its function, its toolness
. . . . . a Greek Temple portrays nothing. It simply stands there
in the middle . . . . Standing there, the building rests on the
rocky ground . . . . . . . The Temple's firm towering makes visible
the invisible space of the air. The Temple rests on the earth. Then
Heidegger adjusts his position : adjusts his aspect. He resists
the notion of the Temple coming to rest on the surface of the earth,
but renames the surface, the planetary earth as the shelter earth, the earth that creates, supports, gives life to the
arising structures and then gives them shelter when they return.
The World and the Earth are contestants in this field. The world
displays its clarity and openness, the earth conceals, shelters,
attempts to draw the world into itself. The Temple straddles both
worlds. The frontier bisects it, masking for a time its progress
[a place of respite, the customs post]. The Temple work standing
out there on this earth opens up a world and at the same time sets
the world back again on earth. And whereas in the case of fabricating
equipment e.g. an axe, the stone is used, and used up, disappearing
into its own usefulness [and the material is all the better and
more suitable the less it resists vanishing in the equipmental being
of the equipment], the Temple does not cause the material to disappear.
It displays it. It allows it to be seen. The Temple is in the earth
: rises above it : descends back into it. It promotes, displays
the earth : it allows the earth to speak, to be seen. The Temple
presses downwards and shows its heaviness to the earth. The earth
though cannot be destroyed: the earth is always 'closed up': it
is 'self-secluding'.
The Temple. This Temple.
The event of the Temple. The Temple in motion. Heidegger talks about
motion : rest is the opposite of motion and only what is in [has
been] in motion can rest. Rest can include motion : there is a rest
which includes an inner concentration of motion, inside of which
exist a multiplicity and variety of inflections which produce' events'
or 'vibrations' with an infinity of harmonics or submultiples. These
do not move to a rational or 'philosophical' plan, but they radiate
and disseminate in a topography of experience composed of units
that are neither logical or organic, that is, neither based upon
pieces as a long unity or a fragmented totality; nor formed or prefigured
by those units in the course of a logical development or of an organic
evolution.
Let return to the subject
of hierarchies, in the sense of the archetype and the copy. These
copies are kept in ‘space’. A divine artificer copies these in different
places, therefore creating many things from the same form [printing
/ moulding / casting ] . . . . . . and, eventually . . . . . . .
cliché‚ . . . . . . overexposure / the trite / the stereotype
[C19: from French, from
clicher to stereotype; imitative of the sound made by the matrix
when it is dropped into molten metal]. The making of the 'master', either through the cutting
[the actual cutting] through of the metal or by the dissolving [etching,
dissolution] in the acid. The master is formed, or the form (image)
is mastered. Alloy, zinc, lead, leather, rubber, the image if formed
through these. The developing process [a misnomer: the process only
offers a change in circumstance
 ], a process
of a chemical development mirrors perhaps Satie’s non developmental
compositional processes. Both in black and white, blanc et noir,
the double negative. As the chemicals attack the paper surface [seen/scene
in/of red light] the image comes into physical and visual being
simultaneously. The hardness or softness of the grain, [the conduit
of the grain as the grain pours through the differences]. This graininess,
this process of gradual surface deterioration destroys the naturalness
and the absence of time provokes the narrative and lets in the possibilities
of the image. It is limited, it is inside itself, there is no place
for itself outside the process. The pleasure of this recalling.
The pleasure of the grain. Disclosing, unfolding and lastly, obsolescent
in its waiting, the Old French desveloper - to unwrap, to reveal,
layer by layer the imitation, the mimicry, the counterfeit . . .
. . To paraphrase Nauman . . . . . . .
The master is formed
the
image is mastered.
The form is mastered the
master is imagined
. . . . . . . the transcript,
abundance and hence power, wealth. Abundant becomes copious . Rich
begets opulence. Copious; copyist; copyright - the exclusive right
to copy; this copying between 'art' and 'life' - reality by exclusion.
They do not encourage meanings, they enjoy descriptions. Explanation
is stupidity, and stupidity is their belief in explanation. Knowledge
is only valued by its inherent banality and practical uselessness.
Objects too have an inherent stupidity. They have no organisation,
only order/disorder. They have presence, but they prove nothing.
Lists exude authority: the possible privileges resulting from inclusion,
the possible disaster of omission. Lists suggest realism, they point
metaphor to the extremities, they provide a set of pieces for the
'audience' to move around without any preconditions or expectations.
These lists slow down the narrative, at times to the point where
the names are becalmed in a mirror image of themselves. extremes
to not meet in some dramatic mêlée, they rather cancel
each other out. This attention to details, minutiae, categories,
parallels those of the abortive suicide who wishes so much to be
seen to want to die. Flaubert allows 'little' metaphors to develop
inside these listings 'in the real world distinctions have little
force, it is a literary deceit that they do', and is in these little
metaphors that the pairs are born. As time begins to falter, the
reader/observer begins to write their own sub-lists, to rearrange
things, say, alphabetically [encyclopaedia], temporally, in terms
of colour, texture, politics. Listings turn out to be arbitrary
in their very earnestness. This splitting up of otherwise rational
events deprives objects of their meaning and creates an atmosphere
of uncertainty and suspicion, justified by pointless acts of organisation.
And as we strip away he meaning from the signs we set the objects
free and leave openings, fissures, where the [common - place] becomes
the emblematic - a notion which Debussy found problematic in the
extreme.
………………………'Before starting work
I walk around it several times accompanied by myself. '
Between 1890 and 1898
Erik Satie lived at 6 Rue Cortot : "in a wardrobe." Satie
was also a collector . . . . After his death his wardrobe was found
to contain 84 handkerchiefs besides 12 identical velvet suits and
dozens of umbrellas. He lived for the last 27 years of his life
in an apartment in Arceuil.
[BEDROOM, BACHELOR'S. Always untidy,
with women's whatsits left around. Smell of cigarettes. There must
be some bizarre things hidden away there. ]
Satie created
Musique d'ameublement [Furniture Music] as music that was
not to be listened to, and to distinguish background music from
"serious" music. He said,
"You know, there's
a need to create furniture music, that is to say, music that would
be a part of the surrounding noises and that would take them into
account, as masking the clatter of knives and forks without drowning
it completely, without imposing itself. It would fill up the awkward
silences that occasionally descend on guests. It would spare them
the usual banalities. Moreover, it would neutralise the street noises
that indiscreetly force themselves into the picture." Satie
elaborated on this idea in a note to Jean Cocteau: "Furniture
music for law offices, banks, etc... No marriage ceremony without
furniture music... Don't enter a house which does not have furniture
music."
Furniture Music's premiere
was a disaster. People insisted on actually listening to it. Satie
was furious; he and fellow composer Darius Milhaud urged the audience
to take no notice of the music and to behave as is it did not exist.
"The music...wishes
to make a contribution to life in the same way as a private conversation,
a painting... or a chair on which you may or may not be seated."
Milhaud later recounted:
"It was no use Satie shouting:
'Talk for heaven's sake! Move around! Don't listen!' They kept quiet.
They listened. The whole thing went wrong."
David Kirshner
[ from a paper delivered at 'TRACING
ART', a conference at the University of Portsmouth, May 2000. Objects
from PH.D. exhibition, University of Brighton, March 2000 ]
|
