Alex de Campi: Gojira!

***

WHO

FILM & TV

COMICS & BOOKS

17.8.05 Bell Inequalities, and Dreams of Cities

Entanglement is a principle of quantum physics which says the properties of two or more particles can become invisibly linked. Do something to one entangled electron, and the other one is instantly affected, even if they are separated by tens, no, hundreds of miles.

The physicist John Bell posited that if entanglement is true, then one (or more) of three basic physics assumptions is wrong: First, that experimenters are freely able to choose to measure the spins of the particles using any axis they desire. Second, that the experiment reflects some real, pre-existing property of the particles. Third, that nothing can move faster than light.

To put this more poetically, either there is no free will and everything is pre-determined; reality does not exist until we attempt to measure it, at which time it hurriedly belches up any old bit of backdrop with just enough detail to keep us happy; or Einstein was wrong and a large amount of things regularly outpace light.

At the very moment yesterday that I was lying indolently on the long grass of Primrose Hill reading Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Tristan Crane in San Francisco was writing about City Visible, a photography exhibition featuring his work and curated by mutual friend Laurenn McCubbin. The exhibition is based on Invisible Cities, a book Laurenn adores. Laurenn and I shared a room in San Diego a month ago. We never spoke about Calvino.

The City Visible exhibition is 9 Sept-3 Oct at the Buzz Gallery, 2316 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland. Oh, and if you are in LA, you only have about 10 days left to see the wonderful, wonderful Tim Hawkinson exhibition at LACMA. Now, LACMA has one of the most crap permanent collections of any art museum anywhere. Other than the statue of Satan, which Mr Wheeler and I intend to steal someday, the collection is filled with the sort of cloying, looks-pretty-over-the-sofa 19th century French Academy art that nouveau riche Californians would have bought in 1910 to demonstrate they had Culture, capital C. If I say Bouguereau, will you be afraid?

But occasionally LACMA does good special exhibitions. It has exceeded itself with the Hawkinson retrospective, which singlehandedly made me feel excited about conceptual art again. After the humourlessness of the London art scene, it's invigorating to experience great art with a sense of whimsy; body-conscious work that reflects wonder and exploration rather than self-obsession. And then there's the Signature Machine, which just beats all.

I leave you with a few passages that have been occupying my mind. The first is from Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, which ties Maupassant's Bel-Ami for the title of nastiest book ever written. They are brutal in very different ways: Bel-Ami is a cutting word behind your back from supposed friends, and As I Lay Dying is a punch in the face. The second is from the ragbag of poems that leads into Paul Muldoon's Madoc, a book more clever than it is good.

Faulkner: "And so when Cora Tull would tell me I was not a true mother, I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words. Like Cora, who could never even cook."

Muldoon: "He flounced off into his cubicle. Though this, our only exchange, was remarkable for its banality, Foley has had some profound effect on me. These past six months I've sometimes run a little ahead of myself, but mostly I lag behind, my footfalls already pre-empted by their echoes."

(Foley is the dubbing process where sound effects are added to a film - most notably, the sound of footsteps.)

And now back to work, to be haunted by dreams of cities. I have been writing for the past year about memory and identity, and now I find myself writing about possibilities. A new twist, a leaving-behind; an ox-bow in the river of my obsessions.

( 10:06 AM )

0 Comments: