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WOR(L)DS      ORIGINAL ESSAY     ARTIST RESPONSE     PRINT

In this page I present my artistic response to Undecidability, juxtaposing the romantic idea of undecidability in Silvia Bottiroli's essay with my own reflections on immaterial labour.
The essay speaks about the significance of a multiplicity of perspectives and visions that some works of art and artistic practices offer to the viewer(s).
I contemplated the many intangible activities that artistic work encompasses; thinking, imagining, reading, writing, discussing, etcetera. The kind of labour me and my peers were engaged in a lot as well while making this republication. Undecidability for me then also became a space of 'the intangible' within labour.
I responded to fragments from Bottiroli's text with my own narratives to show how the notion of 'the undecidable' is entangled with immaterial labour. It is expressed with the ‘and...and...and’ format, which was mentioned as a key logic of how the undecidability works by Bottiroli, in her essay.

: Parts of original essay
: My voice

TEXT : Important keys for my voice

TEXT : Linking with other publications

The parts of the original essay were selected through Python NLTK(Natural Language ToolKit).
Original contribution: Silvia Bottiroli
Original artist response: Jozef Wouters Reinterpreted by Nami Kim

MULTIPLYING THE VISIBLE  (From p.3, 4 in the original essay)
The main concern that he brings forth lies within the relation between contemporary culture and imagination : the risk to definitely lose,

H

   in the overproduction of images, the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut and in fact of “thinking in terms of images.
(...) In his fifth memo, he subsequently focuses on     multiplicity as a way for    literature to comprehend the complex nature of the world that for the author is a whole of wholes, where the acts of watching and knowing also intervene in the observed reality and alter it. Calvino is particularly fascinated by      literary works that are built upon a combinatory logic or that are readable as different narratives. The lecture revolves around some novels that contain multiple worlds and make space for the readers’ imaginations. (...) Therefore, let’s think visibility and multiplicity together, as: a multiplication of visibilities. They are traits specific to artistic production and define a context for the undecidable, or rather for undecidability, as the quality of being undecidable.
(...) Which is to say, if it doesn’t give up on involving radically different realities into its operation modes and doesn’t fade out from the scene of the ‘real' world. We might stretch this line of thought a bit further and propose that art’s    potentiality is that of multiplying the visible as an actual counterstrategy to the proliferation of images that surrounds us. A strategy that is capable of producing different conditions of visibility. Embracing what we are capable to see but also

think and imagine, to fantasise and conceptualise;

and bringing into existence different configurations of public spaces,   collective subjectivities, and social gatherings.







ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL WORLDS  (From p.4)
In fact, undecidability is a specific force at work that consciously articulates, redefines, or alters the complex system of links, bounds, and resonances between different    potential and actual worlds. In this sense, undecidability is a quality specific to some artworks within which the three worlds that Calvino describes meet and yet remain untouched, autonomous, and recognizable.
An artwork can indeed create a magnetic field where different actual worlds coexist and, by living next to each other yet not sharing a common horizon, generate a potential world. Then ‘potential’ does not mean ‘possible.’ In fact, if something is possible when it contains and under certain terms performs the possibility of its actualisation, a world is potential when it can maintain its

potentiality

and never actualize itself into one actual form. In particular, the potentiality generated by undecidable artworks is grounded in a logic of addition and contradiction that is specific of art. A logic of ‘and… and… and…’ as opposite to the logic of ‘either… or…’ that seems to rule reality.







(From p.5)
Artworks are places where contradictory realities can coexist without withdrawing or cancelling each other out. They can be sites of   existence and of experience where images let go of their representational nature and just exist as such. None of the images of an artwork are being more or less real than the others, no matter whether they come as pieces of reality or as products of individual or collective fantasies. It is the art(work) as such that creates a ground where all the images that come into visibility share the same gradient of reality, no matter whether they harmoniously coexist or are radically conflicting.
If every work builds up complete systems that are offered to its visitors or spectators to enter into – if the invitation of art is often that of losing the contact with known worlds in order to slip into others – something radically different happens within an art that practices its undecidability.
Here, spectators are invited to enter the work’s fictional world carrying with themselves the so-called real world and all their other fictional worlds; a space is created where all these worlds are equally welcomed. The artwork may then be navigated either by only choosing one layer of reality, or by continuously stepping from one world to another– different    dimensions are made available without any form of hierarchy or predicted relations. Such dynamics seems to occur in

performative

works in particular, as the contemporaneity of production, consumption, and experience that is typical of performance intensifies the possibility of undecidable links between different realities.







A MULTIPLICITY OF GAZES  (From p.7, 8)
An undecidable artwork is, in other words, a site where different and even contradictory individual experiences unfold and coexist, with no hierarchical structure and no orchestration.
(...) What is peculiar to this kind of artworks then, and what within them can produce an understanding of the place of art and of its politics today, is that they generate a    multiplicity of gazes and of forms of

spectatorship

that also coexist one next to the other without mediating between their own positions and points of view.    The multiplicity of gazes produced and gathered by undecidable artworks does not compose itself into a community, as there is no ‘common’ present.







(...)     The kind of collective body that undecidability produces could of course be seen as an image of a possible or future societal structure, but it is rather an enigmatic subject: it is not there to actualize itself but to keep being a sheer, glimmering potentiality. Indeed, as a practice of undecidability, art produces a collectivity, a future time, and an elsewhere, but    does not claim any agency over them.
(...) Undecidability could then be detached from art and applied to curation, instituting processes or even to politics at large: the unfolding of its resonances and consequences already opens this possibility and even beckons it. Nevertheless, acknowledging it as specific to art, and thus as a means without ends, seems to better protect the inner nature and the intact potentiality of a quality that does not make itself available for any use and    does not serve any agenda, but stays

autonomous

and operates by creating its own conditions all over again.
(...) Through the combination of the encounter between undecidable art, multiplicity of gazes, and a curatorial dimension a condition of existence is produced that is intrinsically and utterly political. As it is, with Samuel Beckett’s words in The Unnamable, about being “all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling”.

MULTIPLYING THE VISIBLE  (From p.3, 4 in the original essay)
The main concern that he brings forth lies within the relation between contemporary culture and imagination : the risk to definitely lose,

H

   in the overproduction of images, the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut and in fact of “thinking in terms of images.
(...) In his fifth memo, he subsequently focuses on     multiplicity as a way for    literature to comprehend the complex nature of the world that for the author is a whole of wholes, where the acts of watching and knowing also intervene in the observed reality and alter it. Calvino is particularly fascinated by      literary works that are built upon a combinatory logic or that are readable as different narratives. The lecture revolves around some novels that contain multiple worlds and make space for the readers’ imaginations. (...) Therefore, let’s think visibility and multiplicity together, as: a multiplication of visibilities. They are traits specific to artistic production and define a context for the undecidable, or rather for undecidability, as the quality of being undecidable.
(...) Which is to say, if it doesn’t give up on involving radically different realities into its operation modes and doesn’t fade out from the scene of the ‘real' world. We might stretch this line of thought a bit further and propose that art’s    potentiality is that of multiplying the visible as an actual counterstrategy to the proliferation of images that surrounds us. A strategy that is capable of producing different conditions of visibility. Embracing what we are capable to see but also think and imagine, to fantasise and conceptualise; and bringing into existence different configurations of public spaces,   collective subjectivities, and social gatherings.

When are your 'thinking and imagining and fantasisng and conceptualising' born?
Have you ever seen physical births of these activities? They are not tangible and not visible. Don't you normally have them during your daily rituals? For instance,

when you have a 🚿 to refresh yourself.
And when you drink a cup of ☕.
And when you get some 🔆.
And when you water your 🌱.
And when you smoke 🚬
And when you 📞 your freinds.
You may think you're not in working mode, yet in fact, unconsciously get into labours...

ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL WORLDS  (From p.4, 5)
In fact, undecidability is a specific force at work that consciously articulates, redefines, or alters the complex system of links, bounds, and resonances between different    potential and actual worlds.
(...) In fact, if something is possible when it contains and under certain terms performs the possibility of its actualisation, a world is potential when it can maintain its potentiality and never actualize itself into one actual form.
In particular, the potentiality generated by undecidable artworks is grounded in a logic of addition and contradiction that is specific of art. A logic of ‘and… and… and…’ as opposite to the logic of ‘either… or…’ that seems to rule reality.

You've got some pictures in your head.
They aren't emobodied in reality yet, but you seem excited somehow.
Because potentiality of the pictures are infinite.
They are fluid and ungrabbable.
As if they are like :
☁️ and 🌫and 🌈and 🌊and ☄...
You grab a 🖊 and start to 📝 all the scenarios on a note and wear 🎧 to listen to 🎶 to get into emotions, and read some 📚 for inspirations.
These might not be considered as so called productive and efficient. But still they are a signficant source of your work.

Artworks are places where contradictory realities can coexist without withdrawing or cancelling each other out. They can be sites of existence and of experience where images let go of their representational nature and just exist as such. None of the images of an artwork are being more or less real than the others, no matter whether they come as pieces of reality or as products of individual or collective fantasies. It is the art(work) as such that creates a ground where all the images that come into visibility share the same gradient of reality, no matter whether they harmoniously coexist or are radically conflicting.
If every work builds up complete systems that are offered to its visitors or spectators to enter into – if the invitation of art is often that of losing the contact with known worlds in order to slip into others – something radically different happens within an art that practices its undecidability.
Here, spectators are invited to enter the work’s fictional world carrying with themselves the so-called real world and all their other fictional worlds; a space is created where all these worlds are equally welcomed. The artwork may then be navigated either by only choosing one layer of reality, or by continuously stepping from one world to another– different dimensions are made available without any form of hierarchy or predicted relations. Such dynamics seems to occur in performative works in particular, as the contemporaneity of production, consumption, and experience that is typical of performance intensifies the possibility of undecidable links between different realities.

Imagine that you will experiment the potentiality through a performance.
For you ⏱ and 💭 and 👁 and 👃and 👄 and 🦵 and ✋ are all materials.
Now you are on the stage and moving your body as itself is your artistic langauge.
How does the every single movement prove its value? What you're producing is not an object, but rather moments and emotions.
Yes, it cannot be displayed on a shelf in a shop, because the performance exists only at the particular moment and place and with audiences near you. It would possibly be recorded as a video clip, but then the value of the document would become transformed, because the live interaction at that very instant won't stay there anymore. Meaning, you inspire 👨‍👨‍🦳👩‍🦱🧕 's impression, which is the very value of your work.

A MULTIPLICITY OF GAZES  (From p.7, 8)
An undecidable artwork is, in other words, a site where different and even contradictory individual experiences unfold and coexist, with no hierarchical structure and no orchestration. (...) What is peculiar to this kind of artworks then, and what within them can produce an understanding of the place of art and of its politics today, is that they generate a    multiplicity of gazes and of forms of spectatorship that also coexist one next to the other without mediating between their own positions and points of view.    The multiplicity of gazes produced and gathered by undecidable artworks does not compose itself into a community, as there is no ‘common’ present.

You may say you don't feel direct and obvious effect and influence that your performance brings. This is because what 👨‍👨‍🦳👩‍🦱🧕 purchased from you are emotions and experiences, which are composed of ⏱ and 💭 and ❕❔ .
You offer audiences an arena of the immaterial experience. They feel and think as they want. Unknown energy is shared between you and them.
Your movement coming with the spectatorship is still located in a part of system, but at the same time it might be a gesture against the system that takes material give and take rule for granted.

(...)     The kind of collective body that undecidability produces could of course be seen as an image of a possible or future societal structure, but it is rather an enigmatic subject: it is not there to actualize itself but to keep being a sheer, glimmering potentiality. Indeed, as a practice of undecidability, art produces a collectivity, a future time, and an elsewhere, but    does not claim any agency over them. (...) Undecidability could then be detached from art and applied to curation, instituting processes or even to politics at large: the unfolding of its resonances and consequences already opens this possibility and even beckons it. Nevertheless, acknowledging it as specific to art, and thus as a means without ends, seems to better protect the inner nature and the intact potentiality of a quality that does not make itself available for any use and    does not serve any agenda, but stays autonomous and operates by creating its own conditions all over again.(...) Through the combination of the encounter between undecidable art, multiplicity of gazes, and a curatorial dimension a condition of existence is produced that is intrinsically and utterly political. As it is, with Samuel Beckett’s words in The Unnamable, about being “all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling”.

What and who do you work for?
The output made by your work seems to have a bit different features with other current products and commodities.
You may do art for your identity's sake, as well as for your living's sake.
Whether putting the label called 'labour' on your performance is a bit tricky, because you're standing between the establiment and your fundamental autonomy. Mediation of the ironic dimensions is not easy as you think. Your practice contains a lot of immaterial labours, and whether the labours are surely regarded as classic labours is still controversial. Thus, not only what you do, but also how you do is undecidable.