‘𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯, 𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭’, plaster, microcrystalline wax, ceramic, wood, pigment, ø 60 cm, 2023
𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙣, 𝙚𝙝𝙚𝙝𝙚𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙡 (2023) consists of a set of dark plaster binoculars and two pieces of clay in a round piece of wood. The binoculars, as we know them in their current form appeared first in 1825, and they were mostly an “operation of reconciling disparity, of making two distinct views appear as one” and retain the apparent promise of seamless unification— it is the first optical invention of its kind in which one can use both eyes simultaneously and without phasing, without having to use one eye over the other. There was no “preferred eye”, and no choice to be made. In front of this binocular piece, we find a piece of earthed clay that has been exposed to several throws of dice. This reminds us of Stéphane Mallarmé’s (1842—1898) notion of the fact that a ‘throw of dice will never abolish chance”: the act can never exhaust the abstraction. The act (the throwing of the dice) will never exhaust the abstraction (chance) that gave birth to the act in the first place. So reposition happens each time, as there will always be movable-multiple and plural attempts assigned to one unmovable singular which in this case is luck or chance. On the next end of the binoculars, we find a ceramic piece that was made during a streak of randomized and ‘poorly’ made objects that could easily fit John Cage’s colloquial saying that not-knowing-cheers-the-knowing. This object stands on top of a tile found in a derelict thermal bathing facility near the mining complex explored by Societé d’Uraine et Radium that provided the uranium ores for the Parisian Laboratories where Madam Curie worked and whose seminal work on radioactivity (1911) would sentence the bathing facilities to a complete shutdown and further abandonment.