A Theory of Minimalism by Marc Botha;

Author:Marc Botha; [Botha;, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472526540
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2017-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

5.5 Number

The consequences of counting:

Dan Flavin’s the nominal three (to William of Ockham) (1964)

Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach (1976)

Nico Muhly’s Mothertongue (2007)

Understood in quantitative terms, minimalism invokes a very specific tension between processes of enumeration, themselves potentially infinite, and the positing of number, the name under which these processes are contingently unified as a work. Badiou’s ontology provides one means of unpacking this paradox, pointing to an understanding of infinity as immanent to existence,164 rather than an abstract and always distant future – essentially unquantifiable. To make sense of this claim, it is necessary first to distinguish between ordinal and cardinal numbers which, together, inhabit every numerical expression. Ordinals, when sequenced by an act of counting, manifest in terms of a rule of succession – one is succeeded by two, by three, by four, and so forth – which is reflected in some of the most fundamental structures of thought: cause and effect, teleological processes, and various processes of calculation. The logic of cardinal numbers, by contrast, is not one of consecutive order or flow, but is rather tied to the singular quantity of the number itself. A number may be part of a particular count, but understood in terms of its cardinality, it might be taken out of the context of this count and substituted into an infinite number of similar counts without altering its fundamental quantity. A cardinal number is thus simultaneously part of a particular act of enumeration, but can also be substituted into other acts of enumeration, thus transcending the particular order to which it initially belongs and potentially giving rise to an infinite number of other acts of enumeration. Cardinality points to a sort of infinite metonymy – the possibility of an infinite number of infinities.165

In this light, the potential significance of number in even the most transparent of minimalist works is considerable. A striking example is Flavin’s sculpture, the nominal three (to William of Ockham).166 The sculpture consists of six, bright, white fluorescent fixtures arranged against a single wall: a single fixture to the far left, two in the centre, and three on the right. Michael Govan goes as far as to suggest that it is ‘[o]ut of Ockham’s nominalism [that] Flavin crafted his minimalism’,167 and there certainly is a parsimonious clarity to the nominal three that recalls the exclusion of extraneous complexity for which Ockham’s is often remembered. In this work Flavin clarifies radical quantity by exposing an aesthetic situation in which the ordinal and cardinal logics of enumeration coincide. The nominalist affirmation of autonomous entities informs Flavin’s search for ‘primary figures’168 that favour transparency and purity of form and medium over complexity.169 Where ordinal logic is manifest in moving from left to right, in the sequence of one, then two, then three fixtures, a cardinal logic inhabits each group individually, being both part of an ordinal sequence and a singular quantity in its own right. Flavin’s concern with number is supplemented by the corporeal experience of quantity. The substance of this

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.