{"id":14196,"title":"Research in Progress","dimensions":"16 x 160 cm","date_begin":"1972-01-01","material":"Felt, ink and soft lead pencil on paper glued onto brown paper, mounted on wood with hooks","art_status_id":13,"legal_status_id":47,"category_id":79,"platform_id":1,"deleted":false,"asset_count":1,"stream_count":0,"collection":"Estate of Robert Filliou, Galerie Peter Freeman, Paris/New York","cached_tag_list":"","publishing_process_id":1,"annotation":"","date_end":"1973-01-01","reference":"","stream_count_app":9,"permalink":"research-in-progress","description_ca":null,"short_description_ca":null,"description_it":null,"short_description_it":null,"cached_primary_asset_url":null,"cached_actor_names":null,"hide_from_json":false,"prev_platform_id":null,"description_uk":null,"short_description_uk":null,"description_tr":null,"short_description_tr":null,"mhka_works":false,"category":{"en":"Mixed Media","nl":"Mixed Media","fr":"Mixed Media"},"poster_image":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/mhka_ensembles_production/assets/public/000/033/207/large/Researchinprogress.jpg?1476113250","poster_credits":"Estate of Robert Filliou and Galerie Peter Freeman, Paris/New York","translations":[{"locale":"en","short_description":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eFilliou proposes that \u0026lsquo;research is not the privilege of those who know, but the domain of those who don\u0026rsquo;t know\u0026rsquo;. He sees research in general, and artistic research in particular, as our best chance to live our lives in a spirit of curiosity and experimentation.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExcerpt of the conversation between Robert Filliou (RF) and Irmeline Lebeer (IL), Flayosc, France, August 1976.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIL:\u003c/strong\u003e And \u0026lsquo;Speed of Art\u0026rsquo; is a proposition, as you say?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRF:\u003c/strong\u003e No, it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;research in progress\u0026rsquo;, as I say. It\u0026rsquo;s part of \u0026lsquo;Research\u0026rsquo;. And what else do we have under \u0026lsquo;V\u0026rsquo;?\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e[...]\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRF:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cem\u003eVitesse de l\u0026rsquo;art\u003c/em\u003e (\u0026lsquo;The Speed of Art\u0026rsquo;). This is something new I\u0026rsquo;m working on, but I think the hat [\u003cem\u003eFrozen Exhibition\u003c/em\u003e] will help you summarise it. It\u0026rsquo;s research that has been going on for more or less ten years. It\u0026rsquo;s part of a long series, which will pursue me until I break my pencil: \u003ca href=\"http://ensembles.org/items/recherche-sur-l-origine?locale=en\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eResearch on the Origin\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, \u003cem\u003eResearch on Pre-Biology\u003c/em\u003e, and now \u003cem\u003eResearch on the Speed of Art\u003c/em\u003e. I need to work with a mathematician. This time I\u0026rsquo;ll try to do that. I\u0026rsquo;ve made the general and intuitive proposition that art is a function of life + fiction, and that fiction tends towards zero. If there\u0026rsquo;s no fiction at all, art is life. In that case, it should be completely anonymous, so that we don\u0026rsquo;t speak about it. This fits with our conversation where I said: \u0026lsquo;If it\u0026rsquo;s true that everything is art, then we shouldn\u0026rsquo;t say so.\u0026rsquo; From the moment you say it, you make a distinction between art and life.\u003cbr /\u003e\r\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; OK. Other times, fiction can be more than zero. A painter will represent reality by adding colours that, for the profane, don\u0026rsquo;t exist. For him the moon is blue, to take a typical example. In other cases fiction is negative, it\u0026rsquo;s less than zero. You summarise the whole experience of a life in a film of one hour and a half. Or there\u0026rsquo;s something you believe to be fundamental, like the Dead Man\u0026rsquo;s Game, and you\u0026rsquo;ll do it in a theatre play. Fiction is negative. In two hours Hamlet is finished, from his birth to his death.\u003cbr /\u003e\r\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; Here\u0026rsquo;s the proposition: art is a function of life + fiction. Based on that, if we go into mathematics \u0026ndash; but I\u0026rsquo;m not going to bore you with that \u0026ndash; we may calculate the first derivative of this function using differential calculus, which, by the way, is something we owe to your compatriot Leibniz, and to Newton. It\u0026rsquo;s really one of the great inventions of the human spirit. Why am I saying this? Maybe because the other day we talked about mathematics being so sublime, and you didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to agree\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIL:\u003c/strong\u003e Not at all! You just seemed to privilege it over other things\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRF: \u003c/strong\u003eWell, it was also stupid to call it sublime\u0026hellip; But all this is just to say that certain manifestations of human invention are really unbelievable. The first derivation of a function is speed. That\u0026rsquo;s why I call this \u0026lsquo;the speed of art\u0026rsquo;. It becomes complicated. The temporary conclusions from my calculations have taken me rather far. Just like there was a revolution when we stopped considering Earth the centre of the universe, now, temporarily, I have arrived at the idea that consciousness is not at the centre of the universe. But my reasoning should be much more rigid. The starting point was very simple: the idea about the speed of art. And I understood that if we can say this about art, we can say it about anything. We can, for example, say that life is the universe + fiction, or that the universe is reality (what exists) + fiction (what we say, which changes). This means that the observer, instead of being a constant, is a variable.\u003cbr /\u003e\r\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; By chance, as I was working on this, I heard on the radio that new sciences are developing, which take science itself as a variable and not as a constant. Once again we see how artists and researchers in a period of great upheaval, like now, are on the same wavelength. Well, for the moment this works, and I have the intention to try to develop it a bit more, if I have the time. I worked a bit with Marcelle\u0026rsquo;s mathematics teacher when she was in fourth grade. The pupils\u0026rsquo; parents came to see the teachers. We met the mathematics teacher, a young man, very pleasant. He told me: \u0026lsquo;Marcelle doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a problem, she\u0026rsquo;s doing well.\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;Maybe \u003cem\u003eshe\u003c/em\u003e doesn\u0026rsquo;t have problems, but I do.\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;What problems?\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;I\u0026rsquo;m trying to calculate the speed of art.\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;What? The speed of what?\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;The speed of art.\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;OK?\u0026rsquo;\u003cbr /\u003e\r\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; I asked him to look at some things with me. He joined the game. Every Tuesday we met in a caf\u0026eacute;, because we lived in a very small apartment. He made some very interesting suggestions for a more rigorous definition. He started some research on the concept of mathematics itself, which had existed before but is basically fictional. It\u0026rsquo;s part of this fiction. I wanted to continue this year, but he\u0026rsquo;s no longer here. He disappeared, without leaving an address. He must be teaching in another school.\u003cbr /\u003e\r\n\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; But I\u0026rsquo;ll ask Edwige, before she leaves next week, if this interests her. The other things I could do on my own, but before presenting this\u0026hellip; I really don\u0026rsquo;t know how to present this visually! I need the elements that would allow me to present this visually one day, like \u003cem\u003eResearch on the Origin\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n"},{"locale":"nl","short_description":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eFilliou stelt dat \u0026ldquo;onderzoek niet het privilege is van zij die weten, maar het domein van zij die niet weten.\u0026rdquo; Hij ziet onderzoek in het algemeen en artistiek onderzoek in het bijzonder als de beste manier om ons leven in te richten in een geest van nieuwsgierigheid en experiment.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n"},{"locale":"fr","short_description":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eFilliou affirme que \u0026laquo;\u0026nbsp;la recherche n\u0026rsquo;est pas le privil\u0026egrave;ge de ceux qui savent, mais plut\u0026ocirc;t le domaine de ceux qui ne savent pas.\u0026nbsp;\u0026raquo; Il consid\u0026egrave;re la recherche en g\u0026eacute;n\u0026eacute;ral et la recherche artistique en particulier comme la meilleure mani\u0026egrave;re d\u0026rsquo;am\u0026eacute;nager la vie dans un esprit de curiosit\u0026eacute; et d\u0026rsquo;exp\u0026eacute;rimentation.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n"},{"locale":"ru","short_description":"","description":""},{"locale":"de","short_description":"","description":""},{"locale":"es","short_description":"","description":""},{"locale":"el","short_description":"","description":""}],"actors":[{"id":52,"name":"Robert Filliou","category":{"en":"Creator","nl":"Vervaardiger","fr":"Créateur"}}]}