On Serendipity and Good Company¹

Wim Goossens

This essay explores how, in the coincidence of a proximity of books, TMML and Marcel Duchamp have something meaningful to say about each other. That they both ended up in the same pile on a bookshelf is the rather coincidental occasion for this investigation, but isn’t it Duchamp who showed the world that coincidence can also be extremely productive?

On the exhibition brochure for the group show Through the Big End of the Opera Glass, Duchamp, who designed the brochure, has Cupid stand in for himself. His signature suggests that the angel figure on the front is depicted upside down, pointing the love arrow straight at the sky. The back of the brochure shows in mirror image an endgame at chess: ‘White to Play and Win’. If you hold the brochure up to the light, as the instruction in the caption instructs, you can see in the superposition of the two images how the direction of Cupid’s arrow follows the orthogonality of the chessboard: the point seems to suggest b5-b6 as the next move for white in this in reality unsolvable chess problem. In the translucency of the paper, the distance between the images on the front and back is reduced to infra-thin and the imagination is challenged to give meaning to this (impossible) meeting between love and reason on the chessboard – most likely a metaphor for Duchamp’s personal struggle.

Splash Résidu, the title of this book, is a juxtaposition of two concepts that, at first glance, have nothing to do with each other. Indeed, linguistically, this word combination is completely meaningless, but, barely a letter wide, the space separating/connecting the words opens up the possibility for constructing meanings.

This appeal to the poetic potential in a conceptual-linguistic field of tension when naming things is a game that the artist collective has often played before. Whether it is The Mental Masonry Lab of their own name, The Phenomenal Park as the name chosen for a project, or Splash Résidu for the title of this book, the words always contain a reference to the perceiving/thinking human being, on the one hand, and to physical, material reality, on the other.

The word ‘splash’ is etymologically an onomatopoeia, a phonetic transposition of the sound produced when something hits a water surface hard. It thus refers to something that belongs to the perception of sounds. ‘Résidu’ is a non-recyclable material remnant of a processing or exploitation method. It stands for something that escapes the system and is considered worthless in that context. In the juxtaposition Splash Résidu, this subject-object duality disappears and a poetic universe of a performative practice opens up, in which imagination is central in dealing with matter and each form of ‘résidu’ deserves attention and care as a canvas for wonder.

In his lecture The Creative Act, Marcel Duchamp talks about the personal art coefficient, which describes almost mathematically the relationship between the idea the artist wants to convey and that which the realized work of art ultimately communicates. In the difference between intention and result, there is room for the viewer to perceive and interpret the work in relation to the world. For Duchamp, this is not mere judgement by the spectator, but an essential contribution to the work of art. In light of this, one could describe TMML as a designed condition to deliberately maximize the artistic coefficient by engaging in collaborations with artists, scientists and the participating public.

In their practice, the art coefficient – essentially a form of serendipity – is the result of an intentional wonder in an attempt to expose or develop that which is not sought or is still unacknowledged.
Because in TMML that art coefficient is not merely ‘personal’, but also ‘shared’: all those involved in the projects also participate in that wonder. The shared personal wonder in the mental masonry of this laboratory is a fertile ground for exchange, conversation and reflection.

The first ever jazz record was yet to be released by Original Dixieland ‘Jass’ Band when Duchamp put down on paper the only three musical works he was familiar with. This music had nothing to do with jazz: it wasn’t improvisation around a chord progression or theme that took centre stage, but chance. This is also the case in 3 Stoppages-Étalon, created in the same period. For that work, Duchamp dropped three 1-metre-long threads onto a horizontal plane. He saw the random curves they assumed on falling as new units of measurement that preserve the standard of the metre but undermine its rational basis.

In jazz music, a standard is a composition or chord progression that is constantly picked up as the basis for new arrangements and improvisations. For performers and the public alike, the fun is in the similarities, variations and differences found in the performance, despite and thanks to the history and limitations that come with that standard.

TMML’s projects, too, are carefully directed appropriations of standards, seeking in the laboratory the satisfaction that can arise in working from that standard. Similar to Duchamp’s use of the metre, the standard is appropriated as an expressive medium and gives direction to shared wonder. Depending on the project, that standard is a method (Game of Stones), a procedure (Substance Data), a code (The Phenomenal Park), a space (TMMRadio) … Their appropriation is a form of playful resistance, directed not against the standard it embraces and engages in dialogue with, but against standardization and the normality this entails. It questions what is ordinary and what is familiar and urges to reconsider what is normal. In other words, every TMML project can also be understood as a re-setting of the standard.

Both the appeal to shared personal wonder and an attitude of playful resistance to normality make TMML, more than just an artistic laboratory, a project with great pedagogical potential.

1. I am indebted to Arnaud Hendrickx for this idea of ‘good company’. See Arnaud Hendrickx, ‘A Method of Good Company: Designing an Environment that Triggers Conceptual Blending’, in Knowing (by) Designing: Proceedings of the Conference (Brussels: LUCA and Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, 2013), 765–72.