georges bataille: "l'informe"

". . . un terme servant à déclasser, exigeant généralement que chaque chose ait sa forme. Ce qu'il désigne n'a ses droits dans acucun sens et se fait écraser partout comme une araignée ou un ver de terre. Il faudrait en effet, pour que les hommes académiques soient contents, que l'univers prenne forme. La philosophie entière n'a pas d'autre but: il s'agit de donner un redingote à ce qui est, une redingote mathématique. Par contre affirmer que l' univers ne ressemble à rien et n'est qu' informe revient à dire que l'univers est quelque chose comme une araignée ou un crachat." Georges Bataille: "Informe." Documents 7 (December 1929), p. 382. Bataille's definition posits the formlessness of the world as implying its intrinsic worthlessness as well as the unredeemable futility of our thinking about it. He uses the notion of "form" in an abstract, philosophical sense which is at best obliquely related to the notion of visual form –– but his evocative visual metaphors resonate strongly with a certain strand in the art of Dada and Surrealism which is exemplified in works by Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Raoul Ubac, and Jacques-André Boiffard. An important contribution to the psychology of formlessness which relates directly to Bataille's suggestions, is Sartre's discussion of viscosity in the penultimate chapter of L'Être et le Néant (pp. 690 ff.). References Georges Bataille: "Informe." Documents 7 (December 1929), p. 382. [Reprinted/translated in: Bataille 1970, p. 217; Bataille 1985, p. 217; Bois & Krauss 1996, p. 6.] Georges Bataille: Oeuvres Complètes I. Paris: Gallimard, 1970. Georges Bataille: Visions of Excess. Selected Writings, 1927-1939. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Yve-Alain Bois & Rosalind Krauss: L'Informe. Mode d'Emploi. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1996. Rosalind Krauss & Jane Livingston: L'Amour Fou. Photography & Surrealism. Washington, DC: The Corcoran Gallery of Art. New York, NY: Abbeville Press, 1985.

physics

In many cosmologies (from the ancient Greek "Kaos" through Kant to the current "big bang"), formless stuff constitutes the primordial beginning of the world, and thus carries no negative connotations at all. Nevertheless, sentiments of futility and meaninglessness do not have to spring from anti-scientific preconceptions such as Bataille's. One can easily find scientific propositions which imply the ultimate uselessness of everything. A good example is the second law of thermodynamics, which states that all isolated physical systems evolve toward a statistically uniform state. This seems to predict that complete boringness is the fate of the universe. This part of modern physics constitutes the background for many pieces by Robert Smithson in the 1960's.