Affective entropy

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Notes

Photographs of the Spiral Jetty, Utah, F.. Colman, 2005.

1 Robert Smithson, “The Spiral Jetty” (first published in Arts of the Environment, ed. Gyorgy Kepes (New York: G. Braziller, 1972) in Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley: U of California P, 1996) 152; hereafter referenced as Flam. For directions to the jetty, and related works, including the Spiral Jetty film, see http://www.robertsmithson.com/earthworks/spiral_jetty.htm

2 Smithson, “The Spiral Jetty” in Flam 149.

3 Ibid. 148.

4 Smithson, “Entropy and the New Monuments” (first published in Artforum 5.10 (June 1966)) in Flam 10–23 (21).

5 See Greg Whiteley's 2005 film New York Doll on Arthur Kane and his involvement with the LDS church.

6 Robert Hobbs, Robert Smithson: Sculpture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1981) 193.

7 Thanks to Bevin Yeatman for discussion on the subjective perception of art and the jetty. Deleuze and Guattari discuss the “partial observer” in their What is Philosophy? [1991], trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson (Verso: London, 1994) 129–32.

8 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy? 130–31.

9 Guillaume Apollinaire, Les Peintres Cubistes (Paris, 1913) in Theories of Modern Art, ed. Herschel B. Chipp (Berkeley: U of California P, 1968) 225.

10 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy? 164, 178, 182.

11 Smithson in Gregoire Müller (1971) “… The Earth, Subject to Cataclysms, is a Cruel Master” (interview with Robert Smithson) (first published in Arts Magazine (Sept. 1971)) in Flam 256–57.

12 For discussion of Deleuze's critique of the transcendental illusion at the heart of concepts such as entropy, see Deleuze, Difference and Repetition [1968], trans. Paul Patton (London and New York: Continuum, 1994) 228–29.

13 Smithson, “A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art” (first published in Art International 12.3 (1968)) in Flam 78–94 (84).

14 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition 228–29.

15 For Deleuze on Bergson, see chapter 2, “Repetition for Itself” in Difference and Repetition; also Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (London: Athlone, 1989) 44–46, 82. For Smithson on Bergson, see his essay “Entropy and the New Monuments” in Flam 19. Deleuze, and Deleuze and Guattari use embryology to address evolution in a number of their works; see Keith Ansell Pearson's discussion of this term in Viroid Life: Perspectives on Nietzsche and the Transhuman Condition (London and New York: Routledge, 1997) 126–31.

16 For a discussion of the scientists of thermodynamics, see chapters 8 and 9 of Ilya Prigione and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (New York: Bantam, 1984). For a comprehensive discussion of Maxwell's legacy, see Bruce Clarke's essay “Allegories of Victorian Thermodynamics,” Configurations 4.1 (1996): 67–90; citations from Maxwell from 1855 69.

17 William Carlos Williams, Paterson (New York: New Directions, 1992). Williams was Smithson's paediatrician, and early childhood carer.

18 Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey” (first published in Artforum 7.4 (Dec. 1967)) in Flam 68–74. For Smithson's position of his art aesthetic, see Smithson, “Towards the Development of an Air Terminal Site” (first published in Artforum 6.10 (June 1967)) in Flam 52–60 (59), and Smithson's comments in “Discussions with Heizer, Oppenheim, Smithson,” eds. Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp (first published in Avalanche (fall 1970)) in Flam 242–52 (244).

19 Smithson, “The Domain of the Great Bear,” with Mel Bochner (first published in Art Voices 5.4 (1966)) in Flam 26–33 (33).

20 Beyond the constraints of this essay, Nietzsche's position on the fracturing of the future through the nihilistic movements of entropy offers further insight to Smithson's equally millenarian pronouncements. See Nietzsche's discussion of entropy in his notebooks The Will to Power [1880s], trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random, 1968) sect. 708.

21 Smithson, “Entropy and the New Monuments” in Flam 19–23.

22 Ibid. 21.

23 Ibid.; emphasis added.

24 Ibid.

25 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition 246–47; Deleuze, The Logic of Sense [1969], trans. Mark Lester and Charles J. Stivale (New York: Columbia UP, 1990) 70.

26 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy [1962], trans. Hugh Tomlinson (London and New York: Continuum, 1986) 45.

27 Ibid.; and Deleuze, Difference and Repetition 224.

28 Difference and Repetition 225–27, 329 n. 5, 7; Nietzsche and Philosophy 45.

29 Difference and Repetition 223–25.

30 Ibid. 244–47.

31 See Deleuze, on his formulation of his differential calculus, in Difference and Repetition 170–82.

32 Nietzsche and Philosophy 45.

33 What is Philosophy? 193, 131–32, 177, 198–99.

34 Smithson, “Entropy and the New Monuments” 17; “Minus Twelve” (first published in Battcock, Minimal Art (1968)) in Flam 114.

35 Smithson in Paul Toner and Robert Smithson (eds.), “Interview with Robert Smithson (April 1970)” in Flam 234–41 (238).

36 Smithson, “The Spiral Jetty” (1972) 149.

37 Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (London: Athlone, 1986) 84–86.

38 Ibid. 84.

39 Smithson frequently alluded to Pascal's concept of the “centre” as “everywhere” in his writings, and gave an explanation for his source to James Fitzsimmons, the Editor of Art International in correspondence regarding the article “The Domain of the Great Bear” (1966). Smithson wrote: “Borges took the Pascal quote from the Brunschvieg text, and quoted it at the end of his Fearful Sphere of Pascal. In the Pensees translated by W.F. Trotter (1952), Section II. The Misery of Man without God, Pascal says, “The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere …’” (Smithson's emphasis; Smithson and Holt Archive, roll # 3832, Fitzsimmons correspondence dated 3 Jan. 1965).

40 As Keith Ansell Pearson usefully describes the complexities involved in thinking through the co-extensive nature of entropy and evolution in machinic systems in his book Viroid Life 144–45.

41 Deleuze, Cinema 1 85.

42 What is Philosophy? 193; emphasis added.

43 Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics [2000], trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London and New York: Continuum, 2004) 20–45.

44 Smithson discusses the spectre of reality in his essay “A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art” (first published in Art International 12.3 (1968)) in Flam 78–94 (91); Deleuze discusses his third synthesis of time and gives the example of Hamlet in Difference and Repetition 88.