Camila Sposati: Addressing Entropy Lisa Le Feuvre

In an age where the dissipation of energy, be it material or metaphorical, seems

endemic, how can art engage with production? Artistic practice cannot change the

world, but it does have a role to complicate, refute and reconfigure structures and

assumptions of perception and understanding. The immutable entropic condition is an

imperative that has a renewed currency today, drawing on the cultural turn to entropy in

the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Is it possible to address such inevitables outside of doom-

laden prophecies or illustrations of statistics? What is there left to say in the face of the

irreversible process of entropy? Can such facts, analyses and ideas be addressed

laterally, generatively and productively?

Camila Sposati pays attention to such concerns, re-engaging discussions of entropy

with a contemporary urgency. Forms of growth and bursts of energy are at the heart of

her artistic practice. Sposati harnesses scientific processes to create artworks that are

proposals for thought, investigating how the rules of entropy impact on process, event,

and perceptions of space. Working with photography, drawing and the occasional

object, she explores patterns of architecture across built, un-built and micro

environments, to interrogate the trajectories of bursts and disappearances of energy.

Today cities explode into being in deserts, full of the promise of future ruins, while

parasitical architecture, be it favelas rolling towards luxury housing in Sao Paolo or Pet

Architecture squeezed into the left-over spaces of Tokyo, takes hold in spaces where

no permission has been given. These stealthy growths are spontaneous, incremental

and only partially controllable as they follow their own course into rise and fall.

Sposati breeds crystals, explodes smoke and compares random instances of

incompatibility, occupying locations in-between the structures forming assumptions of

space and time. The thinker Claire Parnet has asserted, Between two levels is a

difference in potential. A difference in intensity produces a phenomenon, releases or

ejects it, sends it into space.1 De-structuring structure, Sposatis events perform

instances of intensity that change the temperature of their surroundings. Like the pop-

up architecture of Dubai or Tokyo, she throws out proposals for thought, infecting

1 Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, A Conversation: What is it For? in Dialogues II (London: Athlone Press 1987), p23

interstices between possibilities and then holding them for a fraction of an instant in

camera-events that cast a line into a continuous un-representable moment that is

hurled into the future.

In 1971 a short book by Rudolf Arnheim, titled Entropy and Art: an Essay on Disorder

and Order, addressed relationships between art and entropy a term taken from the

Second Law of Thermodynamics that slipped into the vernacular during the 1950s as

fears of energy depletion became mainstream concerns. Arnheim opens his discussion

stating: order is a necessary condition for anything the human mind is to understand.

Arrangements such as the layout of a city or a building, a set of tools, a display of

merchandise, the verbal exposition of facts or ideas, or a painting or piece of music are

called orderly when an observer or listener can grasp their overall structure and the

ramification of the structure in some detail. Order makes it possible to focus on what is

alike and what is different, what belongs together and what is segregated.2 Order

makes sense: it enables assumptions to be made about what can and cannot be

perceived, opens a perceptual choice, and suggests that a tendency to seek balance is

fundamental to human, or indeed living, operations. Order is generally seen as

something to praise: an indicator of good management, efficiency, and care over

scarce resources. A desire for order is indicative of a concern with both perception of

things and things themselves.

Disorder stimulates a desire for order, and with this comes attempts to find equilibrium,

often through the structuring potential of language that, somehow, can bring anything

into line. Disorder leads to a differentiation of elements, a breakdown of structure, and

stimulates a desire to seek out alterative forms of articulation. In the Motion Serendipity

Project Sposati describes incomparable differences and the desire for balance via an

articulation of nomenclature. Red or Brown (2005) shows a red parrot and a brown

cockerel squawking over some feed, the title suggesting there must be some kind of

hierarchal order to this argument that can make the two birds who, surely, do not

naturally occupy the same space, fall into order. Presented as if a scientific comparison

can be made simply from the image, Orange and Red in the Same Line (2007) shows a

pair of white powder lines, one burning orange and the other burning red. It is as if the

artist is trying to pitch colours against each other in a nonsensical competition.

2 Rudolf Arnheim, Entropy and Art: an Essay on Disorder and Order, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1971), p 1

Alongside these images, this series includes a curious object, Disorientated (2005),

made from embuia wood, a now threatened native Brazilian tree, that takes the form of

a four legged stool with elongated limbs, two stretching out, cat-like, making it a

structure of disorder rather than order. The contortions required to make it balance

initiates a negotiation between the human body and the object. As Lawrence Weiner

describes, art is something human beings make to present to others to understand

their place in the world3 - this is a process that interrogates the relationship of human

beings to objects and objects to objects in relation to human beings4, a process of

both order, and its travelling companion disorder. This is an intrinsic part of experience

and its representation.

Entropy is the measure of the dispersal of energy in a system that indicates tendencies

to and away from equilibrium. In 1960, a decade before Arnheims essay, Thomas

Pynchons short story Entropy recounted a tale of a never-ending lease-breaking party

in Washington on a false-spring day in February 1957. Various disorderly guests and

events collide with the party, taking in a lovers argument over a misunderstanding of

communication theory, drunken Navy men seeking a brothel, and a group of jazz

musicians having a session, only without the instruments. The host, Meatball Mulligan,

debates whether he should hide in the closet or rein in the chaos. Weighing up the

options he chooses the latter, achieving his aim by creating order amongst the

disparate elements by making the right introductions. Compatibility gradually brings

balance to the proceedings. All the while, in the apartment above, a man named

Callisto continues his life as usual, his home a sealed hothouse. Over seven years he

has developed the environment to maintain he perfect temperature 37 degrees

Fahrenheit living an existence that involves the exertion of as little energy as possible

the inverse of the apartment below. Callisto expounds to his cohabiter the Laws of

Thermodynamics, quoting a definition of entropy as the measure of disorganization for

a closed system5 that, according to his references, in an isolated system always

constantly increases.6. The application of theory to his quotidian life became an

enacted metaphor within his tiny enclave of regularity in the citys chaos, alien to the

3 Lawrence Weiner, Intervention in Lawrence Weiner, Gilda Williams (ed.), London: Phaidon Press, 1998, p 132 4 Lawrence Weiner, Interview by Dieter Schwarz, Writing and Interviews with Lawrence Weiner 19682003, Gerti Fietzek and Gregor Stemmrich (eds.) (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Canz Verlag, 2004), p192 5 Thomas Pynchon, Entropy in Slow Learner (London: Vintage Classics, 1998), p88 6 Thomas Pynchon, Entropy in Slow Learner (London: Vintage Classics, 1998), p87

vagaries of weather, of national politics, of any civil disorder7. In contrast, only a floor

below, the noisy chaotic present fills Meatball Mulligans enclave. As the party reaches

its fortieth hour order is resumed amongst his guests and the external, rainy city of

Washington comes in line with the perfect temperature of Callistos own apartment.

In the period between these publications, the notion of entropy was picked up as a

symptom of the contemporary by a number of artists engaged with rethinking the

possibilities of artistic practice. In 1973 Robert Smithson declared in an interview with

Alison Sky: On the whole I would say that entropy contradicts the usual notion of a

mechanistic world view. In other words its a condition that is irreversible, its a

condition thats moving towards a gradual equilibrium in many ways. Perhaps a nice

succinct definition of entropy is Humpty Dumpty. Like Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the kings horses and all the kings men couldnt put

Humpty Dumpty back together again.8 Sposati explores the transitory nature of

materials, presenting time, space and scale as elastic concepts. She gives equal

weighting to process and end result, embracing Smithsons urge to not only accept

change and decay, but also to embrace unavoidable entropic functions. 1973 was the

time of an energy crisis, explored thoughtfully in the Canadian Centre for Architectures

2007 exhibition 1973: Sorry, Out of Gas9 which looked to the contemporaneous

responses to the oil crisis within the field of architecture. Today these realities and fears

are returning. In this interview Smithson continued to explain: One might even say that

the whole energy crisis is a form of entropy. The earth being the closed system, theres

only a certain amount of resources, and of course there is an attempt to reverse

entropy through the recycling of garbage10. Reversal from such a crisis, then as now, is

impossible: the present can only learn from the past. To resent the forward arrow of

entropy, however much it may not be desired, is an impossible position as to do so

would be to believe that what has gone before could be transformed11.

Sposatis interrogation of entropy extends out from these legacies. The photographic

diptych Entropic System (2003/2006) shows an image of a plume of green smoke

7 Thomas Pynchon, Entropy in Slow Learner (London: Vintage Classics, 1998) pp 83-84 8 Robert Smithson, Entropy Made Visible, an interview with Alison Sky (1973) in The Collected Writings of Robert Smithson, Jack Flam (ed.) (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996), p301 9 Curated by Mirko Zardini 10 Robert Smithson, Entropy Made Visible, an interview with Alison Sky (1973) in The Collected Writings of Robert Smithson, Jack Flam (ed.) (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996), p302 11 See W. G. Sebald, Against the Irreversible: On Jean Amery in On The Natural History of Destruction (New York, Modern Library Paperback, 2004), p156

moving across a beach, alongside a second image showing a network of crystalline

forms. Each photograph is sourced from wider investigations the artist has developed:

the left from Crystal Growing, a series where she worked with crystals to explore low

entropy, and the right from Smoke Project, which uses military smoke as material to

choreograph instances of high entropy. Both crystals and smoke are substances that

fascinate Sposati they sparkle and obscure while the creation and loss energy that

produces them remains invisible. Sposati's works operate as series of oscillating

relationships with the materials that form the objects, and the ways that the encounter

with them operates, creating a discursive paradox where structures and lines are

placed in productive opposition to each other.

In Smoke Project Sposati temporarily disrupts selected urban and rural settings by

setting off vivid clouds of artificially coloured smoke at unexpected moments. Invisible

forces, such as wind and movement of people, disperse the initial chaos of colour until

it disappears completely, leaving nothing but its memory. Sposatis explosions of

energy take up as much space as possible, yet leave no material trace. Each event is

captured with a single photograph showing the dispersal of the smoke. In these images

there really is smoke without fire; the smoke is a process, not a cause or effect, that

intensifies what already exists. Praia Grande (2003), the smoke-event in Entropic

System, was conducted on a large beach on the east bank of the Rio Avade estuary

in Portugal, the photograph framing a burst of energy across an expanse of sand, that

has itself been produced through entropy over long geological-scale time. In another

image in the Smoke Project, red smoke is released in a busy urban pedestrianised area,

intensifying the densely occupied space, while in another pink smoke released in a

domestic kitchen shows the human-sized scale, and in yet another, blue released

overlooking the ocean shows the sea as a space of possibilities.

The immediacy of these smoke experiments led Sposati to consider how she could

harness low entropy, as opposed to this process of high energy, to create events.

Crystals grow with minute amounts of energy, forming building blocks to develop their

own unique forms next to and on top of each other. Crystallographers define the

characteristic shape of a crystal a habit a term that refers to a repetitive,

unconscious behaviour pattern that becomes a convention through repetition and a

tendency to move towards a system of order. Habit, in all of its applications, brings an

impression of order to an unknown, disordered, experience. Crystal Growing consists

of both photographs and drawings that describe crystal growth, working with scientists

at University College London where the artist herself grows crystals from various

materials. Defined as sculptures for example Sodium Chlorate Sculpture, Rochelle

Salt Sculpture or Aluminium Sulphate Sculpture (all 2007) Sposati focuses on a

specific moment in the growth of each crystal through the time-freezing act of

photography. Hovering between image and object, single and pairs of crystals are

photographed against solid backgrounds removing all information of scale and context.

Her mappings are ambiguous, moving between models for macro-scale urban

environments and micro-studies in the vein of Andreas Feiningers detailed images of

nature.

The right hand image of Entropic System is a work from this series titled Chromium Salt

Sculpture (2006), a detail of green growing crystals that parallel the sweeping

movement of the plume of smoke across Praia Grande to the left. In Sposatis smoke

and crystal experiments her camera cuts into time and space to freeze moments of a

constantly shifting system, denying possibilities of fixity in spite of the photographic

image. The filmmaker Hollis Frampton claims, The photographers whole art may be

seen as a cutting process. The frame is a fourfold cut in projective space12. This is

further intensified by the photographers decision on setting contrast and colour levels

that the scientific process of photography allows. The moment of making an image is a

complex cut (a process that is dimensionless) into time and space that halts the

continuum of entropy for an extended instant. Frampton underlines the chemical

properties of photography: the image is created from cutting and alchemy methods at

the core of Sposatis practice. He describes photography itself an activity that uses

chemical processes to draw with light, forming images via the light sensitive properties

of materials such as the halide crystals of silver, certain salts of iron, chromium, and

the platinum metals, a few rigid polymer plastics, a number of tars, some gums, and

zinc oxide in one crystalline state are sensitive to light.13 Crystal Growing entangles

material with methodology and content.

Two bodies of work titled Drawing Nucleation and Drawing Construction are other

strands of Crystal Growing. Nucleation is the process that occurs in the formation of a

12 Hollis Frampton, Some Propositions on Photography (1065) in On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT press, 2009), p 6 13 Hollis Frampton, Some Propositions on Photography (1065) in On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT press, 2009), p 8

crystal enabling possibilities for future growth. These drawings utilise literal cuts that are

performed with a sharp scalpel, rather than a pen or pencil, to sketch out circular forms,

at times with colour injected, to create descriptions of spaces redolent of an

architectural plan describing retro-future buildings in undeveloped space. The paper

landscapes recall a birds eye view of the structure filling the final scenes of

Michelangelo Antonionis 1970 film Zabriskie Point which closes with a series of slow

motion and fragmented explosions that seemed to be willed into being though the

power of thought. In the film, this explosive disorder calibrates the inequality of late

1960s American society and counter-culture. Made from blocks of 50 A4 sheets of

paper, Drawing Nucleation and Drawing Construction are reminiscent of Gordon Matta-

Clarks cut drawings. Made from stacks of thick paper, the artist roughly cut into them

using a blunt scalpel to describe a process of drawing through architecture, making

incisions in the same as way he used a chainsaw on buildings. Cut drawings made in

relation to the 1973 Genoa work A W-Hole House, for example, consist of carved-

through layers of paper framed behind glass and displayed sitting on the floor of the

gallery, rather than hanging on the wall, giving an architectural birds eye view. One side

of the frame is left open to reveal a sectional view, showing architecture as a system

built up of layers. Unlike Matta-Clarks, Sposatis layers build up rather than into,

performing a reverse entropic process that itself in the future will move into a yet-to-be-

defined disordered state.

Matta-Clarks drawings and photographs, as with Sposati, are material traces of

occasions that have now dispersed with no trace. The event of Matta-Clarks A W-

Hole House took place in an iron foundry scheduled for demolition that the artist

described as a little concrete building, very Mediterranean terracotta shingle roof, and

a beautiful structure, in one of the heavy industrial areas in Genoa. He was fascinated

by the structures interior plan, which had been developed from a simple and rigorous

dividing process around the centre of the building. A square room had been separated

into two halves, with the second half divided in half again one side for an office, and

the other halved into a bathroom and coatroom, with the bathroom further subdivided

in two. Everything was progressively divided so that the remaining piece was 1/32 of

the whole14. Such an architectural crystalline structure is of great interest to Sposati,

feeding into her interest in Pet Architecture, in particular the work of Atelier Bow Wow,

echoing Matta-Clarks provocation that the notion of mutable space is especially taboo 14 Donald Wall, Gordon Matta-Clarks Building Dissections, an interview in Arts Magazine May 1976, p76

in ones own home. People live in their space with a temerity that is frightening.15

Sposati demands that attention is paid to the ways in which entropy mutates

surrounding space, seeking to engage with the process and utilize its force to

understand the world as a constantly changing zone of disorder that we endlessly seek

to order again and again.

15 From an unpublished interview with Gordon Matta-Clark by Judith Russi Kirschner at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 1978