SIMULTANEITY
My first experience of simultaneity was when someone in my class was able to play chess against everybody in the class at the same time with his back turned to us. So 25- each one had his own game of chess, and you just told him what your last move was and he told you what his move was, and he moved on. And he usually won. Simultaneity can give you an incredible force, insofar as it allows you to accommodate what could be and is not, or it is- someplace else at the same time.
MULTIPLICITY
I think that Calvino’s idea of multiplicity is a very cultural idea in the sense that it is true that in the contemporary world we have the idea of multiplicity connected with objects, with things, with the idea of reproduction. For example in art we had this new genre that began in the 60s called multiple. The multiple was a form of printing, but such a kind of printing that you could treat each specimen as if it were an original- and they called it multiples.
Simultaneity is a temporal parallel with multiplicity.
Robert Musil’s great book is “Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaft”, “The man without Qualities”. And it’s a very interesting case because Musil, originally, was student of physics. And studied physics to a very advanced level. There’s even a photo… while he studied physics in Berlin he also took classes with the first client of Mies van der Rohe.
Robert Musil
(1880 - 1942)
You realize the potential of each one of them in a different way, moving in a different way.
POINT OF VIEW
The Man Without Qualities
(1930 - 1942)
REPETITION
And the power of art, in the West especially, compared with other cultures which no longer exist, but which used to be called cool as opposed to hot, diachronic and opposed to synchronic, are cultures in which there’s less questioning of the pattern, and there’s a greater repetition of these patterns which are enhanced by these works of art. In a tribe if one part of the river becomes aware of greater skill and greater artisanry, of shaping the gods or whatever other artifacts, the other part of the river will not change it because changing the meaning is losing faith in what they believe the world is like.
The Savage Mind
(1962)
The first chapter is called the Science of the Concrete, and its very beautifully described. So in philosophy in the West for some reason at a certain moment there is an emergence from this circular repetition and pattern and the pursuit of what could be