Measuring is a way of knowing the magnitude of things, of controlling, of putting things in order. A recent novel by Daniel Kehlmann, The Measurement of the World, takes as its protagonists two historical figures, the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, a supporter of abstraction and logical deduction, and the astronomer Alexander von Humboldt, a naturalist and tireless explorer. Although they represent two ways of conceiving scientific knowledge, both shared an obsession: measuring the world. But we don’t need to go back to the transition between the 18th and 19th centuries to talk about order, measurements and, above all, obsessions. In a present deeply marked by the mania for effectiveness and the economy of time (and, why not say it here, by standardization and mediatization), the vindication of personal spaces, values and logics can generate new ways of seeing things, of questioning the world or, simply, of approaching it, opposing it or evading it.
There is a whole genealogy of artists whose line of work questions the notion of order, shows that other logics are possible or highlights the absurdity of the economy of time. In Paradox of Praxis 1. Sometimes doing something leads to nothing (1997), Francis Alÿs walked a good stretch of Mexico City, pushing a heavy block of ice whose size gradually decreased until it disappeared completely. Literally, “sometimes doing something leads to nothing.” The French artist Claude Closky, on the other hand, builds taxonomies or, on the contrary, destroys systems by concluding that their logic is absurd. He makes, for example, inventories: the first thousand numbers classified alphabetically (Les 1000 premiers nombres classés par ordre alphabétique, 1989); He numbers the squares on a squared pad or lists the names in a telephone directory (8633 people I don’t know at Dôle, 1993).
Since the Trois stoppages étalon (1913-14) with which Duchamp created, as if it were a joke, a new image of the unit of measurement, many artists use their own subjective units of measurement, such as Stanley Brouwn, or detail the different measurements, such as the succession of canvases by Mel Bochner as a representation “of the world as a fantasy of quantifiable truth.”
There is no doubt that Daniel Jacoby belongs to this genealogy of artists who seek to approach the world from new or unusual points of view, highlighting the way in which, based on a certain scale of values, we structure our surroundings, loading them with meaning and authority. Like Duchamp, Brouwn, Bochner, Alÿs or Simon Starling, Daniel Jacoby wants to show how these values can be disrupted, questioned and, in any case, not accepted as absolute. His work is based on the need to question the parameters and values assumed.
With a will as playful as it is obsessive, Jacoby revels in unproductive efforts, in futile knowledge. He defines systems and methodologies, builds taxonomies and identifies an order in amorphous systems. In Weather Forecast for February 20th for the next 100 years he had the collaboration of the Department of Astronomy and Meteorology of the University of Barcelona to prepare a forecast for the next 100 years on February 20th (the date that coincided with his inauguration in Mollet del Vallés). He made musical and video reissues from the times the word “you” appeared (79 times) in the Beatles’ Abbey Road album (79 times “you” in the Abbey Road album), the word “no” in Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (271 times “no” in “A Clockwork Orange”) or a whole repertoire of terms in strict alphabetical order (starting with the A of “actas” and ending with the Z “zamora”, passing through “ética”, “felicitarnos” and, of course, “yo”) from a fragment of a speech by President Hugo Chávez (Extracts from the speech of President Hugo Chávez on December 3, 2007, in alphabetical order). Following this idea of creating order based on criteria that do not conform to standards, in a recent work, Für Eloise de Ludwig van Beethoven en order de tonality, the notes of the piano piece composed by Beethoven are ordered according to parameters different from those of the original composition: in this case, it is no longer a question of transmitting and evoking emotions through a melody as its author did, but rather reordering the notes starting from the lowest tone to progressively reach the highest note. An order, from less to more, that the artist also used in a more physical way when installing 894 documents from the Youth Documentation Centre in order of height, giving rise to an installation of clear minimalist references. In all these works Jacoby seems to insist that another type of order is possible.
He also proposed “dimensioning” the concepts of “grande” and “small”. What do we mean when we say that something is big? In relation to what? How do we quantify it? We can relate big to a huge paella for three hundred diners or to an ocean liner capable of holding thousands of passengers and small to a memory card to store images in a camera, but from a questionnaire answered by hundreds of people, Jacoby drew his conclusions: the absolute numerical value of the adjective “big” is equivalent to the distance between Bilbao and Salamanca, that is, 398,387.44 meters, while the absolute numerical value of the adjective “small” is equivalent to the diameter of a two-cent Euro coin, that is, 18.04 millimeters. You can’t be more precise. Or can you?
In some way, Daniel Jacoby’s work is sheltered by scientific methods (with its desire to measure, classify, order) and by references whose seriousness is beyond doubt (minimalism or classical music, to give two examples) to explore absurdity and outlandish ideas. Their conclusions, as precise as they are random, do not fail to show that the value of their work lies in their ability to ask questions that, from their apparent naivety, are free of all kinds of prejudice and preconceived ideas.
The mission of the project A Toblerone of exactly 50 g and (n) Toblerones of approximately 50 g was to find a Toblerone that weighed the exact 50 grams advertised on its packaging. Not so much to question the acclaimed Swiss precision but to celebrate the discovery, the moment when things are exactly as promised. The experiment began on December 3, 2009 at 7:58 p.m. The weighing process was carried out in a kind of home laboratory that included a precision scale, a clock to record the time and a photograph of each of the 492 Toblerones that were weighed until the one that met the requirements was found. Throughout the experiment, Toblerones were weighed that were far from the expected weight, either overweight (50.867 grams for the heaviest) or underweight (49.173 grams for the lightest). 26 days later, that is, on December 29, 2009 at 7:54 p.m., the experiment was ended because the digits that appeared on the scale with the weight of Toblerone number 492 were 50,000 grams.
In reality, the Toblerone Lab that Daniel Jacoby directed for 26 days was not very different from other scientific laboratories. Routine and everyday life are part of the day-to-day activities that take place there. In a laboratory, most of the daily work, the different experiments lead to nothing (often doing something leads to nothing) until the tests are aligned and precise results are reached. In the Toblerone Lab, many Toblerones had to be unwrapped, discarded and eaten until the wonderful encounter was reached, the maximum precision, the exactness. An exactness that is absolutely ephemeral since the conditions of the chocolate and other external elements could make the final result vary by a few milligrams.
In this way, Jacoby works with “serious” references, such as the conceptual, the scientific, the rigor and the systematic to reach that moment of precision that, in reality, is as random as it is useless, to show the absurd and the lack of sense, to shake the foundations of the “absolute truths”. Jacoby could belong to that other genealogy of Bartlebys who, instead of saying “I’d rather not” (as the protagonist of Melville’s story says), get involved in long and meticulous processes that lead nowhere. Precisely because the philosophy of “sometimes doing something leads nowhere” can be used to pose the most irreverent, radical and groundbreaking questions. Even if it doesn’t seem like it.
Montse Badia
[Text published in Daniel Jacoby’s catalogue in Cajasol, 2010]
