On the 19th of April in 2024, during the yearly event Groningse Nacht van de Filosofie, I was invited to respond to the main theme of the year's edition—chaos—in a performative manner. Every year, about 800 people attend Groningse Nacht van de Filosofie, an annual event hosted in the Groningen Forum that features a range of talks by local and global academics and philosophers. For the theme of chaos, Graham Harman was a keynote speaker whose talk against Kantian epistemology was given as one of the main frameworks in relation to the theme of chaos.
The concept of chaos as a source of non-linearity in modern physics and the mythologization of chaos as the creator of nature and planetary systems were the other two aspects provided by other event speakers. For this occasion, I constructed a performative score that was titled Cleanstorying. In it, I positioned myself as a cleaner, tasked with cleaning the ink from seven books I chose to represent canonical Western thought, including two books by René Descartes, two second-hand books by Sigmund Freud, a book on the introduction to logic, an antique ethnographic book on ‘savage’ women, and Immanuel Kant’s book Critique of Reason.
The books were donated from a local second-hand bookstore, Isis, whose owner, concerning my intent, made this particular selection of books. The objective of the performance was to disrupt the audience's perception, given that, at its core, cleaning books is an unusual activity. Cleaning these particular books that could be artistically speculated to have determined the path of Western thought was the subtle critique and an alternative proposal I opted to share with the spectators.
The performance was created in accordance with a score I have written, which included three acts: preparation of the space, the main act, and the aftermath.
3.5 hours
part of Night of Philosophy, Groningen Forum
performance
I
The preparation act began the moment I started to slowly walk to the prepared
space of the performance, carrying seven books, one small-sized aluminium bucket with an algae sponge soaked in water, a glass jar with two extra algae sponges, and two linen towels gifted by my late grandmother.
Upon arrival at the space, seven medium-sized aluminium buckets filled with cold
water were waiting for me. I have placed these buckets two hours prior to the beginning of the performance in a circle, following a cardinal directions order. The
water was gathered from the nearest sink in the building.
I stepped into the space and walked a circle around the buckets; first stopping at
the north side, I took one of the books and deposited it in the metal bucket, allowing water to submerge the pages of the book.
Then I walked to the east-side facing bucket, left the smaller bucket with an algae sponge next to it, placed a book in the bucket, and proceeded to walk to the west bucket, leaving another book in the water. This action was repeated till all the buckets received a book.
When the circle was rounded, I walked toward the north-facing bucket that had
the Critique of Reason, I gradually knelt down next to it; slowly unwrapping one of
the towels. The other towel I kept wrapped, putting it to the right side where I was
kneeling. I brought my gaze to the people, slowly observing the space that I was in,
quietly looking at the audience. The preparation act was completed.
register
II
The second act began when I approached the Critique of Reason by attempting to fully submerge it in the water. The book’s hardcover is made out of a carton and weighs approximately 250 grams, making the book float.
After repeating several times to place the book under the water, I took it out and placed it on the towel. With my right hand, I took the sponge and opened the book's first page with the left one.
Instead of reading the first sentence of a preface, I began brushing the page with the sponge, trying to clean the ink from the paper. I went through each page, cleaning it in a repetitive manner.
As I continued to add water to the book with the sponge, the papers began to break down from the moisture. Some of the pages completely disintegrated. When each page was swept with a sponge, I closed the book, placed it back into the bucket filled with now murky water, and proceeded to the next book.
This action was repeated seven times till all the books were symbolically cleaned.
in three stages
III
During the period of two and a half hours, I experienced moderate feelings of frustration as I was continuously cleaning one book after another, noticing that the ink was not fading and the book pages were gradually dissolving. Regardless of supposedly failing to fulfil the desired outcome of the action, I calmly proceeded, feeling a sense of a meditative state of mind. From the intent of cleaning the ink from each book, the action turned into a compromising act of care and erosion.
During the whole time of the second act, I did not engage in any communication with the audience; just occasionally brought my gaze back to recoup the environment I was in. To my surprise, no audience member came up to me either. Having no verbal communication with the surroundings, I began noticing the material qualities of each book, water’s influence on them, and how my physical engagement—from careful to a more rigid treatment of the books—affected the object-based relationship I was engaging in. I used my right hand to use the sponge and my left to flip pages while kneeling in the same posture next to each bucket to maintain the exact same degree of repetition.
My legs eventually became numb, resulting in a tingling sensation that exacerbated the discomfort. However, I could maintain my kneeling by breathing in and out with care.
There were moments that I felt isolated, given that I was in a crowded area and could hear a lot of noises, yet I had to maintain my poise, not communicate, and repeat the action, which made my legs hurt and my hands wrinkle. When I would occasionally look up at the audience, I noticed how swiftly they would change, and only some would remain sitting up close, following each move I made.
After roughly two and a half hours of the second act, one of the organizers softly signalled that Groningse Nacht van de Filosofie was about to end. Since there was no clock nearby and the second act could not be finished until all the books were cleaned, I had one book left to wash when I was approached. Luckily, the final book—Sigmund Freud's essay on women's genitalia—was so damp that it fell apart in my hands as soon as I took it out of the bucket. I decided to place it back in the bucket and let water disperse it.
The second act was done, and with dizziness in my head and all my clothes soaked with water, I stepped out of the performance space, trying to walk toward the dressing room. Unfortunately, it was difficult for me to leave the space due to the combination of disorientation and numbness in my legs; one of the organizers helped me get back to the dressing room. When the event was over and the majority of people were exiting the building, the third act, the aftermath, began. I returned to the performance space with a big glass jar in hand.
All seven books were drenched, and while some were scattered around the buckets, some remained in the water. Cautiously, I approached each bucket and collected samples of water in the glass jar. Then, I proceeded to collect what was left from the books, sealing each in bioplastic envelopes. One large bucket that was provided by the event organizers was then filled with the remaining water residue, which I took with me. I cleaned the space and left, returning the remaining materials to the studio.