'Manyness'
Somewhere between Bataille’s ‘excess’, Lovejoy’s ‘plentitude’, Kant’s ‘mathematical sublime’ and Bergson’s ‘multiplicity’, lives a loosely articulated but dialectically ripe thread within metaphysical discourse. This presentation names that gap ‘Manyness’, an abstract site that examines the poetry and politics of magnitude and her promises of obstinacy. As one of the more notorious Sigmunds once said, “accumulation puts an end to chance.” In the same way that, for instance, mass production has industrialized the man-made accident, accumulation has become an end in and of itself.
In 1919 on the northern harbor of Boston, a large storage tank burst and released a wave of hot molasses through the streets, killing 21 people and injuring 150. This disaster was largely the result of corporate negligence, as the huge demand for industrial alcohol during Prohibition emboldened the United States Industrial Alcohol Company (USIA) to cut corners on safety inspections. Local urban legend says that on hot summer days, the sickly sweet smell of molasses still fills the air.
This lingering scent is an astute example of the resistance of Manyness. Immoderate volumes tend to stage the conditions for an unanticipated excess to be left behind, equipping the disruption with a resilience to time. This residue then names itself. In a way, the residue almost divorces the flood, betraying the spatial in a pursuit of the lasting. This ebullition, the posture of Manyness, is the opposite of scarcity. It is the refusal of the singular in favor of the swarm.
In this session, Kelsey will observe events implicated in the aesthetics of abundance as revolt, and how this research expanded into a material study of barricades, crystallized molasses, and glitter concrete. Such inquests interrogate the role of longevity and durability within dimensional congestions, potentially offering new insights towards sculpture, catastrophe, and demonstration.
