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

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.
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

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
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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

Thomas Pynchon, Entropy in Slow Learner (London: Vintage Classics, 1998) pp 83-84
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
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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
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
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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 MattaClarks 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 carvedthrough 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-bedefined 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 WHole 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.

From an unpublished interview with Gordon Matta-Clark by Judith Russi Kirschner at the Museum of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

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