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Jorn—Luck and Change

kac attac <kacattac@gmail.com>
Wed, Sep 13, 2023, 6:50 PM
to Stefan

LUCK AND CHANGE
DAGGER AND GUITAR
Asger Jorn
The status of the aesthetic problems of the present day
"One evening I sat Beauty on my knees - And I found her bitter
And I abused her.
I armed myself against justice.
I fled. O witches, O misery, O hatred, to you my treasure was
entrusted!
.. Misfortune was my god. I stretched myself out in the mud. I
dried myself in the air of crime. And I played some fine tricks on
madness.
And the spring brought the idiot's frightening laughter.
- oh! every vice, anger, luxury - magnificent, that luxury - above
all, falsehood and sloth."
Arthur Rimbaud
The two unsolved problems hindering further progress in the systemiza-
tion of the scientific research of aesthetics today are the declining ability
to give the topic a serviceable definition and the difficulty in finding the
clear and tenable distinction between the object of aesthetics and the object
of art, especially in the question of the essence of dance, music, poetry and
pictorial art, that is to say, the essence of the fine arts. As far as these are
concerned, an understanding has been generally reached that they are not
identical with the aesthetie, but merely represent an especially effective and
rarely failing technique for the exposition of aesthetic effects. Moreover, in
certain circles there is also a gradually dawning feeling that the fine arts
themselves never represent pure beauty, but are above all arts, and as such


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always more than beauty, with an effect going deeper and transmitting
more than the purely aesthetic. This is something we touch upon here in
the indication of the ethical character of art and which is manifested in
more recent art by the pictorial content being moved from the aesthetic
over to the magical, even though this word has to be understood in a new
meaning as the expression of power.
As far as the problem of aesthetic definition is concerned, then the
difficulty lies in being unable to limit the aesthetic area to an easily compre-
hensible field of activity with a clear distinction between the true methodical
activity of aesthetics and auxiliary investigations into other disciplines,
economics, sociology, politics, biology, psychology, technology, religion etc,
from which benefit and experience can be derived. Furthermore, the blurred
boundary between aesthetics and art also causes even the most rigorous sep-
aration between aesthetics and the other philosophical areas (ethics, logic)
to have no objective validity and to be based merely upon sensory illusion
uncovered more and more by each new experience.
If, in an attempt at empirical aesthetics, we take the road of expe-
rience to find the aesthetic object in the articles and laws of beauty, we
immediately come up against resistance from subjective judgement,
which perceives the human being as a primary existence in relation to his
thoughts. This judgement, the individual's judgement, takes its point of
departure in the individual's reaction to the sensed object, a precondition
and a point of departure which no one can deny.
The objective synthesis
If the individual judgement necessary to construct an aesthetic doctrine
is to be coordinated with the aesthetic judgements of other individuals,
then this can only happen by getting behind these judgements in order to
analyse the common preconditions reflected in the internal psycho-physi-
logical similarities and the bio-sociological dependence of the individu-
als, as is done, for example, in medical science, to discover the common
human subjectivity or the community of inter-human interest which is a
bio-physiological, sociological and cultural fact.


Asger Jorn Luck and Chance Dagger and Guitar
21
The wider question then becomes whether this organic community of
interest extends out over the human into the vegetable and animal king-
doms, whether the whole biological world can be perceived as a collected in-
terdependence, a fellowship of interest, an organic subjectivity and mutual
necessity, and historically as an evolutionary unity, or, in short, whether we
can make aesthetics relate to the natural sciences.
However, to achieve a real objective aesthetics it is necessary to dem-
onstrate a causal unity between the forms of reaction of the organic and the
inorganie worlds which reaches from the macrocosmic aesthetics of the uni-
verse itself to the atom's microcosmic reactions of an aesthetic character. If
this is not possible, then the results of both subjective and objective aesthet-
is are worthless and the establishment of a scientific aesthetics impossible.
The synthesis for which I am here the spokesman definitively breaks
with the intermixing of aesthetics and art theory, a break which is based
upon new experiences and arguments, the most weighty of which is
perhaps the recognition, derived from the development of modern art,
of the value of so-called primitive art and the consequent understand-
ing that aesthetic recognition and any acquaintanceship with the idea of
beauty, the understanding even of the difference between the thing and its
depiction, is quite meaningless for elemental artistic creation. As, into the
bargain, it is apparent that modern aesthetic education, as known from
the art academies, is directly restrictive to creative ability in art, these facts
demonstrate that not only is the aesthetic knowledge of our time worthless
but also directly damaging and thus, in other words, false.
The extreme definition of aesthetics
This acknowledgment, which is shared by all aestheticians, has gradually
made it generally appreciated that aesthetics should not be understood as
a phenomenon exclusively connected with the fine arts. On the contrary,
it represents one of our forms of existential experience, its subjective point
of departure in interest having forced science to perceive the object of
aesthetics as impenetrable by exact, scientific research, so that it has
to be perceived as something which can be described and to a certain


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extent limited, but not defined and computed, remaining a demonstrable
and communicable unknown', which can throw its light over one of the
problematic forms in which our being exposes itself, and thereby have an
instructive significance for art and criticism.
That this instructive significance is only to the detriment of both
art and criticism has really nothing to do with science nor obviously the
critics, but it involves artistic activity and the artists' working conditions
themselves in the most painful way. Because of this inconvenience it must,
of course, be the artists themselves who, by theoretical activity, have to
intervene and change course about this point.
What have I then been able to change in this hazy picture? Apparently
something quite insignificant, as I have only tightened up this 'aesthetic
definition' from being something unknown and enigmatic' to mean 'the
unknoren' or everything unknown and enigmatic. By this clarification of
the aesthetic object, it takes on not only a subjective and existential but
also an objective and essential significance, from its smallest detail to its
greatest context. This makes possible the establishment of the following
outline, of which we will only have occasion in the following text to deal
with the first half and point c. III.
Brief outline of the fields of activity in aesthetic research
Thesis: The aesthetic object is defined as the unknown, and aesthetics as
the empirical science of the reactions of the known to the unknown or the
unknown, unexpected or uncontrollable reactions of the known.
1. Objective aesthetics
then becomes the empirical science of the immediate reactions of
substances to other substances and of the character of the substance's
macrocosmic and microcosmic phenomena towards the borders with the
non-existent, and thus the effects of chance.
2. The aesthetics of the natural sciences
then becomes the science of the reactions of biological organisms to


Asger Jorn Luck and Chance Dagger and Guitar
23
unknown, unaccustomed or unexpected impulses and of their abilities to
invoke such impulses biologically.
3. The aesthetics of the human sciences
becomes the empirical science of man's experiential and recognitive reac-
tions to everything unknown, divided over the subjects:
a. Psycho-physiological aesthetics
The empirical science of man's spiritual and physical reactions to
everything unknown: 1, destructive, 2. passively negligent as well as 3.
actively absorbent reactions.
b. Sociological aesthetics
comprises the empirical science of the societal group's positive, nega-
tive and passive reaction to the occurrence of the unknown in societal
life and society's ability to invoke unknown phenomena in all areas,
political, economic, technical, artistic, scientific, ethical, philosophi
cal, cultural, ideological, religious, etc.
c. The aesthetics of art scholarship
This comprises the empirical science of man's expansive reactions to
unknown external and internal impulses, as aesthetic art is defined
as our ability to invoke and satisfy unknown interests, phenomena,
things, thoughts and ideas.
The aesthetics of art scholarship is divided into two groups, the aesthetics
of direct experience and the aesthetics of indirect recognition, which can
be grouped as follows:
c.I. The aesthetics of human artistic action
The empirical science of human reactions to what cannot be done;
the interest in creating and enjoying unknown things, thoughts and
pictures created by people. With connections to psycho-physiological
and neurological aesthetics in general, this is divided into:


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a. The aesthetics of productive experience
The empirical science of the process of human creative experience,
which develops in a dialectical relationship of opposition and de-
pendence to:
b. The aesthetics of receptive experience
The empirical science of the human ability to absorb aesthetic art
experiences. Both are developed in connection with the artistic
material which represents:
c.II. The aesthetics of the art-work or the artistic means
The empirical science of the character of the art object and its aes-
thetic effect upon the producer and consumer, comprising:
a. The aesthetic character of technique in general.
b. Aesthetic technique or the fine arts which form:
1. Psychological sensory aesthetics
The empirical science of immediate sensory effects (sound,
pitch, light, colour, form, movement, etc.)
2. The aesthetics of mental conception
The empirical science of the aesthetic effect of visual formula-
tion and conception. This leads to the opposite of the aesthetics
of experience:
c.III. The aesthetics of recognition
The empirical science of human intellectual reactions to what is not
known. This is divided into two contrasting activities:
a. The aesthetics of fantasy and speculation
The empirical science of the human activity of idea and thought
in the treatment of subjects neither understood nor known and
the reactions of people to the results of such speculations and
fantasies.


Asger Jorn Luck and Chance Dagger and Guitar
25
b. The aesthetics of scientific research
The empirical science of human interest in and attempts to gather
exact knowledge about hitherto unknown phenomena which can
be analyzed empirically, as well as the abilities and means to do
this, and the significance of this activity for human art and aes-
thetics in general.
The aesthetic phenomenon - summing up and definition
Disinterested pleasure'
Kant defined beauty as 'universal, disinterested and necessary pleasure
but as pleasure is really nothing other than a kind of interest, we have to
reject this self-contradictory definition and assert that aesthetics is the
interest in the unknown, the effect of which can be unpleasant as well as
pleasant, antipathetic as well as sympathetic. This brings out feelings of
distaste or delight which give us the opportunity to judge the object of the
experience as either ugly or beautiful, a biological reaction called attrac-
tion and repulsion in the mineral world.
The essence of aesthetics is unconditional and immediate interest or
spontaneous reaction, and the aesthetic object is that phenomenon which
invokes this immediate interest, whilst the aesthetic subject is the field of
immediate interest.
"Known and unknorn
Beautiful are the things we see.
More beautiful are the things we understand,
but by far the most beautiful
are surely those we do not comprehend."
Niels Steno
Only the unknown or the apparently and partially unknown can possess
this aesthetic property. What one already knows is effective only through
its recognizability and corresponds to those deeper, regular interests


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which, on the strength of their vital significance and regulatory essence,
we call ethical interests.
However, as soon as we become aware that the known and the unknown
are relative phenomena, the question then becomes whether we can con-
nect them with anything at all. We could say that the objectively known
is everything that acts as facts, as impressions in the conteat of sensory
material, and can be directly or indirectly sensed. But therefore it is not
certain that we know it, and as in itself this is a matter of acquaintanceship
or transmission, we must find another yardstick for the known and the
unknown. What do these two concepts really mean? The latter is derived
from the former as its opposite, but this does not take us very far, and we
already appear to have excluded in advance any possibility of an empiri-
cal analysis of this subject, as science, as is well known, is based upon the
study of the comprehensible, the known or the actual.
We are not, however, giving up, even though we will have to reduce the
area of aesthetic study to the border phenomena between the known from
which we start and the unknown, to the study of the unknown reactions of
the known and the effect of unknown phenomena on the known.
Aesthetics perceived as interest in the unknown
"Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerie und Medizin
und leider auch Theologie
durchaus studiert, mit heissem Bemühn.
Da steh' ich nun, ich armer Tor!
und bin so klug als wie zuvor."
Goethe
Aesthetics as the law of change
But what have we really embarked on here? Simply that the true point of
departure of aesthetics is the law of change, allowing the unknown and the
new to arise in the universe and create evolution, whereas the known is the


Asger Jorn Luck and Chance Dagger and Guitar
27
static cycle or law of immutability, which we have perceived as the ethical
principle of nature. Here immediately we are in the elemental philosophi-
cal conflict between compatibilists and incompatibilists, empiricists and
idealists. The latter was a school founded by Socrates, who came to the
conviction that 'we only know that we know nothing', that everything is
unknown and thus aesthetic. We also know about the opposite school of
determinists, and aver simply that they are both correct, in the same way
as the scientists who quarrelled about whether light was rays or waves,
since the law of change exists on the strength of and because of the law of
immutability, in the same way as the radiant character of light is condi-
tioned by its wave system, and the aesthetic principle of nature is precisely
its radiant essence, the material's 'ideality' or éclat.
We have thus transferred the world of the metaphysical concept over to
matter, but can this work? Yes, it depends exclusively on whether it can form
a system and if this system, which we regard as primary, connects naturally
with the secondary spiritual or metaphysical system to form a unit.
Subject or area of interest
The elementary metaphysical concept is the subject, normally defined as
"the conscious ego;, the observing, thinking, feeling, active individual, and
thus the human object. But if we take into account how humanity origi-
nated, this definition is too narrow. When did the human embryo begin to
be a subject? The question is meaningless. Here we will use the concept of
the subject as a designation for any exclusive or limited sphere of interest
in matter, any system of action, any individuality. But the limited phe-
nomenon in matter is what is called the object. Object and subject should
thus only be two different ways of perceiving the same phenomena and two
different sides of their essence. Quite so!
This subjectivity of matter or classification of interest can be called
the qualitative properties of the material, and the feeling, thinking and
observing properties' are just the most consummate and differentiated
means of existence of this subjectivity or sphere of interest, which here on
earth has achieved the greatest perfection in humanity.


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Objective subjectivity
Objective science is the science of how matter thinks, about the spirit of mat.
ter. Subjective science could be called the science of how material feels, of the
material's interests or the material's soul, its enthusiasms or eros, its body-
forming principle. This science of the objective subjectivity of the material,
which makes it corporeally identical with the spiritual and thus perceives
the spiritual as a physical phenomenon, is obvious and easily understood if
it is really made clear what an object or a body is. We can buy the materials
in a human body at a chemist's shop, but we cannot unite them into a hu-
man body, yet the human body endures even when the materials of which
it is formed are renewed. One is the same even though one is someone
else. We can shape a lump of clay into a vase and a sudden movement will
change it again to a lump of clay. We can lay out a rail-track and constantly
change all the material. Even if there are completely new materials, it is
still the same track, the same region of interest, the same context.
The bodily perception of the soul
We are, however, in no doubt that the living person exists as a latent pos-
sibility in the material we have bought. Thus the impotence we feel before
a dead person whom we wish were alive is not caused by the soul forsaking
the body. That it cannot do. But by the human soul having disintegrated,
so that we are unable to put it together again.
Therefore, unlike the spiritualists, we perceive the visionary faculty, the
highest achievement of the aesthetician, not in the form of a detachment
of the soul from its bodily mortal frame, but as a superior and intense
radiation and receptive activity with its unavoidable centre in the physi-
cal ego. From this it follows that we evaluate the proficiencies acquired by
this clairvoyance according to their ability to serve our actions. With this,
our opponent relationship to spiritualism in its traditional form appears
to be clarified.
The subjective context of material
The word interest means what is between certain phenomena and thus the
context. We have defined subjectivity as interest or context.


Asger Jorn Luck and Chance Dagger and Guitar
29
Every cell in the human body is an object and at the same time an area
of interest, a subject or acting individual. Cells are again part of the areas
of interest of the organs which in fellowship form a human ego, body or
individual, together with his mental equipment. The individual is a part
of the ego of the family, the group, whose common interest is given its self.
conscious expression in its codex of action or ethics. Together all human
groups, classes, peoples, nations and races form a joint human object,
humanity, which is thus not an idea but an actuality, a body, an ego or
subject, which is, for example, the common object of medical science and
the very basis of actuality for the whole of technique and culture, the joint
human interest. I call this perception Nordic humanism.
Aesthetics as meaninglessness and cynicism
"For a long time I boasted of possessing all possible landscapes, and
found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry derisory.
loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks'
backcloths, inn-signs, cheap prints; unfashionable literature,
church Latin, badly spelt pornographic books, grandmothers'
novels, fairytales, little books for children, old operas, silly refrains,
naive rhythms.
I dreamed of crusades, voyages of discovery never reported,
unrecorded republics, suppressed religious wars, revolutions in
manners, movements of races and of continents: I believed in all
enchantments."
Arthur Rimbaud
Secret interests
We are, however, going beyond human, even organic subjectivity and
maintaining that even the least atom with its rotating nuclear system, as
well as the solar systems, must be perceived as spheres of interest, units of
activity or subjects. The study of the interests of these materials and peo-
ples is not only complicated but dangerous, especially as far the latter are


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concerned. Not everyone is interested in having their interest clarified and
this is undoubtedly the real reason that an objective and scientific basis for
the so-called human sciences' has not yet been established and that there
is still no interest in doing so. Yet we have apparently got to the stage that
today artistic, philosophical, ethical and aesthetic development is simply
demanding the renewal that can only be established by the recognition
and study of the objective subject.
Subjective Knowledge
"Who follows his own head must also stand on his own feet."
Danish proverb
We have stated that what is called objective knowledge is just the intellec-
tual demonstration that a phenomenon exists in the world. But the word
lenore has a more immediate sensory meaning, as when one says, I know
myself. Here the word has the same meaning given to the Greek origin
of the word aesthetics. Subjective knowledge is thus a direct context, an
acknowledgement of a phenomenon. For a subject, the absolute known, that
which is within bounds, is thus a part of the context, the established, the
determined, the lare.
The aesthetics of subjectivity
"Everything like is unalike."
However, we know that all phenomena, objects and spheres of interest
are in constant change, are established, extended and dissolved, enter into
other contexts, exchange, are condensed and exploded, that there are thus
different degrees of acquaintanceship, right from the most airy and super-
ficial to contextual, flowing and yet firm, compact, almost immobile and
unbreakable connections, and that the aesthetic stage is thus the study of
the superficial individual stages.
Universal rationalism
Aristotle, who in his metaphysics stressed the experience of this constant
movement or change in matter by which it takes on new forms, maintained


Asger Jorn Luck and Chance Dagger and Guitar
31
that it is the realization of an all-embracing reasonable plan that the divine
spirit is following in the shaping of the cosmos through the development of
nature, which is gradually and logically following the purposeful meaning
of our existence, with which human reason can lead us into harmony. The
movement in, for example, a plant's genesis is invoked by 'external' causes
(Aristotle was the first person who dissociated himself absolutely from
objective subjectivism), like the seed from the mother-plant. But the form
that occurs as a plant is because of an intrinsic power in matter, and thus
in the seed, of a preordained kind (inheritance?). The seed thus contains
the coming plant in itself as a possibility which could come into being or
reality, be activated, be unfurled and take on an actual form that is the true
being. Every form is in this way developed by other forms, and all these
forms ultimately point back to the first cause which is consequently the
absolute divine idea.
The imbalance of matter
"He also makes new who destroys the old."
Even with due regard paid to Aristotle's doctrine of catharsis, this percep-
tion can only be a half-truth, and therefore wrong, especially when its
further enlargement in connection with Christianity's belief in providence
and the doctrine of immortality is borne in mind. On the other hand,
Hume's liberation of the purely deterministic perception of the world
offers no opportunity for the establishment of an opponent relationship
between aesthetics and ethics, but forces, as we have noted, the estab-
lishment of the former as a side of the latter in the doctrine of pleasure.
His philosophy thereby becomes purely analytical without a perspective
of development, or what we could call positivity, inclination forward or
imbalance, and this absolute equilibrium automatically forces the denial
of the actual existence of the objective context, which is only delineated in
the dynamic of motion and not in what is stationary. Then even a realistic
ethics becomes an impossibility.


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We maintain the following:
No providence exists for people other than our oven foresight, where ever we
get that from, but we merely wish to maintain that it is always the present,
existence, actuality or reality that manifests itself as the static and abso-
lute, and that all development is and must be a break with the known, with
lares, and takes place through the ceaseless dialectic between the establish-
ment of lare and lawbreaking, between ethics and aesthetics.
One-sided moral upbringing towards reason and justice, which incul-
cates an absolute disgust of all stupidity, injustice, lies, brutality and heed-
less, ugly self-assertion, to which orphanage children and future kings in
particular are subjected, results in just as one-sided tendencies towards
servility and desperation.
Aesthetics as injustice, disaster and crime
Law creates lawbreaking
"You walk over dead men... of your jewels Horror not least charming
and Murder, amongst your dearest trinkets, there on your proud
belly dances amorously."
Ch. Baudelaire: Hymn to Beauty
On the other hand, it is health that changes the drama of life from be-
ing a perpetual tragedy to being a principle of development. All renewal
consists of casting oneself out into the unknown and thereby into almost
certain annihilation, and even if it is the exception that proves the law or
rule by renewing it, no successful renewal or introduction of the unknorn
can happen without the context and the order being destroyed, crushed
and dissolved to give way to new contexts. This revolutionary unrest, the
unknown, incomprehensible and incompatibilistic element in existence,
where the old is destroyed to give way to new, is the inevitable law of the
universe and humanity. Incompatibilism is determined, and determinism
acts only through this. The transcendent is immanent.


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Lawbreaking creates lare
"Diamonds are polished in diamond dust."
Taras Bulba
If one loses this understanding of the dialectical context between law
and lawbreaking necessary to establish this, then, instead of perceiving
lawbreaking as a necessary ingredient, one must necessarily feel it as a dis-
turbing, destructive, devilish element in existence, as something absolutely
wicked, as nature's tragic principle. By denying this absolute ideality and
independence of the aesthetic we are turning away from the abstract doc-
trine of suicide, which is its logical extreme point, and like everyone with
'sound common sense' also turning from what it demonstrates: that all
development would stop if sound common sense' came to rule.
Unforeseen happenings
"Did you not see recently how eagerly the dove there over the
treetops beat the air with its wings?
He had seen his mate and the nest with the young: that was the
reason for his quick flight.
It appeared to him that it was under his own power that he moved
his wings and took the shortest way. But it was love, his downy
young and his beloved that awakened his soul, and this that
thereafter moved his wings.
Love is like the coachman who looks after the reins and controls us
as the rider controls his horse. He obscures our soul and convinces
us that we sit as chiefs or coachmen."
Swedenborg
The circle of interest dominates the cycle of materials and life. But things
can suddenly happen that quite change the picture. It can so happen that
the dove suddenly leaves his track. As if drawn by a strange force within
or without, it is thrown up against quite different experiences that attract
and entice it. Apparently, we say expressly, there is nothing here for it
to like, let alone love. On the contrary, there is something immediately


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loveless, something disquieting and unpleasant, something surprising, the
unknown, and because this is new it is meaningless, irritating, unreason-
able and worthless, but nevertheless a force, which, like the lighthouse or
the lamp, could throw one off course, possibly even kill and annihilate, but
which does, at any rate, innervate, interest, animate and obsess with an
externally warm and inner cold excitement.
Why -why not?
"Misfortune often makes people pale, as hot water does lobsters;
Why this? Yes, the whole aesthetic problem consists of just this why - why
not? If the question is answered, the enchantment is lifted, the unknown
has become known, but the incomprehensible is often just dissolved by
this intervention in an even greater sum of unknowns.
This is the essence of aesthetics. Is it of value but at the same time
valueless, is there something harmonious in the paradoxical, something
obvious in the unknown, in the insecurity and dissatisfaction? If one ac-
cepts that this is the case, then one accepts the obviousness and meaning
of aesthetics, the actuality of the illusion. The need to separate illusion
from reality results in concepts of god, but the need to make illusion reality
and reshape reality according to our illusions is aesthetic activity or what
'one calls the fine arts. The metaphysicians seek what is in this world, but
not of this world. The aestheticians seek the precise opposite, what is of
this world but not in it.
The legality of the illegal
"To do a great right, do a little wrong!"
Shakespeare
Aestheties is the ceaseless hunt of the universe, nature and humanity to
prove that nothing supernatural exists, for the truth of aesthetics is namely
nothing other than the naturalness of the unnatural, the humanity of the
inhuman, the health of the anomalous and sick, the clarity of the dark-
ness, the good fortune of misfortune, the competence and power of the


Asger Jorn Luck and Chance Dagger and Guitar
35
incompetent and powerless, the significance of the insignificant, the track
of the trackless, the reality of the unreal, the rightness and the truth of the
intolerable, of dislike, nastiness, faithlessness, lack of respect, disobedience,
injustice, recklessness, cynicism, distrust, insincerity, falseness, immoral-
ity, irresponsibility, crime and lawlessness, the order and utility of the ca-
pricious, the ephemeral, the terrible, the awful, the doubtful, the uneven, the
unusual and misplaced as well as the unusable, useless, inept, disordered
and impractical, in short, all that is not interesting except in its immediate
effect, the new, the radical, the original and experimental, the fertility of
the earthquake.
Aesthetics as repellent abnormality
"When the Indian teaching about evil perceives God as just as much
the source of evil as of good, thus in a way placing the Devil in the
Trinity, is this not Hegelianism?"
Soren Kierkegaard
The pleasure of distaste
This and nothing else is the immediate effect of the unknown in the known,
the primary or extreme aesthetic effect, pure aesthetics. It is neither beau-
tiful nor pleasant, but it is the raw material from which the beautiful is
born, and, what is more, from which life itself is created.
You will perhaps say it is impossible for the repellent to be the precon-
dition for the attractive, but let us just push these phenomena into the
distance a little, into the future of the past, in the example of memory, so
that we can more easily see their attractive sides. How truly exciting and
unforgettable, wonderful were those catastrophic events we experienced at
that time, even though they were shocking, astonishing, terrible, upsetting,
irritating, provocative, innervating and inspiring, and what a marvel it
was that they strengthened us instead of crushing us and what a miracle
that they really took place, even though we had perhaps not experienced
themselves ourselves but had read about them in the newspaper or in a
novel. It was sensational or, in short, aesthetic.


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Although we have thus pulled back from the phenomenon in order to
perceive its meaning, we can nevertheless ascertain that this is the point
that cannot be excluded - whether aesthetics should be made into a vital
and independent function: the procurement of the unknown.
Dysmorphism and abnormality
"All sins are no more complicated than that they all would get their
deathblow if one eradicated breach of confidence.
Nis Petersen
On the occasion of the breakthrough of Expressionism in Denmark, a
certain Professor Salomonsen undertook a very notorious and ridiculed
analysis of this new aesthetic phenomenon and came to the conclusion
that it was a sort of "dysformism' or an ugliness-seeking epidemic, like the
medieval self-tormentors, flagellants and other sick phenomena. So the
man was quite right, but he just did not understand that the ugly is not
ugly in itself, but is perceived so only because it is incomprehensible and
unknown and therefore meaningless, and that therefore any renewal at
once appears ugly, because the ugly is nothing other than the abnormal,
and the ugliness grows with the size of the abnormality. Only in the instant
the meaningless has been comprehended, possessed, owned or under-
stood, does it become beautiful.
Thus there is no way around it. If aesthetics is to have a meaning, it
must be as the meaninglessness of existence, and if it is not to have mean-
ing, then it thus becomes meaningless anyway.
Aesthetics as curiosity and wonder
"Zum Erstaunen bin ich da."
Goethe


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37
The interest of the new
When something is neither lovely, good nor logical, but nevertheless at-
tracts us, then this interest can only be explained as purely immediate
interest, curiosity, wonder or astonishment. Curiosity is thus nature's
primary aesthetic factor.
'The objects we meet for the first time immediately exercise a mental
impression upon us; says the Russian painter Kandinsky, and in our need
to collect rarities and rare experiences or strange and sensational articles,
curiosities, we have the starting point of our aesthetic activity. This capac-
ity and need is not associated only with humanity, even birds and insects
can demonstrably develop such an aesthetic activity by the collection of
strange stones, shells, pieces of metal ete. That even fish are immensely
curious is known by everyone.
According to these observations, the capacity for wonderment is thus
the basic element of aesthetic activity. No one shows wonder at the nor-
mal. But where does the abnormal come from? We are not the first who
have banged our heads against this problem. However, we feel that it arises
from within, as a part of the life process.
The need for the new and the desire for adventure
"Foreign food and forbidden fruit taste best:
That certain reactions are normal or known is to say that they have direct
preconceptions or demonstrable grounds. Where these are lacking, we are
before unknown products of the known. As we do not reckon with actual
unknown powers, we must perceive these activities as their own object, a
selt-contradictory capacity in matter, as a sort of osmotic pressure in the
spheres of interest, as innervating factors of tension, acting as an attrac-
tion towards the unknown. One could call this need for the expansion of
capacity for development the healthy sickness. Rationalists call it, char-
acteristically enough, 'horror vacui, or fear of emptiness. The opposite
description deciderium ad vacuum, longing for the unknown, the curiosity
or aesthetic capacity of matter must be more correct.


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Aesthetics as tension, surprise or shock
"The higher a species is
the more uselessly it behaves.
Hens do not write aphorisms."
Nis Petersen
New and useful
The capacity for wonderment is thus a primary characteristic of the in-
dividual's or species's stage of evolution. The human being is the most
curious, whimsical and changeable being in nature. This is the reason for
our power.
In his history of Denmark, Professor Arup stresses that tattooing and
the use of strange attachments are phenomena just as old as protective
hide clothing. We venture to assert that they are older and that even hide
clothing was originally only used to appear sensational. An old, emaciated
and frozen shaman one day just discovered that it was warmer to keep the
bearskin on all the time. We believe that any new development begins as
something meaningless and worthless, from which the ability to create val-
wes is conditioned by the ability to occupy oneself with the valueless, and
that this law is not just valid in the world of art but also in the biological
sphere, and even overall, because nothing new can immediately be correct.
But can we consequently make curiosity and the capacity for wonder-
ment into the elemental phenomenon of aesthetics without further ado? It
has to be said that it was not us who discovered this placing. Throughout
the centuries and right up to Surrealism, surprise or shock has been per-
ceived as a basic factor in the sphere of aesthetic experience.
Surprise and wonderment
"For him beauty was always the hidden."
G. Brandes on M. Goldschmidt
Writing of unreasonable, pre-logical or irrational actuality, that border
phenomenon between the existing and non-existent, Descartes says


Asger Jorn Luck and Chance Dagger and Guitar
39
(although he exchanges pure wonderment with its sympathetic offshoot
admiration) that 'admiration (wonderment), that is to say first and fore-
most surprise, is the only thing that does not rest upon an organie process,
but exclusively on the state of the brain.'
That his latter statement about the activity of the brain alone is dis-
proved by the fact that we are able to evoke the shock of surprise by purely
physical means (with insulin shock, etc.), and that we have recognized the
organic character of the brain and nervous system changes nothing in the
condition we have here, which is the essence of surprise itself: the break
with the organic, that is, the anti-organic effect in matter.
Aesthetics as opportunity or possibility
"Writing forewords is like remarking that one is in the process of
falling in love. The soul searches restlessly. The puzzle is given
up. Every event is a hint of explanation. Writing a foreword is like
bending a branch to the side in the jasmine cabin and seeing her
sitting there secretly: my love.
- and how is he who writes this? he goes amongst people like a dupe
in winter and a fool in summer, he is hello and goodbye in the same
person, always happy and carefree, pleased with himself, a feckless
gadabout, yes, an immoral person.
Soren Kierkegaard
Luck in misfortune
Here we are at the very core of extreme aesthetics, its lack of precondi-
tons, its groundlessness, its non-dialectical curtness towards nothingness,
to what it is directed towards and seeks to overcome. This position as the
negation of nothingness abolishes the normal dialectic of thesis, antithesis
and synthesis. It is the thesis that seeks the unknown antithesis, and the
ganne is a merciless either - or, luck or misfortune, renewal or an nihilation,
and we cannot therefore call aesthete reactions true causal reactions, as
we reject all theories of divine guidance, being forced to perceive them as


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COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere
secretions, provocations, reactions of opportunity or possibility, as this is
their immediate aspect, and this is precisely what we are trying to bring
out.
The paradox of aesthetic science
"There are some truths, at least, of a particular modesty and tick-
lishness of which one does not come into possession if not suddenly
- that one must surprise or abandon."
Fr. Niet&sche
But how can one make science in this way? Let us explain our position.
The disinterested research which is the mechanism of science is a result of
human interest in its purest form, interest in being interested. We want to
maintain this state, even though the result of the research influences our
other interests and develops and renews them.
However self-contradictory this may seem, we could thus well interest
ourselves in something that for us does not exist, in the unknown, but the
real paradox lies in our interest consisting of wanting to know the un-
Inoren. When we have achieved this, the object of our research dissolves in
our hands. This is what makes the establishment of the science of aesthetic
experience so enormously difficult. Acquaintanceship or experience hills
and dissolves the unknown, the aesthetic object. From being interesting it
becomes unimportant. But this is an inner subjective process. Therefore if
we are to work on the problem, we must find a method to keep the interest
awake, to preserve our wonderment. However, as scientific truth is pre-
cisely the opposite of this, we can only approach it in short lightning visits
that leave as few traces as possible, in order to keep the ability for experi-
ence awake and vitality intact in us. Life cannot be studied in a cadaver,
nor experience in knowledge, nor fire in ashes.


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41
Aesthetics as fanaticism and intolerance
"It is strange that people are so angry with the Jesuits. In a certain
sense, everyone who is enthusiastic about an idea and wishes only
its realization is to that extent a Jesuit."
Soren Kierkegaard
Self-forgetfulness versus memory
Burnt children fear the fire, they say, but this is not so for foolish or forget-
ful children, for what is forgotten is also new. One must thus have a short
memory to continue to be a good aesthetician, whilst one must have a long
and good memory to be a significant scientist, as science is nothing other
than experience, recollection or memory.
Aesthetic understanding is the completely intolerant will or control, the
absolute talent. Scientific understanding is complete tolerance, disinterest-
edness, the all-forgiving lack of talent.
To contain enough of both these characteristics to establish an aesthetic
science has not hitherto been vouchsafed anyone, and we would not assert
that we have it. We would just like to point out that in any such expla-
nation one has to evaluate whether the passion of the idea is sound and
well, and that the necessary experience for this is not achieved through the
experience of the art of others and imagined experiences, but only through
an intense and conscious experience of the aesthetic and artistic process
during its creation, during the transformation of matter to a sphere of
interest or art. An aesthetic science must not only be true, it must also be
interesting, not just useless ashes but firewood or artistic proficiency.
The need for non-critical experience
"Experience is the best teacher."
Don't talk, artist - create!' they say, and even if it is from time to time
necessary to open one's mouth to correct certain misunderstandings, there
is something right about this. If only one could then get the artist, and
incidentally also the viewer, to stop listening to what people who don't
understand art say about it.


Asger Jorn Luck and Chance Dagger and Guitar
41
Aesthetics as fanaticism and intolerance
"It is strange that people are so angry with the Jesuits. In a certain
sense, everyone who is enthusiastic about an idea and wishes only
its realization is to that extent a Jesuit."
Soren Kierkegaard
Self-forgetfulness versus memory
Burnt children fear the fire, they say, but this is not so for foolish or forget-
ful children, for what is forgotten is also new. One must thus have a short
memory to continue to be a good aesthetician, whilst one must have a long
and good memory to be a significant scientist, as science is nothing other
than experience, recollection or memory.
Aesthetic understanding is the completely intolerant will or control, the
absolute talent. Scientific understanding is complete tolerance, disinterest-
edness, the all-forgiving lack of talent.
To contain enough of both these characteristics to establish an aesthetic
science has not hitherto been vouchsafed anyone, and we would not assert
that we have it. We would just like to point out that in any such expla-
nation one has to evaluate whether the passion of the idea is sound and
well, and that the necessary experience for this is not achieved through the
experience of the art of others and imagined experiences, but only through
an intense and conscious experience of the aesthetic and artistic process
during its creation, during the transformation of matter to a sphere of
interest or art. An aesthetic science must not only be true, it must also be
interesting, not just useless ashes but firewood or artistic proficiency.
The need for non-critical experience
"Experience is the best teacher."
Don't talk, artist - create!' they say, and even if it is from time to time
necessary to open one's mouth to correct certain misunderstandings, there
is something right about this. If only one could then get the artist, and
incidentally also the viewer, to stop listening to what people who don't
understand art say about it.


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COSMONAUTS OF THE FUTURE Texts from the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere
He who will not listen, has to feel; is another saying, and as feeling is
aesthetics precisely, this explains something fundamental: that the aesthe
tician will not be content with secondhand experiences, but will get into the
hard school of the facts themselves. It is the task of aesthetics to confront
people constantly with themselves and their own experiences, to get them
to feel and believe more in their own feelings and sensations than in the
words of others. This Doubting Thomas attitude is neither an expression
of lack of faith nor sepsis, but, on the contrary, of an expression of a need
for experience without criticism that will realize the idea, the fantasy, the
performance and the word in sensory perception. When the aesthetician
reads a sign The ice is unsafe;, then for him this is not just an invitation
to see whether the sign is true, but also to see how unsafe ice feels. This is
the precondition of aesthetics, development and progress: that one gets on
thin ice.
Aesthetics as surplus of power or luxury
"The superfluous, a very necessary thing."
Voltaire
The aggressivity of the desire for experience
Children and naive, forgetful and inexperienced people have their el-
mental aesthetic areas intact. They marvel easily and are without routine
because of their ignorance. Consequently there is something childish in
preserving one's aesthetic need: one's capacity for wonderment, the long-
ing for the new, for possibilities, for following one's impulses, whims, eater-
nal causes and preambles, the invitations, temptations and provocations
of others, the predilection for openings, introductions, beginnings and
sketches, one's capacity for impulsive, immediate and unpremeditated ac-
tion. It is called keeping oneself young.
This initiatory capacity in children and young people with the great
possibilities for development is a natural power for growth. It is an aggres-
sion or conquest, a reaching out beyond the static ego.


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43
But one must not forget that children, idiots and naive people are also
more limited and bigoted than experienced and developed people, because
all organisms seek stability, limitation or morals. They therefore have to
smash and destroy in order to develop, and as they neither understand nor
know nor recognize anything other than their own world, they perceive
many of the actions of developed people as meaningless, incomprehen-
sible and unnecessary occupations, as games or secret black magic and
wizardry, and will behave accordingly.
If one has absorbed or rejected all the normal skills and knowledge, but
has nevertheless preserved one's
childishness' or need for wonderment,
then one will be drawn towards the unknown in human society and be-
come a conqueror, adventurer or researcher in the fabrications of the life
of the imagination, the inventions of art life and the discoveries of science,
if one does not simply become an oppressor or exploiter of other people.
Held & hasard. Dolk & guitar [1952] (Copenhagen: Skandinavisk Institut for Sammenlignende
Vandalisme & Borgen, 1963), pp. 17-30 & 33-52.
Translated by Peter Shield.
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