PHONE TRANSCRIPT461

Daniel James – Sam Molloy

03.02.12

SM: Let’s face it. This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve failed to maintain a professional distance from a job, would it? I’m just concerned this is becoming an obsession. I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but what if Maas went off to one of these isolated locations where he had a studio and died of a heart attack? You said yourself he’s been everywhere, from Antarctica to the Australian outback. He had the means to go anywhere, and if no one knew his plans, or where he had gone, then his bones could still be there now, while you’re running around here chasing shadows.

DJ: What are you trying to say, Sam?

SM: Like I said, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but maybe there is no conspiracy, no master plan, no ‘big bad’ pulling the strings, no-one following you around – other than the people you owe money to, anyway (laughs). Seriously though, what if there are no plots and no patterns other than those you’ve created yourself? A detective can’t solve the case if there’s no crime.

DJ: Look, I see what you’re saying. It makes sense, but people are dead. The Maas Foundation has admitted following me, and I don’t think they’re the only ones. I’ve been drugged, attacked. People have tried to kill me, Sam. All of that was real. It’s not in my head.

SM: Well, for argument’s sake, let’s say you’re right. It’s all real, and Maas is behind it. What’s his plan? What’s the endgame?

DJ: That’s what I need to figure out. The clues are everywhere, overlapping. There are almost too many of them, but maybe that’s the idea? Maybe it’s all subterfuge – quantum mechanics, the unspeakable name of God, breaking through to a new psychological state of being, returning to a pre-linguistic state, restoring humanity to a core self, revealing the ultimate truth or discovering there is no truth at all – maybe it’s all smoke and mirrors?

SM: Concealing what?

DJ: Maybe nothing, maybe that’s the answer…it’s just like Barthes said, “a construction of layers (or levels, or systems), whose body contains, finally, no heart, no kernel, no secret, no irreducible principle, nothing except the infinity of its own envelopes – which envelop nothing other than the unity of its own surfaces”.462

SM: Look, quoting French philosophers is very impressive and everything, but it’s not going to convince me of your sanity…

DJ: I’m being serious.

SM: So am I…well, maybe I’m messing with you a little, but what does Barthes have to do with Maas? He was talking about language, right?

DJ: Yes, his point was that language doesn’t signify objective reality, if such a thing exists at all. Language just refers to itself. It’s a closed system of infinitely fluid signifiers. Derrida, Kristeva, Saussure, Lyotard, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and many others, have explored this. The idea that we cannot separate language and reality, and that any quest for certainty is misconceived, is not new. What’s really frightening is this, if the language we think with, that defines our consciousness and personality, doesn’t refer to the world, if the linguistic signs are constantly shifting, if everything is changing all the time, how can we be certain of anything?

SM: You’re making my head hurt here…So let me get this straight, the big secret behind Maas’s final artwork is that there is no meaning?

DJ: I think you’re half right. There is another possibility though, something worse…

SM: What?

DJ: This book is his final artwork.

SM: What do you mean? The book you’re writing?

DJ: Yes…I thought I was the author, but what if I’m just a character? What if I’m part of the final artwork? He has created this world, full of reflections and meaningless clues, dead-ends and overlapping stories, out of his life, out of his art, and he has trapped me inside. This is a man willing to turn his entire life into art, who replaced history with fiction, and disappeared into worlds he created. Do you really think he’s above turning another man’s life into a piece of ‘live’ conceptual art, and presiding over it like God? This book is creation, and I’m man, his experiment in free will. Do you see what I’m saying?

SM: Not really, but keep going, anyway.

DJ: Think about it, what would be the purpose of something with no core and no meaning, except for the infinity of its own layers, something with no centre and no exit?463

SM: I’ve got no idea.

DJ: It would make a hell of a maze.464

END TRANSCRIPT

Notes

461. This is only a partial transcript. The beginning of the conversation has unfortunately been lost.

462. Barthes, Roland, Le Bruissement de la langue.

463. If Daniel is correct, this would make the structure of the book ‘Rhizomatic’. A Rhizome is a botanical structure that has been used as a concept in philosophy, most famously by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972 – ’80). They wrote: “Rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.” Rhizomes are made up of input and output nodes working together in a multiplicity. If a book were ‘Rhizomatic’, it would imply that the reader also brings their own nodes, which interconnect, a key facet of multiplicity – Anonymous.

464. There are generally considered to be three types of maze/labyrinth. The third type is a net, and its primary feature is that every point can be connected to every other point. Where the connections are not yet designed, they are conceivable based on the repetition of the existing structure. In other words, a net is a potential infinite territory. Deleuze and Guattari define this type of labyrinth using the metaphor of the Rhizome – derived from the botanical term for a subterranean stem. This has been used in attempts to philosophically describe the way the universe of human culture is structured. Its characteristics match a labyrinth of the third type, in that it is structured according to a network of interpretants, making it virtually infinite, because it takes into account multiple interpretations realised by different cultures, and because it does not register only truths, but what has been said about the truth, or what has been believed to be true, as well as what has been believed to be false, or imaginary, or legendary.