Complicite - A Disappearing Number - Barbican

First and Second: two warnings.

1. This review contains plot spoilers. But nothing is quite as spoilt as the plot of this show.

2. Maths. Not a lot of people know that I got an A in my Pure Mathematics with Statistics A level, back in the days when A levels meant something. At school they wanted me to do a maths degree. In a funny kind of way I wish I had. I have been thinking a lot about maths of late. When I was a kid, I got into a book called The Joy of Numbers by an Indian maths genius called Shakuntali Devi. I’ve been re-reading it of late, working on developing a character who has an intimate relationship with numbers. It works into a lot of ideas I’ve become curious about, like symmetry, chance and coincidence, the appearance of mathematical sequences in nature, string theory and quantum physics, which as things stand lead to the extraordinary conclusions that matter can be in two different places at the same time, the existence of parallel universes, and that time, rather than being linear as we take it to be, with distinct past present and future, is, as Doctor Who put it, “wibbly wobbly”, that everything is taking place at the same time, all the time.

Or as TS Eliot put it in Burnt Norton:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

I am not the only one following this path. The new age fraternity have leapt on this area and fused it into their own belief systems: for example saying that this wibbly wobbly concept of time is in effect the same as that of Native Americans and Aborigines, although this is disputed by those who have studied those cultures.

All of which is a round about way of saying that I came to this play with a certain amount of knowledge which would not be shared by most of the audience. And despite what I thought was lukewarm applause, all those around me were saying how fantastic they thought the play was. I didn’t. I thought it was fundamentally, artistically, flawed. And I found this deeply worrying. Because in many ways the flaws were failures to find solutions to the problem of making art out of this stuff, problems I am wrestling with as well. I was hoping for inspiration, but came away troubled.

The key issue for plays (or any art) like this is how to make ideas led art, rather than narrative or character driven art. The starting point for Complicite was the “real life” relationship prior to WWI between Cambridge mathematician GH Hardy and a self-taught maths genius in Madras called Srinivasa Ramanujan. But the majority of the play was based around a fictitious modern day relationship between (guess what) a maths lecturer and her soon to be husband (of course of Indian extraction) who did something in the futures market, oh and there was a string theory chap who the husband meets on a plane to India – characters entirely concocted to solve the problem of how you explain the maths to the audience. So we had maths lectures from the wife, and the string theorist explaining how some of Ramanujan’s theories turned out to support or be supported by string theory. This might have worked, were it not so obvious that the characters were foils for their speeches, having no credibility as characters in their own rights. So as bad things happen to the wife, a miscarriage, and ultimately an early death, you do not feel that they have grown organically from the plot, you feel emotionless. It is too blatant that the play is gratuitous in manipulating your emotions.

This is especially annoying as in the relationship between Hardy and Ramanujan offers great material. Hardy considered his collaboration with Ramanujan as the “one romantic incident” of his life (quoting the programme) but whether platonic, sexual, intellectual or whatever, this does not come across in the play.

The narrative weaves shards of the Hardy/Ramanujan and husband/wife string theorist narratives together, neither following chronological order – the point being to demonstrate within the fabric of the piece the idea of time present time past time future. This was more like the sort of approach I am advocating for art after quantum physics, but I was underwhelmed by the execution. For example the sequence where the deaths of Ramanujan, Hardy and the wife follow one after another seemed contrived. Too often the shards of narrative failed to coalesce or resonate with each other. It felt as though the company was searching for a key to unlock the material and give it shape, but that the key remained elusive.

And it didn’t help that the depiction of India and the Indian diaspora was so clichéd. The gratuitous arms in the air dance sequence. The tabla player on the side of the stage, when the rest of the music is recorded. And did they really do that conversation? The one where an Anglo Indian woman is asked where she comes from and she says London and he says no before that and she says Ealing?

It is no co-incidence that this fractured narrative technique is one which all significant narrative art is struggling with at the moment – it is the necessary consequence of the conversion of (a) the modernist (and all the stuff that came after it) dismantling of the “realist” art form, and (b) the fundamentally altered conception we now have of “life the universe and everything” post quantum physics (and my doesn’t that Eliot quotation seem prophetic!) So we have the multiple strands of films like The Fountain, and Pan’s Labyrinth, or the extraordinary INLAND EMPIRE which is designed out of David Lynch’s Maharishi / Transcendental Meditation philosophy that everything is connected because it comes from the oneness of (un?)consciousness. In theatre we have Faust, the (coming soon) Masque of the Red Death, the Wonderful World of Dissocia, all riffing on fragmentation, multiple colliding parallel narratives, the uncertainty of consciousness and psychology and (and this should in some ways have been a (c) above) the fragmentation of society. And although the linear structure is abandoned, they work in a way which still produces a sense of pattern. Which this show should have done, given one of the key quotes from Hardy: “Mathematicians are only makers of patterns, like poets or painters.”

This is maybe the fundamental flaw in the production, the failure to find a satisfactory pattern to its structure, one that feels organic, and natural, as maths is, rather than contrived.

Which is not to say that there weren’t great ideas lurking here. The fact that the husband works in “futures” is never explored, save for a great line that he believes that if he says something it is much more likely to come true (cf Auster – Oracle Nights and the Music of Chance). The “numbers are all around us” stuff is good too, the digital clock, the computer code projections, although there is quite a lot made about ‘phone numbers which gets a bit tiresome.

Back to reality. You will have noticed I only got as far as films and plays 3 paragraphs ago. Well at the start of the play something terrible happens. The string theorist tells us that nothing we see on stage is real. They are only actors. The set is just a set. Only the maths is real. And the tablas. So far so modernist, although in my view the play never recovers, or more to the point I never recovered my suspension of disbelief; I just didn’t believe the characters. Why you might be thinking am I carrying on so? Because I believe that this issue (reality) is fundamental to what is going on at the moment in all narrative artforms (fiction, film and theatre), fundamental to the book I am trying to write, fundamental to the explosive arguments which are inevitable coming to a Latte Days Book Group near you sometime soon. The realist form is dormant, very possible dead. Because realism doesn’t reflect reality, or should that be realities. The genre of literary fiction has played itself out. It doesn’t work anymore.

That’s why literary fiction has become more about writerly style – eg John Banville’s Booker Prize winning “The Sea” , a book which takes the “show not tell” obsession of the objective correlative to an ultimate position. The phrase objective correlative was, ironically, perhaps, coined by TS Eliot. He said that the only way of “expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding…a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.” In The Sea what happens is that every inanimate object, every piece of clothing, every blade of grass, every grain of sand on that damned beach the narrator is obsessed with, is animated with meaning, to express the interior psychological condition of the narrator. All the inanimate objects are animated, but the problem is that the characters themselves are totally inanimate. Of course I may be doing Banville a disservice, in that I can conceive of a counter argument that the tension between the animated inanimate and the inanimate characters is deliberate, creating an internal critique of the characters and the objective correlative and the genre of literary fiction. But my gut instinct is not.

Another technique that literary fiction has adopted is to try to head off the reality problem by writing about stuff which is really important, like Darfur (I am thinking of Dave Eggers “What is the What”). They make a pre-emptive strike against the argument that they are redundant as fiction because of the worthiness of the subject matter. I admit I am straying into dangerous territory here, in that I don’t read this type of work, a priori because I have already dismissed it, so I can’t give specific evidence other than the fact that I have no interest in it. My gut feeling though is that it is reportage, journalism or fact dressed up as fiction. I have read some Eggers and he is a terrific writer, but for me books like this inhabits the same territory as docu-dramas; I cannot conceive that it can get away from the fundamental problem that whatever the factual background is it has to be shoe-horned into the realist genre, by artificial plot devices and neat narrative tricks.

And don’t get me started on all those books about three generations of lesbian sisters growing up in a remote treehouse on an island somewhere foreign”

Compare and contrast the energy and excitement of the postmodern none-literary scene. The explosion of graphic novels where words and pictures combine, contradict, resonate, vibrate. Or that very hard to label thing that is a kind of fusion of magic realism and postmodernism – Murdoch, Carter, Auster, and Murakami to name but four, but much much more is coming – Steven Hall’s “The Raw Shark Texts” or Scarlett Thomas’ “The End of Mister Y”, wherein narratives are constantly remixed, and genres mashed-up. Weird Fiction some people have called it. Toby Litt tried to coin the phrase “Slipstream”. But Scarlett Thomas prefers “transrealism” and pointed me and other attendess at her book launch to Rudy Rucker’s superb “A Transrealist Manifesto” (get it at http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker/transrealistmanifesto.pdf). Here are the first three paras (though it is worth reading the whole thing):

“In this piece I would like to advocate a style of SF-writing that I call Transrealism. Transrealism is not so much a type of SF as it is a type of avant-garde literature. I feel that Transrealism is the only valid approach to literature at this point in history.

The Transrealist writes about immediate perceptions in a fantastic way. Any literature which is not about actual reality is weak and enervated. But the genre of straight realism is all burnt out. Who needs more straight novels? The tools of fantasy and SF offer a means to thicken and intensify realistic fiction. By using fantastic devices it is actually possible to manipulate subtext. The familiar tools of SF — time travel, antigravity, alternate worlds, telepathy, etc. — are in fact symbolic of archetypal modes of perception. Time travel is memory, flight is enlightenment, alternate worlds symbolize the great variety of individual world-views, and telepathy stands for the ability to communicate fully. This is the “Trans” aspect. The “realism” aspect has to do with the fact that a valid work of art should deal with the world the way it actually is. Transrealism tries to treat not only immediate reality, but also the higher reality in which life is embedded.

The characters should be based on actual people. What makes standard genre fiction so insipid is that the characters are so obviously puppets of the author’s will. Actions become predictable, and in dialogue it is difficult to tell which character is supposed to be talking. In real life, the people you meet almost never say what you want or expect them to. From long and bruising contact, you carry simulations of your acquaintances around in your head. These simulations are imposed on you from without; they do not react to imagined situations as you might desire. By letting these simulations run your characters, you can avoid turning out mechanical wish-fulfillments. It is essential that the characters be in some sense out of control, as are real people — for what can anyone learn by reading about made-up people?”

And this is what he says about form:

“The Transrealist artist cannot predict the finished form of his or her work. The Transrealist novel grows organically, like life itself. The author can only choose characters and setting, introduce this or that particular fantastic element, and aim for certain key scenes. Ideally, a Transrealist novel is written in obscurity, and without an outline. If the author knows precisely how his or her book will develop, then the reader will divine this. A predictable book is of no interest. Nevertheless, the book must be coherent. Granted, life does not often make sense. But people will not read a book which has no plot. And a book with no readers is not a fully effective work of art. A successful novel of any sort should drag the reader through it. How is it possible to write such a book without an outline?”

And maybe this is the crux of the matter:

“Transrealism is a revolutionary art-form. A major tool in mass thought-control is the myth of consensus reality. Hand in hand with this myth goes the notion of a “normal person.”

There are no normal people — just look at your relatives, the people that you are in a position to know best. They’re all weird at some level below the surface. Yet conventional fiction very commonly shows us normal people in a normal world. As long as you labor under the feeling that you are the only weirdo, then you feel weak and apologetic. You’re eager to go along with the establishment, and a bit frightened to make waves — lest you be found out. Actual people are weird and unpredictable, this is why it is so important to use them as characters instead of the impossibly good and bad paperdolls of mass-culture”.

And lets face it, its not just people that are weird, the universe(s) is/ are. Rucker was writing in 1983 and we all know things have gotten a damn sight more weird since then. Look at quantum physics. Look at the internet and the way it has screwed up so many people’s ability to differentiate truth from fiction, although this phrase is of course loaded with prejudgement, for if we have learnt anything from the parlous state of the world today, it is that one person’s reality is very different from another person’s.

At the heart of A Disappearing Number lies a nexus of anxiety about how to mathematical weirdness and the weird nature of its universes, without losing the audience. It adopts a number of strategies. For example there is much use of projections and an ever fidgeting stage set to try and introduce an overreaching aesthetic to the play. But, spectacular and sometimes lovely though the visuals were, they again seemed to be a gratuitous layer that didn’t successfully integrate themselves into other aspects of the play. At one point I was thinking to myself how the visuals were full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, when there was a loud, unexplained, and deliberate bang. I could see no purpose to this other than to wake up any one who had nodded off what with all the maths stiff that was going on. If this was its purpose, it succeeded, judging by the number of people who jumped out of their seats.

And the irony of all this is that the maths was the best part of A Disappearing Number. I had no trouble following it (there were some deliberately obtuse equations for easy laughs). What I resented was the usual conduit of communication – ie mock lectures, and stilted conversations. In one section, the maths was acted, eg possible divisions of 4 represented by movement of an actresses two legs and two shoes, and this was so much effective.

Towards the end of the play we learnt that mathematicians have recently got excited that Ramanujan’s last scribblings may hold the key to unlocking the holy grail of physics, the grand universal theory of everything from the very smallest to the very largest. And I wonder whether there is a grand universal theory to this piece. I think there is, namely that narrative art is about communication, and that contemporary narrative art is suffering from acute anxiety as to how to achieve this, and art being a mirror held up to nature, we are riddled with anxiety about communication, about language, about ideas. Looking back at Eliot’s definition of the objective correlative, I still think that what he said holds true, and that the challenge of contemporary art is to wholeheartedly commit to his formula, not holding back, not dumbing down, trusting the audience or reader, not feeling the need to interrupt the art with its own explanation. Coming soon to London is an artist who does just that, Matthew Barney. He makes art entirely constructed from his own private system of symbols and meanings. No concession is made to explaining itself within the artwork. He picks up the mantel from Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Joyce’s “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” – imagine trying to read those without having access to the copious footnotes that accompany the texts, and you get somewhere close to it. His films and gallery installations make David Lynch’s work seem entirely limpid (dictionary definition: “1. characterized by transparent clearness; 2. easily intelligible; clear; 3 calm and untroubled; serene) by comparision. Luckily we have excellent interpreters like Richard Dormant (writing unfortunately in the Daily Telegraph). Here’s an extract (read the full article at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/09/18/babarney118.xml) :

“Working in the North gallery, the high ceilinged central space under the cupola, and wearing a harness around his waist and thighs, Barney first attached himself via a flexible elastic cord to two heavy oil drums filled with petroleum jelly (Vaseline) on the floor. He then climbed each of the four gallery walls, on each ascent making a drawing in the triangular spandrels in the corners under the ceiling.

Strapped together to increase their weight, the drums of Vaseline acted like an anchor, pulling him back towards the floor, forcing him to ever greater exertion because the higher he climbed, the more the resistance increased.

What is hard to convey in words is the sheer physical strength and mental focus required for each ascent. Not only are the cleats or footholds embedded in the walls for the climb very small, but once at the top he had to work with one hand, using a large piece of graphite in a long bamboo holder to reach the top of each spandrel.

As if that weren't difficult enough, the length of time he is able to work before becoming exhausted is limited. Throughout, I could hear him panting and grunting, winded with the effort required to stay at ceiling height long enough to complete a drawing while simultaneously struggling against the tremendous force pulling him backwards. In the rest periods between each ascent his body language was just like a top athlete's. He hunched his shoulders, shifted his weight from one foot to another, and paced back and forth, concentrating on what he had to do next.

Through the extreme physical exertion used in making these drawings, Barney is here making an analogy between the great artist at work and the biological phenomenon of hypertrophy whereby weightlifters and athletes make their muscles grow bigger by placing them against resistance. Just as a muscle is weak until it meets an external force, so too at its highest level art needs to encounter resistance or constraint if it is not to become facile.

This is why Picasso always fought against his own facility as a draughtsman and why other artists have endured extreme physical constraints to create some of the greatest works of art – just think of Michelangelo lying flat on his back for years to paint the Sistine Ceiling.

And so, at one level, the first part of Drawing Restraint 16 is a symbolic enactment of the process of artistic creation. For Barney, the making of form begins with what he calls "Situation", a state in which raw energy is unstructured and lacking in direction. This is symbolised by the petroleum jelly.

In the second stage of creation, which Barney names "Condition", the artist uses discipline and restraint to channel and give structure to that energy. This is the climb. Finally, in the "Production" stage of the creative process, form begins to emerge. This is the drawings in the spandrels.

For him, what is valuable in art is not so much the finished product as the tension between the desire to create and the discipline required to funnel that desire into the making of art. This is why petroleum jelly is such an important symbolic material for Barney. Being formless, it can be heated or cooled, shaped and transformed, restrained in a mould or allowed to flow free like molten lava. The elastic tether is an umbilical cord that ties the artist to the formless and often destructive chaos of pre-creation.”

What is going on here is classic post-modernism – art about making art, but the idea is fused totally with the art itself, rather than sitting apart from it, the adoption of a private mythological system used without compromise. The exhibition is on at The Serpentine Gallery very soon, with related cinema showings of Drawing Restraint 9, a 3 hour plus film of slow, total, visual symbolism. I will let you know whether I love or loathe.

You should know that Barney’s most famous work is a series of films called the Cremaster Cycle. They are named after the cremaster muscles which cover the testis, their function is to raise and lower the scrotum in order to regulate the temperature of the testis and promote spermatogenesis. No doubt his detractors deride his work as a load of old bollocks.

So there you have it. I thought that A Disappearing Number was a flawed piece of work. I am troubled, because what it tried to be was in some ways very close to my own work, and its flaws are those I am trying to and so far failing to overcome. So this is far from being a malicious review, I am just trying to work through what I think, develop my wn theory of what I want my work to be, to identify the pitfalls. Writing this was easy, what is hard is turning the ideas into functioning art, finding the formula in Eliot’s terms.

In summation: A Disappearing Number, a play about maths which failed to add up to more than the sum of its parts.