George Widener, Sapere Aude

saie de trouver des modèles, de la symétrie, de l’équilibre – pour trouver une structure, une clairvoyance. Dans l’avenir, on regardera les dates et on se dira : oh, mais c’est la semaine prochaine ! Cette idée me plaît.

Que pensez-vous de l’avenir ? Pensez-vous que les ordinateurs, l’intelligence artificielle et les techniques de l’information vont transformer le cerveau humain ? Avec la rapidité des flux d’informations, la technologie et les médias pourront produire un changement chez l’être humain, et pas pour le mieux. Peut-être que, pour la prise de décision, il y aura moins de possibilités de se tromper. Il faudra que l’on décide de ce que l’on veut être à l’avenir. Il faudrait devenir une machine… Je sais que cela à l’air fantastique (3).

NAUFRAGE-CLÉ

Votre travail à propos du naufrage du Titanic et autres catastrophes pourrait être le symbole que la nature est plus forte que l’intelligence et la technique humaines : Ernst Jünger appelait cela « le syndrome du Titanic ». Les hommes seraient utilisés par la Terre comme de nouveaux Titans, des travailleurs utilisant son énergie, mais il se pourrait que l’être humain disparaisse à l’avenir. Pour Jünger, le naufrage du Titanic, juste avant la Première Guerre mondiale, marquerait le moment-clé du 20e siècle. Et les forces de la nature sont encore bien supérieures sur d’autres planètes !

À qui s’adressent vos travaux ?

J’aurais bien aimé qu’Alan Turing – cryptographe et grand amateur de puzzles – puisse les voir. Et il se pourrait que dans le futur, mes oeuvres soient collectionnées par des machines, mais j’ai introduit des erreurs, des pièges pour les désorienter.

Outsiders est un ouvrage de sociologie de Howard Becker de 1985 dont la définition de la déviance fait référence. Depuis, le terme outsider (marginal, déviant) désigne aux États-Unis des formes artistiques plus ou moins proches de l’art brut. Dans la métaphysique de Leibniz, le point de vue de la totalité i. e. celui de Dieu est simultané tandis que l’être humain reste limité à une vision temporelle successive. George Widener s’appuie sur les prédictions de Ray Kurzweil qu’il partage.

Claire Margat est philosophe et critique d’art pour diverses revues. Elle s’intéresse plus particulièrement à l’art brut.

Page de droite right page:

Titanic. 2022. Tampons et feutres sur papier stamps and markers on paper. 129,5 x 97,8 cm. (Court. galerie Arthur Borgnis, Paris)

In the mind of the outsider George Widener, numbers can be found where images usually are. That’s why they are at the heart of his graphic work, which was shown before the summer Bordeline, les funambules du langage at the Appart Renoma in Paris, and will be presented in October by the Andrew Edlin gallery at Paris+ par Art Basel. Claire Margat met the artist at the Appart Renoma, in collaboration with the Arthur Borgnis gallery. Widener is also represented in France by the Christian Berst gallery.

The American George Widener (b. 1962) features in a large number of outsider art collections, and is being exhibited with increasing frequency. The material he uses is not paper or pencil, but the extraordinary calculating capacity of his mind. As a spontaneous pataphysicist (we recall that Alfred Jarry defined pataphysics as “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments”), he is looking for a “science of the particular” that makes the exception the rule: accidents, air crashes, disasters and major catastrophes— such as the sinking of the Titanic—are his first objects of investigation. This outsider in the sociological sense of the term (homeless, marginal, living from odd jobs) [1] has ceased to be so because his work has been recognised by the world of art brut or outsider art, which now allows him to integrate socially and even take action, for example with the Ukrainian people, via an NGO in Poland—as illustrated by his recent graphic work, maps of Ukraine with the towns that are being helped by Krakow. CM

Translation: Juliet Powys

For me, it is a form of meditation, like a refuge where I find peace. A word where I feel less trouble. In my past, there were some circumstances when I needed this refuge… It is like listening to the reason inside of me, and it was the beginning of my art. That’s where I come from.

How do you think numbers appeared in human culture?

Maybe when people saw their fingers or their toes… When they saw that there was more than a single unit. Perhaps they developed it early… but I think that primitive groups didn’t use the idea of number because they didn’t need to do business, they only needed to get food for the day. They lived in the present: they didn’t know yesterday or tomorrow.

You use dates to make calendars and you are also making a lot of mathematical figures like magic squares or magic circles. Some scientists at the New York University of Neurology made studies about my brain: it was scanned and they discover that numbers can be found where images usually are. So, I am officially scanned… Calendars are an engine with which I can explore things like storms or dates in people’s life. With the birthday and the deathday (and the dates inbetween) of a person, I can make portraits— and I make them into magic squares.

You made a self-portrait this way... You make list of dates using the calendar, but are you only interested to the occidental calendar? I know a little bit about the Julian calendar: in 1582, the calendar became the modern one. And when it was changed, people thought some days were stolen from them, and there were some riots!

Do you think time is like the stream of a river and that the human life involves travelling on that river? Yes… but in 1996, when they put me in hospital after a breakdown, I had a vision: past, present and future, they all exist in a single entity. I saw them like an object. We try to understand them as a process going from yesterday to today to tomorrow, but in fact they are all together. But our senses don’t let us connect with that entity. (2)

BECOMING AN ARTIST

Did you always thought that what you were making was art? No… I was going to be an engineer. In 1996, I started to list dates for a project, and this project became an artwork, but I didn’t think it was art—for me, it was like a science project.

Did you become aware of it when it was suggested to you that you were an artist? Now I am aware that I am an artist because there is an audience and, of course, I do it for the people who see it. Before, I didn’t want them to see it, it was a secret, my secret! Now, I still have my treasure, but I can share it a little bit. I was really an outsider artist but now it is different, I have a gallery, somebody that is interested in what I am doing. My idea of being an artist was different when I was younger than it is today. I believed being an artist meant to be creative,