"1897–1990. Modern Figures of Chance: Accidents and Procedures"
Résumé
Chance in the twentieth century is associated with a plethora of new scientific theories and technological developments, from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to information theory and the computer rendering of stochastic models. At the same time, chance is linked to a crisis of rationality and to a heightened awareness of accident and catastrophe that occupy a central place in modernist and postmodernist narratives. The literary and artistic avant-gardes of the century are alert to chance as a site of aesthetic potential, seeking not simply to represent it but also to exploit or harness it in the form of specific procedures, from coin tossing to complex combinatorial mechanisms; they develop systems and strategies which, like the processes discovered by contemporary science, may be both deterministic and unpredictable. These practices both decentre the authority of the artist and reflect a profound sense of the contingency of the work of art, within a universe made up of complex interconnections and irreversible change.