M HKA Ensembles

Mixed Media, 32 x 49.6 x 12.6 cm.

Collection: Foundation Walter & Maria Schnepel, Baté (Hungary).

Excerpt of the conversation between Robert Filliou (RF) and Irmeline Lebeer (IL), Flayosc, France, August 1976.

IL: Can you explain the term ‘Research in Dynamics and Comparative Statics’?

RF: It’s explained in the Suitcase. I had the intention to use the money to do the Ding-Dong Territory of the Genius Republic. Very generously, you agreed to it. But it hasn’t worked well, I must say. That’s the dynamic side, no? That something created in the past is published now. And the Comparative Statics? It’s still static, but it would have been different to see in 1960 or 1963, for example, rather than publishing it ten years later. And it’s used with a dynamic goal.
            I use scientific terms in my own way. You have statics, comparative statics and dynamics. Everyone can understand a little bit what it is. If you have an immobile object, you can study it from a static point of view. If it starts to stir, you can see where it went and compare that to where it came from, and that’s comparative statics. The actual movement between the two points, that’s the dynamic. We do this very often when we speak about human beings: we immobilise them. It becomes comparative statics. Quite often, we become impatient. We say: ‘We can’t do this. The world is dynamic.’ While we’re talking, for instance, the relations between men and women are changing. I don’t know how many people are being born this very second. And others, who have lived in the old system, have disappeared or will be put on the bench, because they don’t count anymore.