Black Hole Liquidity

Black Hole Liquidity relates to different forms of divination where an object is manually moved to create an answer for a specific question relating to a specific situation in the future. A dark, varnished wooden sculpture in the shape of a black hole is rolled into the exhibition space. The movement creates a trace on the floor with mechanical oil grease from the sculpture.

The sculpture is part of the installation Cultivating Probability. Cultivating Probability is based on research into the way how people in different times and cultures try to predict and influence decision-making processes and the future paths of specific situations. The sculptural objects part of Cultivating Probability speculate and unite attitudes and rituals from different cultures and periods of time into a kind of fictional anthropological display. The installation consists of a collection of diverse objects, which are spread throughout the exhibition space, where some are susceptible to change and movement.

“Marjolijn Dijkman’s sculptures are imagined miniatures of divination, the figures and gestures of the desire to read the future. ‘Magic’ can mean different things: on the one hand, there are the strategies of markets where to foretell – combining algorithms and astrology – means to manage and transmit information for profit. Here magic means the miraculous trick and deceptively incomprehensible act that is meant to calculate the future. In this context, Cultivating Probability frames this transcultural desire to control and stages a few figures of uncertainty, indeterminacy and ambiguity. The probable is the unpredictable side of life and the latter stays human as long as its possibilities are not completely determinable. Maybe the installation shows that the indeterminate is human, essential to both enchanting art and the artistic magic. ”  – from: ‘Decommissioned Truths Marjolijn Dijkman’s Cultivating Probability’ by Vlad Ionescu, 2017