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The April 27, 2019 edition of the newspaper Lib\u00e9ration1<\/a><\/sup> ran the following: \u201cDeath of a verbal tightrope walker: the extravagant and moving orator \u00c9ric Duyckaerts, artist from Li\u00e8ge known for his improvised conference-performances<\/em> combining humor, fine arts and the popularization of knowledge, passed away on Saturday at the age of 65.\u201d What better way to get a feel for these conference-performances than by sifting, without too much analysis, through some of the headlines dedicated to them between 1994 and 2007: \u201cA post-philosophical novel\u201d, \u201cDemonstrations\u201d, \u201cMutationals\u201d, \u201cOn the Plurality of Discourses\u201d, \u201cLacan, Mathematics, Herm\u00e8s and the Artist\u201d, \u201c\u00c9ric Duyckaerts Para-Docte\u201d, \u201cTruths Which Aren\u2019t\u201d. Every title is a unique testament to the artist\u2019s personality, which was both accessible and indiscernible.<\/p>\n His conferences were equally indiscernible, since Duyckaerts\u2019 goal in performing them was to lose the audience in his psychic interlacing\u2014a mesh of curveball, shattered phrases that offered no easy exits. Duyckaerts described his modus operandi by saying this: \u201cYou can compare it to downhill skiing: there are several paths, you can choose this or that bump or slope, but you have to do it fast.\u201d \u201cInside my cranium there are possible bifurcations and I have to decide on the right speed. It\u2019s not always the best one, sometimes you come to a dead-end, so you start over.\u201d<\/p>\n But what are his conferences actually about?<\/p>\n What is Duyckaerts saying?<\/p>\n To better understand him, let\u2019s quote several moments from an interview the artist gave in 2011 to French exhibition curator and art critic Frank Lamy, when he was invited to do a show2<\/a><\/sup> at MAC VAL (Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art contemporain du Val-de-Marne).<\/p>\n Lamy took this angle: \u201cLet\u2019s start with this phrase by French writer Joseph Mouton, who summarizes rather well some of the questions one might ask about your pieces: My God, but what is this man actually trying to tell us?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Duyckaerts: \u201cWhere could he really be leading us? We won\u2019t know because I don\u2019t know either. Improvisation is unique in that one thing follows another in ways that surprise even me. As to the many references, anecdotes, different theories and topics that I bring up rather rudimentarily, but whenever possible with exactitude\u2014or with the most precision that is within my feeble power\u2014they are used as conversation starters to show a style of elocution, of persuasion, a style of person: sometimes enthusiastic, passionate about topics that he has explored himself, sometimes a bit blas\u00e9 or dogmatic.\u201d<\/p>\n To put it briefly: \u201cBut what is this man telling us?\u201d The answer is: \u201cWe won\u2019t know.\u201d And precisely in suspending this unanswered question, in this gap, is where attitudes, figures, and styles slide in. Language subjects us to logic, but it carefully avoids taking ideas to a place where they might reach a conclusion, and in that sense, there is subtraction.<\/p>\n Duyckaerts relies enormously on language for his pieces. And he\u2019s not alone. American conceptual artist Ian Wilson has spent even more years than him experimenting with what he calls Discussions<\/em>: performance pieces that also rely on arduous language games. They consist for example of speculating on \u201cthe nature of truth\u201d, \u201cthe human condition\u201d or even \u201cinfinity\u201d\u2014incidentally, Duyckaerts and Wilson were both successful in brilliantly integrating philosophy to their art. Unlike Duyckaerts, who presented his conferences in the shape of films, an approach that may sometime seem indulgent, Ian Wilson always refused to record his Discussions<\/em>. Naturally an artist turns to language when he has a hard time with objects and feels the need to subtract them from his practice. Let\u2019s hear what Duyckaerts says about this: \u201cWhen I was in my twenties, I was just starting out as an artist and saw a lot of exhibitions; at one point, it started to make me nauseous. I wrote a text about it: there are too many objects, it\u2019s a gift shop, there\u2019s too much\u2026 I thought about art at the time\u2014it was over thirty years ago\u201d in 2011 \u201c\u2014and I told myself: we shouldn\u2019t make any more. It was a moral position, akin to the idea there\u2019s too much pollution<\/em>. My brother and I like to joke about it a bit. He\u2019s not at all in the art world and he says: \u2018You know, when archeologists find all this 2000 years from now, they\u2019ll wonder, what was the use of this? And they\u2019ll reply, \u2018it most likely had some religious meaning\u20263<\/a><\/sup>\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But let\u2019s come back to what is of importance to the Chronicle\u2019s point of view: There are many works of art that bring us nowhere. If the art we make represents our world, we could say that a world going nowhere is not necessarily heading for a wall.<\/p>\n For those who defend \u201ccollapsology\u201d, from the Latin collapsus<\/em> or \u201cfalling in one piece\u201d, our society may very well be coming to an end.<\/p>\n In Comment tout peut s\u2019effondrer, Petit manuel de collapsologie \u00e0 l\u2019usage des g\u00e9n\u00e9rations pr\u00e9sentes<\/em> (How Everything May Collapse: A Small Collapsology Manual for the Present Generation4<\/a><\/sup><\/em> published by Seuil in 2015, Pablo Servigne and Rapha\u00ebl Stevens, doctor of biology and eco-consultant, respectively, write5<\/a><\/sup>: \u201cIt\u2019s not about the world ending, nor is it about the apocalypse. It also isn\u2019t about a mere crisis that we will pull out of unscathed, or some random catastrophe that we can forget about a few months later, like a tsunami or a terrorist attack. A collapse is the process by which basic needs (water, food, shelter, clothing, energy, etc.) are no longer available (at a reasonable price) to a majority of the population through the governance of law6<\/a><\/sup>. So it is clearly an irreversible large-scale process, like the end of the world, yes, except it won\u2019t be over! There is a lot to come, and we will have to live through it, with one thing for certain: We won\u2019t have the resources to know what it will be made of. On the other hand, if our basic needs are affected, it\u2019s easy to imagine that the situation will grow immeasurably catastrophic.<\/p>\n