Column | Unprecedented torments, such as the ‘Zeitgeist Cookbook’

Number 1 is ‘Ice Creams’. Number 26: ‘Secretly peeing in the sea’. Number 994: ‘Hairdressers who listen to you how you want it’. They are on the list of “things that make life worth living” in the play Every Brilliant Thing (because of Covid it was often canceled, can Het Nationale Theater bring it again? Please?). Yes, lists. In the novel Calm Chaos by Sandro Veronesi, the main character quiets the noise in his head by making all kinds of unnecessary lists, such as “Airlines I have flown with”, or “Comets I have seen” (a list of two).

Sometimes ordinary things are suddenly priceless beautiful. I saw cookbook phenom Nigella Lawson eating a bitterbal – and I was blown away. I saw a famous dancer at a funeral pick up a hand of sand and drop it on the coffin – what a gesture. In other words: I would like to see a shopping list from Sandro Veronesi.

I get the chance in the Amsterdam Museum of the Spirit (hidden in De Hermitage) at the exhibition 31553580 (obsession) for numbers & schedules. Curator Hanne Hagenaars and artist Jan Hoek (mother and son, together they form a primal scheme) collected overviews and schemes and series and lists with which artists create order. At least that’s what they think. We look and see, indeed, calm chaos. The museum rooms are brain pans, skulls have been lifted, feelings are writhing naked.

George Widener, artist and math genius, is sure that the world is being taken over by artificial intelligence forms and probably designed a mathematical scheme as entertainment for those intelligent machines. A super superior goose board, with numbers. No one can understand it, least of all me, but I consider it a sight for sore eyes and I just hope those AIs will be able to see beauty (art enjoyment requires recklessness; if someone is very smart then it is difficult) .

Wait, let me list the works that you are quick to overlook (and wrongly): 1. Zdenek Kosek, who influences the weather (and shares his scheme with the birds.) 2. How to make a good painting in seven characteristics of father Mark Rothko for son Christopher (revealing for Mark). 3. Stanley Brouwn’s overview of his future expectations for the year 4000 (no past, only future).

No, wrong. The little knotty collage Things to do in Hell, by Simon Evans, is of course number 1. A variation on the medieval hell, full of untold torments such as ‘storytelling traffic jam’ and ‘zeitgeist cookbook’ and ‘global desk lamp’. But what does the cry ‘Egg’ do there?

Yeah, what’s that egg doing there? What are those airlines doing in that novel? Control is the goal. All schemes, all rows are incantations. Control is nothing more than a thud on a chest.