Edith Doove

1  It must be noted that although the terminology ‘all-female’ might give the impression of a multitude, actually only two female astronauts were implied.

2  Dr. Jean-Louis Vincendeau discovered that Bonnie Prince Charlie studied botanics at the College during his stay in Saint-Nazaire in 1745.

 

 

3  The Comet is a wild card and has special affects on the game when it is played during a player's turn. A player may play the Comet at any time during his turn in place of any other card (usually replacing a denomination he does not possess). Once played, the individual who played the card may begin a new sequence with any card in his hand. In addition, when the Comet is played, each other player must give the player of the Comet two chips from their own stock. If the Comet is found in the Dead Hand during a round, it's scoring value is increased by two additional chips for the next hand. Thus, for the next hand after a hand in which the Comet was found in the Dead Hand, the player of the Comet would receive 4 chips from each other player. If the Comet did not appear during that hand either, in the next hand it would earn the player 6. Thus, the scoring value for the Comet will increase by 2 for each hand in which it is found to be in the Dead Hand. Once the Comet is played during a hand or found in a player's hand when another player runs out of cards, on the following round its score reverts to the normal score of 2. See for more information http://www.catsatcards.com/Games/Comet.html

 

4  This visit to Paris resulted in Doyle’s article published in The Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Paris in 1894: A Superficial Impression’ which ends with the following observation that actually refers to LeBlanc: “And then there is the position of woman, in which, again, I think that we are far in front of the French. The unmarried girl is still fenced round with restrictions which seem to us to be preposterous. And the lover arranges matters on a strictly cash basis with the parent or guardian. We met one young lady who had had three offers, all of which had fallen through because there was a difference between what the lover required and what the guardian could promise.”

 

 

5  See https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft3w1005ft;chunk.id=d0e967;doc.view=print

 

 

6  See Man Ray’s photo Dust Breeding from 1920 in which he recorded the dust that would end up being included in the Large Glass. (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/271420).

 It’s unclear whether Ray was a Faculty member.

 

 

7  Currer Bell College acquired a new status in 2019 when on initiative of Dr. Jean-Louis Vincendeau a convention was signed between ESADHaR Le Havre|Rouen and Transtechnology Research, Plymouth. The convention was signed by Prof. Thierry Heynen and Dr. Edith Doove on 24 November 2019 in the abbatial church of St. Ouen in Rouen on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition ENSEMBLE. Unfortunately, neither Prof. Dr. Michael Punt and Dr. Jean-Louis Vincendeau, nor the scientific collaborators Dr. Hannah Drayson and Dr. Rita Cachao were able to attend due to the B-word and strike related issues.

 

 

 

8  A noteworthy undated photo of the Duchamp brothers shows Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon both cradling cats while Marcel Duchamp stands ostensibly empty handed in the middle.

 

9  See L'ascension continue autour de René Daumal, collective publication under the direction of Xavier Dandoy de Casabianca, Editions "Voyelles", Charleville Mézières 2010

 

10  The information in this paragraph is a translation of Vincendeau’s findings.

 

 

Faculty of Minor Disturbances : A History

 

As we know today the history of the Faculty of Minor Disturbances or Fakultät für geringfügige Störungen is non-linear and can thus in principle be told from any moment in time at any angle. For the sake of ancient human understanding it has been told here in a mostly linear fashion starting with the fact that in the year 2058 the Faculty once more reappeared after a long absence to celebrate its 300-year anniversary. It is important to know that on this august occasion the Faculty finally managed to leave Earth and install itself on the ecoplanet K2-18b. This was thanks to an unexpected major and very necessary development in space travel that was caused by the cancellation of an all-female1  space walk in the year 2019. Initially the official reason for this was that the only space suits (so-called) available were the wrong size, but in reality, it was because one of the astronauts had discovered a way to travel in space very fast through virtuality. Afraid of piracy NASA panicked and subsequently caused a major uproar as the reason for the cancellation was patently ridiculous; worse still the engineering boys once more were badly advised by PR and reduced the difficulties of the female crew to wardrobe problems and related expenses. Not surprisingly the women turned to the Faculty of Minor Disturbances who were able to assist them in the following years in the development of their further research. This however, meant that the Faculty had to ‘disappear’ below the radar of ordinary mortals from about 2025 in order to reappear as said in 2058 at ecoplanet K2-18b. This was no hardship since disappearing and reappearing tended to be the Faculty’s on-going modus operandi. It is of course no coincidence since a comet was at the very basis of its initial inspiration.

 

The Faculty was set up in 1758 by Helena von Bohnwarten in the German town of Trier as part of its university. As women were officially not allowed at the university, she took on the pseudonym of Heinrich von Bohnwarten. She was inspired by the work of the female astronomer Maria Margaretha Kirch, also called Kirchin, who had discovered the so-called ‘comet of 1702’ and was befriended with Kirchin’s children Christfried, Christine and Margeretha Kirch who were all astronomers. Consequently, the main purpose of the Faculty, von Bohnwarten determined, would be the study of comets and more specifically that of the Halley-comet that was predicted to return to the solar system and be visible from earth in 1758. For that reason, Von Bohnwarten travelled to Hawaii where she actually witnessed the comet and in her diary the brief, fleeting appearance of the comet was interpreted by her as “eine geringfügige Störung” or Minor Disturbance. The fact that the substance of a comet, its solid nucleus or core, consists mostly of ice and dust, was something that she assumed at the time and that fascinated her immensely, but mostly it was the fleeting reappearance that captured her.

 

Von Bohnwarten would continue her research until she reached a great age and was followed up by her daughter Christine Meister. After the closure of the Trier university in 1798 by the then French administration, Meister moved the Faculty to Paris as she had met and married the French astronomer Michel LeBlanc. In honour of her mother, Christine Meister decided to turn the Faculty into a so-called ‘wandering’ entity that could be situated anywhere. With the disappearance of the university, the Faculty thus more or less turned into a comet itself, and became a wandering star so to speak. At the same time, Meister intended this move to be a critique of academia, a position that the Faculty still maintains wherever it happens to be. In the wandering years, largely through her husband’s connections the Faculty became part of the Currer Bell College in Saint-Nazaire2 , although it kept a strong, if somewhat underground presence in Paris throughout the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It was during the so-called Fumistes period at the end of the 19th century that the card game Comet was discovered as a major research tool. It had been played since the 18th century, but through the contacts of Janine LeBlanc, the granddaughter of Christine Meister and Michel LeBlanc, who not only worked as an astronomer but also as an artists’ model, it became highly popular in scientific and artistic circles.3  An early depiction of the game can be seen in Cézanne’s Card Players from 1890-1892. Both in the version at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the version at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris the players are actually members of the Faculty. They were astronomers and not, as was thought for a long time, incidental players observed by Cézanne in some establishment or other. A later, more abstract, depiction can be seen in the Card Players (1916, now in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag) by the Dutch painter Theo Van Doesburg who frequented Paris regularly and would become a Faculty member in 1915 and was inspired to celebrate his membership with the transcription.

 

An important role in the history of the Faculty must also be granted to the Lycée Henri IV in Paris where Henri Bergson had Alfred Jarry as one of his pupils. The latter took extensive notes of Bergson’s lectures between 1891 and 1893 and although most of these have survived an important part is unfortunately lost. It is generally thought that the missing cahier actually contains the notes on crucial conversations between Bergson and Jarry on the subject of duration. The west of England must also be recognised as a player in this history. The first connection with Plymouth was established by Arthur Conan Doyle who had visited Paris in 1894 where he met Janine LeBlanc.4 Doyle had briefly lived in Plymouth in 1882 where he set up his practice in Durnford Street. From this period date his contacts with the Athenaeum which would be instrumental for the connection with the Faculty. Equally important was his acquaintance with William Freese Greene, who had a photographic studio in Plymouth and made, a now lost, portrait of Doyle. Freese Greene would later claim to have invented the first device for projecting moving images and is buried in Highgate cemetery not far from the grave of Karl Marx.

 

Marcel Duchamp, who was also charmed by Janine LeBlanc and her early connections with Alfred Jarry, became a member of the Faculty around 1912. Highly influenced by Cézanne’s Card Players5 he painted a couple of versions himself, before deciding to replace the card game with that of chess players deciding that chess pieces come and go like comets too. This eventually led him to his famous saying “It’s all in one’s grey matter”, not only alluding to the conceptual side of the chess game, but also to the dust of comets. Which in itself further raised his interest in dust and the inclusion of it in his Large Glass.6  Duchamp would later establish the link between the Faculty and the city of Rouen where he lived with his parents around 1920 and after a busy life would later be buried in 1968. While in Rouen under the guise of the Rouennais Circle of Chess Players of which Duchamp became a member on 23 January 1924, regular meetings of the Faculty took place in the Brasserie Paul at the Place de Cathédrale (which still exists at the time of writing). In 2019 Currer Bell College returned to Rouen (and with that also the Faculty) by becoming part of the Cabinet of Singular Deviations that originated at ESADHaR in Rouen.7

 

About hundred years earlier the Faculty’s first link with Portugal was established by Rafael Baldaya, an astrologer and author of Tratado da Negação and Princípios de Metaphysica Esotérica who regularly visited Paris and presented the Faculty in Lisbon in 1920 during a talk at the university. From this period, it was also established to include the subject of mist and its temporary disappearances central to the faculties concern. Not only did this subject connect to the dis- and reappearance of comets and their fogginess, it also eluded to the dis- and reappearance of the Faculty itself. The fact that the subject originates in Portugal and more specifically Lisbon is quite possibly connected with several intriguing factors. One is the possible connection with Sebastian, King of Portugal who disappeared in battle and is said to return, in a foggy dawn, on Portugal’s greatest hour of need. The great poet Fernando Pessoa, who was associated with the Faculty, dedicated the last poem of his Mensagem cycle to this advent which he equated with the situation of his country at the time, ending the poem with the unambiguous

 

Ó Portugal, hoje és nevoeiro...

É a Hora!

(Oh Portugal, today you are mist...

‘Tis the hour! Author’s translation.)

 

The second connection is the Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 in which the whole of Lisbon practically disappeared and that explicitly interested Bernardo Soares, author of the famous The Book of Disquiet and eminent Faculty member. Mysteriously the Faculty itself disappeared not long after the link with Lisbon was established. Some suspect Arthur Cravan to have taken it with him on his trip to Mexico where he was last seen in 1918. There was a brief recurrence of the Faculty during the beginning of the fifties with the publication of Mount Analogue by Rene Daumal that some see as proof that the Faculty in fact had been abducted just before Daumal’s untimely death in 1944. Although often seen as a comparison between art and alpinism the following passage on fugitive achievement is seen by scholars as an occult allusion to the Faculty:

 

Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action.

You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again...

So, what's the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully.

There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know. . .

 

It further has to be noted that the last chapter of Mount Analogue was to be titled “And you Reader, What Do You Seek?” which is generally seen as an allusion to the Faculty.

 

The post-war recovery of the Faculty can be attributed to Georges Perec who briefly met with Marcel Duchamp on the occasion of his inauguration into the Oulipo group in 1967. They discussed the Faculty during a meeting at the Paris café Le Rouquet in honour of Daumal who used to frequent this establishment regularly and it was agreed to keep the Faculty a secret in order to protect it. Duchamp therefore took it temporarily into his grave in Rouen the following year, causing a slight disturbance, whereby he had the famous epitaph “D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui meurent” or “By the way, it’s always the others that die” engraved on his tomb. Both Perec and Duchamp have been instrumental in the most recent reappearance of the Faculty at planet K2-18b where they continue to develop their collaboration. It must be noted that the recent official discovery of the ecoplanet somewhat hampers their ongoing work and they consider moving to another planet. The fact that ecoplanet K2-18b is at a symbolic 111 light years from earth currently keeps them from taking a decision on this part, as is the considerable number of feline Faculty members, amongst which Perec’s and several of Chris Marker’s and Agnes Varda’s cats are very present. It is suspected that Bébert, Celine’s cat, is also a lifelong member but research into this is ongoing and there is some academic quarrelling as to how many lives he used up. The Faculty does not have dogs as members. This is not only due to the fact that, as it has been well established, cats have more brains than dogs, but also because cats’ brains have a remarkably close resemblance to human brains, to such an extent that it can be safely assumed that humans descend directly from cats, a fact discovered and recorded by the Pharos. Cats immediately recognised the endless possibilities of the Faculty and were also relieved that their nine lives could finally be used in a way that was intended. The length of a cats’ life depends on arbitrary counting conventions such as 1+1 = 2 and is consequently completely flexible, which in effect means that cats live for as long as they like. The Faculty on Planet K2-18b for that reason, was taken over by cats who prefer to stay anonymous as they see no purpose in names especially the mostly ridiculous noises that humans call them by. There is, of course, also the practical reason that with an infinitely variable definition of nine such names would add an eternal insult. The names by which cats name each other are unsuitable to include within this current record. They consider Perec as one of their own since he is a known cat lover and merely tolerate Duchamp who has never stated a preference.8

 

From the year 2019 to somewhere in 2025 - the exact date remains unfortunately unclear due to a glitch in the recording software - the Faculty of Minor Disturbances was mainly situated somewhere between Saint-Nazaire and Plymouth, occasionally wandering more towards the northern region of Rouen, or southwards towards Lisbon. It was equally observed in Hong Kong and Wales during this period. In Plymouth its Director was Prof. Dr. Michael Punt at Transtechnology Research, while Dr. Edith Doove and Dr. Rita Cachao held the reigns in Saint-Nazaire and Lisbon. Dr. Jean-Louis Vincendeau, a French artist, film maker and specialist in gardens as well as Daumal’s Mount Analogue9 , thus directed together with Punt and Doove the Currer Bell College as a subdivision of the Cabinet of Singular Deviations in Rouen. Research in this period was mostly into rejuvenating academia and trying to keep Britain afloat as it was dangerously close to sinking due to a process that has further only been indicated as the ‘B-factor’.

 

Recent research by Dr. Vincendeau10 has further brought to light that the Currer Bell College was cited by the scholar Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) also called "the prince of the curious", advisor to the Parliament of Provence, and knowledgeable in several subjects being an astronomer, numismatist, archaeologist, physiologist, botanist, zoologist, etc. Peiresc constituted a cabinet of curiosities and a remarkable library, symbols of his great humanistic thought. Vincendeau further discovered that on 21 May 1701 Alexander Pope signed the golden book of Currer Bell College:

 

 Happy the man, whose wish and care

 A few paternal acres bound,

 Content to breathe his native air,

 In his own ground.

 

 (Author’s note: from here the document becomes unclear and fragmented due to water dammage. We have done our best to recover what we can.)

 

Bonnie Prince Charlie, or Charles Edouard Stuart (1720-1788), eldest son of prince James Francis Edward Stuart, himself son of King James II of England and pretender of the English and Scottish thrones. The mother of Charles, Maria Clementina Sobieska, was John III Sobieski which makes Charles a cousin of Louis XV. He started his studies at the Currer Bell College in the years 1730-1737 in the Black Mountains of Wales, most probably to keep him away from his family in Scotland.

 

Vincendeau also notes that around 1880-1881, Alfred North Whitehead spend several days at the Currer Bell College during his study travels. This is most probably due to his contact and friendship with Gertrude Stein. Research into Stein’s connection with the Currer Bell College is ongoing.

 

Activities of both the Currer Bell College and its Faculty of Minor Disturbances remain unpredictable. It is thought that the strike announcement in France for daily strikes of only 55 minutes at different moments of the day between 24 September and 31 December 2019 is the work of an as yet unknown member of the College and/or Faculty. The notation of the moments of the strikes as a long series of ‘minor disturbances’ supposes that this member is in direct contact with Georges Pérec – see illustration below.

 

 

During this period of strikes, the Faculty launched an invitation to the world to create a Minor Disturbance to coincide with the passing of the interstellar comet 21/Borisov on Sunday 8th December. Whether this had any consequence is, at the time of writing this history, hard to tell.

 

Edith Doove

Art historian based at Rouen, France

2019

 

Please note that this history of the Currer Bell College and Faculty of Minor Disturbances can be subject of unexpected changes and further embellishments or may be rewritten at any time.