MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Grain of Emptiness When a word is repeated over and over again, two things can happen. Either the word loses all meaning, or the repetition provokes questions about what the word really means.

The second possibility seems to be the aim of “Talk about Nothing”, a lecture series at New York's overlooked Rubin Museum of Himalayan art. The talks are designed to accompany "Grain of Emptiness”, an exhibition that explores Buddhist theories in contemporary art, particularly the concept of non-attachment—what is and what isn’t.

Rick Moody, an American novelist, and Melissa Franklin, a physicist, took the stage recently to discuss, well, nothing. What this meant in practice was a conversation about Samuel Beckett, whose work has been an inspiration to them both. The Rubin did a smart job with such a disparate pairing—Moody, an author who has been described as having “a compulsion to overwrite”, was emotional, cutting and articulate. Franklin, who was the first woman physicist at Harvard to be granted tenure, was dry, witty and excellent at breaking down complicated concepts and imbuing them with wonder.

Most interesting were the different ways in which they approached the text. For Moody, Beckett was an author who aspired towards nothingness. The author and playwright stripped away the “inelegance” and “stuff’” of the world in pursuit of perfect prose. The result, said Moody, is heartbreaking. For Franklin, Beckett was like a scientist conducting experiments. Much the way a physicist places two planes in a vacuum to observe how they interact, Beckett did the same with two characters.

Perhaps the best thing about the conversation was the absence of an insistent moderator with an agenda. The conversation between the novelist and scientist shifted from a poignant story about reading Beckett in college (from Moody), to a moving testament to the romantic allure of black holes (from Franklin). The banter included enough disagreement to be interesting, and the occasional joke at each others' expense.

The talks continue through January, with similarly inspired pairings—philosophers and actresses, academics and directors. For conversations about nothing, they are certainly something.

"Talk about Nothing" will take place at the Rubin Museum through January 29th

~ ARIEL RAMCHANDANI

Picture Credit: Atta Kim, ON-AIR PROJECT 160-13, from "Grain of Emptiness"