The purposeful and the desolate
Text by Christiaan Henkel
In the north of the Netherlands, the Wadden Sea presents a landscape that is neither land nor sea.
Its endless tidal flats appear desolate, but who looks closer finds intricate patterns in the clay, and
abundant life pursuing its own goals in the mud. It is with these patterns and materials that
Gunnhild Torgersen’s exhibition Pathmakers explores the no man’s land between inanimate matter
and life.
In the main exhibition room, the sculpture series Agents is inspired by a theory about the origin of
life. How did the landscape go from empty and lifeless to one populated by organisms – things that
are distinct from their environment, that have their own identity, their own aims? Their goals are
curiously absent from their substance and form, beyond the self, always in the future. The Agents,
made out of clay from the Waddenzee, build on a biological theory that emphasizes this void or
absence, the negative space that defines life.
In the cellar, the Irrlys light sculptures have not quite achieved this level of independence. As they
remain bound to their landscape, they might be denied the freedom to go where they want, to
pursue their own goals.
There are two types of landscapes, the science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem tells us – the
purposeful and the desolate. Life fills landscapes with purpose: every last speck of dust in a
biosphere is touched by evolution. By contrast, on desolate planets devoid of life, nature’s slower
creativity can run its course. Here, patterns and grotesque structures arise precisely because they
are not constrained by the hasty rhythms of natural selection. These forms exhibit ‘a
senselessness that concealed some subtle deceit – here things […] could never complete
themselves, never achieve full realization, never decide on a conclusion, on a destiny.’ (1)
This deceit presents a paradox: nature’s blind pattern formation capabilities can create the
semblance of meaning in the absence of intelligence. Conversely, in Lem’s bleak universe, we are
not able to recognize where an alien landscape ends and where its life begins, let alone grasp its
goals and ambitions. Perhaps the contrast between these two worlds is not one of day and night.
In fact, there are hints that purpose and meaning actually depend on the self-organizing
capabilities of pointless, desolate nature.
Self-organization – pattern formation without an architect’s blueprint – occurs all around us. At the
Wadden coast, a semi-regular pattern emerges from the cracks in the dried clay deposits. A key
characteristic of such order-generating processes is that they occur from the bottom up, from the
local interactions of small particles, unaware of any emerging pattern. In addition, self-organizing
processes are self-reinforcing: the first interactions restrict the future of the process. As a crack
forms in the drying clay, it temporarily relieves tensions in the material, so that no new cracks can
appear close by. Any further drying will only strengthen (widen) the original fissure.
Life shares many of the qualities of self-organizing processes. Like nature’s desolate creativity, life
imposes its patterns on unorganized matter, perpetuating itself. According to one biochemical
scenario, the reactions that created the building blocks of life on the primordial Earth occurred on
the surface of, and in cracks in clay. These small molecules subsequently further self-assembled
into proto-life. At some stage, proto-life started to reproduce, natural selection kicked in, and cells
conquered the world.
What is the difference between living and self-organized nature? Is it merely a question of quantity,
with life’s patterns just more intricate and numerous, or has some qualitative phase transition
occurred? The key difference might be agency, the autonomous pursuit of own goals. Life is
separate from its surroundings: each cell, or organism, or possibly even a proto-life assembly,
continuously evaluates its environment and, based on what it finds, acts on its own behalf. It is
through these acts of assigning value that life introduces meaning into the otherwise pointless
cosmos.
By having agency, life is very unlike any engineered device. Despite appearances, even highly
complex machines such as the large language models of artificial intelligence do not possess it.
This lack of familiarity could explain why science and philosophy have struggled to come to grips
with purposeful phenomena like life and mind. However, that does not mean they should be treated
as mysterious forces forever beyond our understanding. Rather, we could draw lessons from
selforganized patterns, which are real, and explainable, even in the absence of a design.
The sculptures in Pathmakers are inspired by the emergence of agency, by the threshold between
the desolate and the purposeful. The Irrlys take their name (Norwegian for will-o’-the-wisps) from
the ghostly lights wandering across landscapes, especially marshes. A natural phenomenon, they
are ultimately caused by decomposing organic matter. The paths they trace are without purpose,
yet our minds assign them intentions.
The Agents are inspired by teleodynamics, the model for the emergence of agency (from
higherorder self-organization) proposed by the theoretician Terrence Deacon . The capsids,
boundaries between an inner self and the outer world, are simultaneously inert and in anticipation (4).
Their negative space constrains potential dynamics. By narrowing down infinite, random movement
options to a few possible paths, purpose might emerge. Both as individuals and together, the
Agents hint at own aims, suggest directions – but have they, in Lem’s words, decided on a destiny?
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(1) Stanislaw Lem (1986) Fiasco. Translated by Michael Kandel, Penguin Modern Classics.3
(2) Terrence W. Deacon (2011) Incomplete nature. How mind emerged from matter. W.W. Norton &4
Company.