Gödel Suite, 2009

Marcello Mercado

Gödel Suite, Baden-Baden

1h Performance

2009

This one-hour performance took place in the Napoleon Suite of a hotel in Baden-Baden in 2009. The artist staged a clinical operation with two plastic containers, each containing compost, California red worms (Eisenia fetida), and a printed version of one of Gödel’s two incompleteness theorems. Each container was assigned a specific theorem – the first and second, respectively – creating an operational dissociation.

The performance followed a precise protocol. Both containers were placed on the bed of the suite, on a sterilized white surface. A laser device was positioned to intermittently activate beams directed at the compost masses. Throughout the one-hour duration, fragments of Gödel’s theoretical formulations – translated into sound – were transmitted to the containers via a CD player and a portable military radio system. No outside audience was present. No symbolic gestures were made.

The action was clinically closed. A sterilized green surgical drape was used to cover the entire scene at the end of the procedure. No commentary was provided and no textual explanation was provided at the site.

This work does not intend to represent Gödel’s theorems. It acts upon them. The performance subjects these theorems – considered fundamental limits of formal logic – to biological decomposition. The worms digest without interpretation. The artist does not take authorship of the decomposition, but becomes its procedural agent. The plastic containers function as epistemological cells: finite environments with a strictly defined purpose.

In line with Gödel’s formulation of incompleteness – where any consistent formal system capable of expressing basic arithmetic is necessarily incomplete – performance introduces an irreversible event: Decomposition. Once subjected to decay, the logical integrity of the theorems is no longer preserved as a cognitive artifact, but as an organic residue. The separation of the two theorems into independent composts suggests a dissociation of limits: one of provability, the other of system self-validation. They are not opposed to each other, but parallel to each other and degraded separately.

Here, the clinical approach to logic resonates with contemporary curatorial frameworks. Anita Haldemann’s forensic treatment of conceptual drawing, Chus Martínez’s investigations into speculative epistemologies, and Sebastián Vidal Mackinson’s curatorial approaches to logic-based performativity all support readings that locate performance not in allegory but in direct, structured operation.

Duration plays a critical role. The worms act slowly. The performance does not document transformation – it initiates it. The artist does not accelerate, complete, or alter the natural pace of the event. The decomposition remains partially invisible, imperceptible within the given time frame, yet fully initiated. Maria Lind’s writing on «compost politics« provides a lens for understanding slow, non-representational knowledge production. Similarly, Rosa Lleó’s interest in post-natural time and Catherine de Zegher’s focus on invisible spatial gestures enrich the reading of this temporal layer.

Light Intervention: A handheld laser traced subtle lines across the compost bins, activating the performative space as a site of speculative measurement-mapping invisibilities and referencing both data collection and epistemic limits.

The decomposition of the theorems into their own containers-each a closed system-materialized Gödel’s insight that no formal system can be both complete and consistent. The worms acted as biological agents enacting undecidability, devouring the internal limits of reason itself.

This work continues Mercado’s exploration of the body, language, and information as ephemeral substrates. The performance recalls early interventions in conceptual and body–based practices, while establishing a new dialogue with strands of bioart that explore identity, decay, and techno–organic thresholds.