The Tapis de sucre<\/em> also questions the place of a refined culture\u2014as of refined sugar\u2014within this raw economic logic. The carpet seems \u00adprecious because its stencilled fringes reproduce a decorative lace motif, applied repetitively with great care to convey the impression of handmade work. This craftsman-like work, which imitates the industrial process, invites comparison with the thankless labour that preceded it elsewhere to produce its raw material, evoked in the sugar plantation scenes painted in dark filigree on the exhibit walls. The artwork commands respect by simultaneously underscoring the dignity and indignity of work, drawing on the ambiguous connections between artistic creation and industrial production. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the thread of this web of contradictions can take us far, namely to the \u201csacred\u201d origin of all culture according to the \u00adanthropological thesis posited by critic Ren\u00e9 Girard in Violence and the Sacred<\/em>. According to Girard, the peace and plenty that any social order claims to ensure first \u00adarises out of the general fray of rival desires competing for a common object. As a social pact, the sacred union around the victors results from a \u00adunanimous confusion between this founding violence and its \u201cbarbaric\u201d \u00advictims, allowing \u201ccivilization\u201d to be purged of the former along with the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is the sacrifice of the scapegoat, still to be seen in the margins of Tapis de sucre 3<\/em>, driven into the industrial shadow of a shining artistic surface. The sugar itself is the revealing precipitate of desire in its pure infantile form, invisibly saturating everything we consume so as to maintain a dependency whose nature and implications remain hidden from us until we see it massively poured onto a factory floor. In seemingly inviting consumption, all the while maintaining the prohibition against it, this obscene waste only serves to further emphasize the sacred dimension of the sugar. In this way, the desire which the artwork cleverly thwarts is maintained, since to give in to it would profane the \u201cpure\u201d object that sustains such desire, possibly triggering an escalation of vandalism worthy of the primitive horde. The ephemeral survival of Tapis de sucre<\/em> hangs by a thread tautly stretched between conflicting impulses, in the precarious balance of a tour de force relying on an archaic fulcrum to defy\u2014even as it invokes it\u2014 the command to give in to all temptations on which the economy runs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This sacred space is nonetheless given over to desire to the point of suspending it in a more gaping openness to any and all contingencies. As a dazzling white skin, of a grain so delicate that the most timid caress would suffice to lacerate it, the Tapis de sucre<\/em> resembles the finely raked sand of a Zen garden upon which we dare not trample, but where irregular rocks emerge here and there, in an indecipherable arrangement. Likewise, in its very materiality, the artwork acquires in the surrounding space the \u00adcharacter of a desert erratically punctuated by protuberances and crevices, which underscore its otherwise immaculate emptiness: craters of rubble fallen from the ceiling; gashes and contusions inflicted by the fleeting touch of careless visitors; the cruel, brownish scars of rainwater leaks; and the light, parallel tracks of discreet wildlife. These traces, beyond human control, become part of the surface of the sacred enclosure set apart from the latter, to make room for and give rise to the Void of which everything that spontaneously arises in the artwork partakes, bearing witness to the Void\u2019s sovereign power in the vulnerability of its very self-emptying. The Tapis de sucre<\/em> furthermore does without security guards to enforce the respectful distance imposed by the museum as an institution; this highly fragile work can fend for itself precisely by putting itself at the mercy of all comers, as though by virtue of the Tao\u2019s acting-without-acting The Void nevertheless reclaimed its rights over its ephemeral foil during the public dismantling of the installation, titled VACUUM<\/em> and filmed as a performance. It was only a matter of letting sanitation \u00adprofessionals do their job: vacuuming up the poured sugar, then transferring it to a tank truck parked outside so as to recycle it as food for a \u00adpharmaceutical \u00adlaboratory\u2019s microorganisms. After a few weeks\u2019 detour through art into the cultural sphere, the sugar provided for free by Lantic thus \u00adre-entered the economic circuit. The industrial system finally exercised its \u00adannihilating power over the vulnerable softness of the Tapis de sucre<\/em>, which had covered its iron logic with a revealing coating. Overtaken by a strange unease, one might have shuddered to watch this white skin being slowly flayed until all that was left was a bare gray floor. The fragility of the environment given over to economic exploitation might come to mind upon seeing this snow-white carpet being inexorably eroded by the vacuum cleaner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides, until the very last moment, one could hardly believe that the majestic Tapis de sucre<\/em> would actually disappear, slowly dwindling to oblivion before our eyes; it was as though it had been invisibly rolled up rather than irretrievably abolished, each fragment containing the dimensions and the structure of the whole, much as in a hologram. Due to the sacred aspect of this sugar mandala, its transfer into the vacuum called for a ceremonial dismantling comparable to that of sand \u00adpaintings in Tibetan or Hopi rituals, whose surfaces are grooved by a straight slash to break their microcosmic charm prior to restoring them to the Void. In this happening, the technical procedure of the profanation of an \u00adartwork reduced to its own dust ended up being ceremonially sacralized as an \u00adintegral part of the work\u2019s creative concept in the very process of its destruction, evoking the sacrifice of fragile human and natural resources by the technological system that harnesses them as such. In surrendering to the world-system as a willing victim, the fragile and ephemeral artwork identifies itself with what is weak and precarious to the point of allowing raw power to erase it, as though the only way not to give in to its sway were to uncover it, letting it run on empty. For only the Void has the final word, however faint its voice might seem, as it echoes through such an art of the fragile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [Translated from the French by Vivian Ralickas]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/65_DO05_Roy_Moreau_Tapis-de-sucre-2-scaled.jpg\")
(wei wu wei<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/65_DO05_Roy_Moreau_Tapis-de-sucre-3-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/65_DO05_Roy_Moreau-scaled.jpg\")
photo\u202f: Guy L\u2019Heureux <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n