The Reversibility of Art, Lucretius, Gravity and Sema Bekirovic's How to Stop Falling

This paper reflects on art works recently displayed in an exhibition in the Lewis Glucksraan Gallery, Cork, Ireland, in 2011. In particular it focuses on Sema Bekirovic's video art work How to Stop Falling, in order to expand upon a theory of art' s reversibility. The paper uses the work of the Roman philosopher Lucretius, along with Jacques Derrida ' s deconstructive encounter with Lucretius in his essay "Mes chances/My chances" to meditate on art' s resistance to the entropie logic of the natural world. The paper also employs Lucretius alongside modem scientific understandings of the cosmos to reflect on Bekirovic's and others ' engagement with the very idea or in fact ideas of gravity. As part of this meditation on reversibility, the paper foregrounds issues concerning the relationship between nature, art and the idea of chance. Lucretius ' s atomistic philosophy, with its concept of the clinamen, emphasizes chance in ways which Derrida has shown are particularly congruent with deconstruction, and with these contexts in mind this paper attempts to explore ways in which art seeks to frame the essential aleatory nature of reality.