Photo-Graph
John Abbate
Press release / Catalogue text
In his Seminar XI, Jacques Lacan literalises the two components of the word "photograph" by splitting it down the middle, a trope of which he was very fond. This work on the floor of Ocular Lab by John Abbate emerges from this point.
"Hence it comes about that the **** is the instrument through which light is embodied and through which--if you will allow me to use a word, as I often do, in a fragmented form--I am photo-graphed.
What is at issue here is not the philosophical problem of representation. From that point of view, when I am presented with a representation, I assure myself as a consciousness that knows that it is only representation, and that there is, beyond, the thing, the thing itself. Behind the phenomenon, there is the noumenon, for example. I may not be able to do anything about it, because my transcendental categories, as Kant would say, do just as they please and force me to take the thing in their way. But, then, that's all right, really--everything works out for the best."
-Jacques Lacan, Seminar XI
