Project Two -
Desire and its interpretations
What do you want? What do you desire?
…and what is the source of that desire? Where does it come from and how does desire work in practice?
The psychoanalyst and theorist Jacques Lacan characterised desire as lust, covetousness, longing, and pleasure. He developed a number of models to explore the dimensions of desire that I will use as a basis for photographic design.
In this project, I want to explore interpretations of desire, with its drives and compulsions, not as a voyeur, but rather to open the door to see that desire must be maintained rather than consumed.
As the options for content are so vast I have decided to concentrate on 4 key themes.
The incoming of the Real
Imaginary, symbolic, and fantasy in desire
The desire of the other
Language worlds
The Real
The first idea that I want to explore is The Real.
Lacan described “three registers of reality” - The imaginary, the symbolic and The Real.
When a subject reaches out and grasps the object, The Real breaks in to demolish our symbolic worlds.
The black lips represent the death of desire that comes from grasping the object.
The Rose
I desired a rose, a beauty held beyond compare
who’s sweet scent fills the air with joyous notes
Who’s tender form, of petal and flower, the mind ensnare.
As I grasp, as I hold, death arrives on black silken lips,
The Real enters, to leave it’s emptiness,
in the grave yard of desire.
The window as portal to desire
The window
The window
Portal
Guardian of another world
Pregnant with ideas
Fantasies beyond this realm
Touch me, break through the barrier
Taste and see what desire may bring
Fulfil your dreams
Be whole
Be complete
O prophet of light, who’s touch brings only darkness
Desire waning beneath the ecstasy you did not give
A promise only, that turned to dust once grasped
Empty
Vacant
The Real rushes in
Fantasy in a bubble
It only took a glimpse, just a glimpse and I was hooked,
caught, bewitched, ensnared by a look, by a promise.
What could it be? What could happen?
What sensual pleasures could ensue to deliver pleasures treasures?
What truths could escort me onwards
down that rosy road of desire’s wish?
The fantasy in a bubble of dreams and hopes
framed by imagination’s ebb and flow, light and life
Overlayed with false impressions, but oh the sweetness in symbolic form.
Only a glimpse
Only a look
Only an eye to see
and be seen
as one.
The desire of the other
One of Lacan’s most interesting ideas is the desire of the other.
Lacan proposed that as human subjects, our desire is not directly for another person, but rather to be their desire. To be desired by them.
Imagine this in a triangular way. We desire the other person, but they desire something else. So we want to displace the thing that the other desires by becoming it.
I have tried to visualise this idea by using an apple as the object of desire for the viewer. The model in the background is trying to displace our gaze from the apple and onto her.
Look at me.
Fantasy and the imaginary
Lacan tells us that fantasy is the engine of desire. It is in the imagination that we envisage all sorts of wonders, that we can get what we want and that the object of our desire is sublime.
The imagination feeds on the promise of what might be.
A chance encounter sparks and so the flames of desire begin.
Little a gets in the way
Lacan introduced the idea of object petit a (object little a) as a central theme to understand desire.
So what is objet petit a?
It is the thing that stops us from getting what we want. The cause of desire, and the thing that keeps desire functioning.
It exists in relation to a lack, but in itself it is a nothing.
In order to keep the imaginary, the symbolic and the fantasy worlds that we create in play, object a gets in the way.
In this way, the object of desire remains sublime.
Trapped in language
What is it like to be trapped in language?
Do you even know?
Semiotic sickness, symbolism like prison bars,
Invisible, unnoticed, not a clue.
Ravelling
Ravelling
Ravelling
Ensnared by a timeless curse of syntax and grammar
Stalking every move and thought,
to claim the victim’s prize.
Words that drift in sound and sight, to work, to fight, to rectify the timeless cause of making meaning.
I only spoke a word, to match the signifier with the signified
wrapped in language, forever entombed, in the chaos of desire’s whims.