6.         God is Dead, but He Doesn’t Know it: Lacan’s Play With Bobok

The modern atheist thinks he knows God is dead. However, the very notion of believing someone to be dead unconsciously places modern man in the place of still believing.  For Lacan the true formula of atheism is not to declare that God is dead but rather to declare that God is unconscious. One of the basic traits of modernity is the shift in what constitutes repression: what is now repressed is not the subject’s forbidden desires but prohibition itself; the subject has become a “tolerant hedonist dedicated to the pursuit of happiness” giving heed to the superego’s insistence to enjoy!

However, the very diminishing of oppressive authority has resulted in even harsher prohibitions and even the previous privilege of harboring at least transgressive fantasies has given its place to the commonly known “guilt trip”. The common child-adult dialogue of :

Adult: Do this!

Child: Why?

Adult: Because you have to.

And the subsequent obedience of the child who at the same time maintained its own personal unwillingness, has become:

Adult: I want you to do this but if you don’t want to do it OOOO-kaaaay…

Child: *dumbfounded silence due to the fact that it DOESN’T want to do what

it is asked to do but at the same time DOES want to please –stupid desire to be

desired- the parent*

Subsequently the guilt trip is “successful”, the child does what it is told but has lost even the freedom to be unwilling… The child can no longer rebel against authority as is its nature but has to appear complacent even whether it likes it or not… And if THAT false freedom of choice doesn’t mess up a person’s superego for life, what does??? The obscure  superego injunction as Lacan calls it is in my opinion what drives all the more kids to therapy nowadays…

Based on that train of thought Lacan supports that in psychoanalysis it is not when a patient has a false impression of himself “it is not enough to convince the patient about the unconscious truth of his symptoms, the unconscious itself must be brought to assume this truth”. It is one thing to talk one out of saying they are an elephant and acting like one and a totally other thing to actually changing his belief and convincing him that he is NOT in fact an elephant…

The same applies to Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism. One may believe that an everyday object has “superpowers” but the task of critical analysis is to discover what those “superpowers” are, not just to deny their existence… This shift form saying that “the commodity (the everyday object) seems to you to have special powers but in reality it is just a means of expressing relations between humans” to saying “you may thing that the commodity appears to you as an embodiment of social relations but actually by participating in those social exchanges what you actually wind up thinking is that the commodity in itself has the special powers to enable those exchanges.” This is portrays why Lacan stated that the formula of materialism is ‘God is unconscious’ rather than ‘God doesn’t exist’.  This brings us to Kafka and the comparison of what once was (publically pretending to believe while inside mocking and questioning those beliefs) and what is now (freely showing our skepticism while inside remaining haunted by those same beliefs and even stronger prohibitions).

Continuing Zizek talks of Dostoevsky, his statement in Bobok that ‘If God doesn’t exist than everything is permitted’  and his description of the spirits decision to enjoy their time among the undead by ridding themselves of morals and shame and doing/saying all those things that they had not dared to in life. The horror (ethically) of this according to Mikhail Bakhtin is that it is a reminder of the limits of ‘truth and reconciliation’ in the sense that we will come across perpetrators for who confession (the truth) will not server as catharsis but as an additional pleasure… Dostoevsky’s hero however, who is a religious man listening to spirits talk, creates a “truth” for himself in which what he is witnessing is proof that God does exist. In this fantasy  lies Dostoevsky’s ultimate lie: in his effort to present a terrifying Godless universe he instead portrays  a Gnostic fantasy of an evil God, of that aspect of religion that has been repressed. And of course let us not forget Lacan and the superego as it is exactly that, that urges the spirits to compulsively enjoy a shameless sincerity.

***

            For Zizek, Gnosticism is the externalization of the truth. To make his case more clear:

***

            All this fits nicely with the principles of cyberspace and the philosophy of Leibniz concerning the “monads”, microscopic substances living each in its own private universe with no way to look out at its surroundings and simultaneously able to see the whole universe mirrored in itself… That space where the undead can talk without limits is a depiction of Gnosticism and Cyberspace; it is the place where everything is allowed because no real interaction is possible and therefore no danger of harassment. Harassment is an ambiguous term implicating on an elementary level social forms of violence that should be condemned mercilessly but having subtly drifted into condemning any kind of over-proximity to another real human being with desires, fears and pleasures. The attitude of tolerance prevailing today has a liberal character and mostly takes on two forms of expression: that of respect and openness for otherness and that of an obsessive fear of harassment. What is now considered the “central human right” is the right to not be harassed in any way, and tolerance is thought of as the notion that the other is OK as long as he does not invade my personal space and as a result I must not get too close either, I must respect the other’s intolerance of my over-proximity lest I be accused of harassment. This has resulted in the use of restraining orders not so much, as far as Zizek describes, as a measure to keep someone at a safe distance rather as a “defense against the traumatic Real of the other’s desire”.  Openly displaying ones passionate desire for another is in itself violent for the recipient, even if in the end it turns out to be welcome.

However there is a paradox in this, that of surplus enjoyment; the more the object is veiled, the more it is shielded and protected, the more intensely disturbing is whatever trace of it is left as a reminder. I want what I am forbidden to have… And serves as a proof of sorts that the only guarantee of satisfaction is the existence a firm limit imposed by a symbolic authority that I can then violate. Satisfaction comes through transgression of a limit set to keep me from what I am not supposed to desire. However there is one catch nowadays: we are so strongly bombarded with the command to ‘Enjoy!’ that enjoyment has taken the form of an ethical duty resulting in feelings of guilt when a person does not feel the need to violate moral inhibitions and enjoy “guilty pleasures”. The real freedom thus, is to be allowed to maintain the right to NOT ENJOY if we choose to…

***

Favorite quote from Zizek ‘till now: “Evil resides in the very gaze that perceives Evil all around itself”…

Da links yo want, I got fo yo! Jamaica (in a regge singsong voice…)

Harassment

http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/harassment.html

Bobok

From Somebody’s Diary

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

translated by Constance Garnett.

[a Bobok is a small bean]

http://www.kiosek.com/dostoevsky/library/bobok.txt

THE DALI LAMA, BARBIE and COMMODITY FETISHISM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRDhB-8Ty0k

‘The big bang theory’ “Bernadet walked in on me while we were doing the cybernasty under the bridge of souls”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2DkmheRs8A

Atheists know that God exists?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE0TqJNqJEM

Technology and Art

Blast Theory “You Get Me”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4THE0Dk5Kw –> Blast theory is a company that combines instant composition, online gaming and cyberart. They interest me very much because what they do is in a way connected to further research about holograms and improvisation performances I would like to do.

Nick Harkaway: Touching Cyberspace, the Physicalisation of the Net

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsQMawflQK0 –> Interesting concept, cyberspace becoming palpable…

Nodding off, my jumbled up thoughts…

I have come to realize as I look for examples on artistic work fitting this chapter, that the closest I can find is my own future work… My dream hologram project combining virtual reality, dance, the possibility to do anything and everything to and with your virtual partner with no inhibitions, no prohibitions, no shame and no regrets, because there will be no real life consequenses… The performer can take on any role and the audience can even play God to those on stage…

And  I ask myself, if there IS such a cyber-God, is everything possible or is our human nature still going to stand in the way???

Will people attemt deeds that would be unthinkable had they had a flesh and blood human in front of them instead of a hologram?

Or are our instincts and prohibitions so deeply etched within us that we cannot bring ourselves to openly express our most dark secret desires EVEN IF IT IS ALLOWED???

Hmmm. A new idea is coming to life… PAF beware… You just might become part of it…

*** DARK EVIL SMIRKY LAUGH***

Goodnight (forever…)

The Trauma of Being Alive

By MARK EPSTEIN

Published: August 3, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/opinion/sunday/the-trauma-of-being-alive.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

Just came accross this, took a few minutes to read it (as I am having a very hard time concentrating on writing my proposal and anything and everything to keep me otherwise busy suddenly comes up…) and found it too good to be just a coincidence  So here it is, a few easy to understand words on ‘trauma’…

And I love the picture because it seems very indicative of the woman carrying her pervious trauma, minimizing it and then acknowledging it again when the new, big and fresh trauma refuses to go away…

5.         Ego, Ideal and Superego: Lacan as a Viewer of Casablanca

“Nothing forces anyone to enjoy except the Supergo. The Superego is the imperative of jouissance – Enjoy!”

            Right from the start, I knew I was going to enjoy (haha!!) this chapter! It interests me very much to ponder upon the degrees of enjoyment from the slight hint of a smile to the notion of “it hurts but I like it” and all the levels of consciousness that could apply to…

When speaking of jouissance the distinction is made: it speaks of an enjoyment so intense that it is borderline painful and pleasurable; a traumatic DUTY to enjoy, linked to Freud’s superego that “sadistic ethical agency that bombards us with impossible demands and then gleefully observes our failure to meet them”.  I have to say that I LOVE this definition especially the concept of an invisible “superagency” gleefully observing us stumble about, like kids watching a cartoon and laughing at the hero’s mishaps!

So let us bullet-point the Freudian and then the Lacanian (more distinct) concept of the three agencies that propel a subject to act ethically.

In the eyes of the Superego the more I try to suppress my corrupt urges, the more guilty I become, as, according to Lacan, it is an anti-ethical agency. Lacan proposes therefore a fourth agency, the ‘law of desire’ the agency urging us to act according to our desire. He also notes that there is a rift between this law of desire and the Ego-Ideal (the goody two shoes of agencies telling us to be reasonable and abide the norms of society) and that is where the superego comes in handy. It feeds us with guilt, not so much for the “sinful things we’ve done” but as a reminder that we have betrayed our desire.

Coming then to the movie Casablanca there is 3 ½ minute open-ended part, where the viewer is called to decide for himself whether or not the two main characters had sex or not. There are indications as to both.  This serves as a clear example of keeping decorum in the eyes of the big Other but leaving fantasy free to roam! As long as it is not clearly stated that the two characters engaged in sexual relations the viewer can deny it on the Ego-Ideal level and thus be “safe” from judgment. On the other hand, on the phantasmic realm of imagination the viewer is free to indulge in his deepest darkest fantasies and – best of all – guiltless! This is for Lacan the purest case of inherent transgression and the proof that appearances do matter…

In closing a few more viewpoints are provided, starting with the Hays Production Code that according to Foucault, was more productive, creating the very excess whose depiction it forbade and less negative censorship. By direct prohibition the opposite result was reached, everything became sexualized (yes, the human being desires what it is told it cannot have!). Then there is Shakespeare’s Ulysses where Ulysses diplomatically states the necessity of keeping the hierarchy (keeping the Ego-Ideal happy) while at the same time manipulating Achilles’s envy and playing him against others feeding from his desire (and that makes the superego happy since it loves a good catfight…). Finally in A Few Good Men, Apocalypse Now but also in the  debate about the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners one thing is common: if it is not seen, if it is kept secret than it is as if  it did not happen… Power can do wonderfully horrible things without admitting to them, or even worse, with presenting them as a solution for the best (and actually believing it sometimes). And then there are those men (or groups, or animals, or concepts) that would have been better off dead than being left for alive in the realm of the un-dead…

What comes to mind…

“Television”: Lacan on the unconscious

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URsYj-TVFjc

slavoj zizek gangnam style

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP6LoH3hASo

‘Everybody in Guantanamo has been tortured or abused’ – former detainee

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/tag/guantanamo-bay-detention-camp/

Donald’s better self 1938

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDLWbBrvA40

Casablanca’s 3 1/2 minutes…

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151608569705748&saved

A Few Good Men – You Can’t Handle the TRUTH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUu4ceCIN4k

Less artists than I wanted… I need to sleeeep….

SUKA OFF “tranSfera” | VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pFjXTsEQdU –> Jouissance, more pain than pleasure…

Live Video: Enter at your own jouissance. (Jan Baracz hands a tissue to Arfus Greenwood)

http://post.thing.net/node/2335

Jouissance Invitation Tease

https://vimeo.com/10208269

Tim Minchin – Guilty Pleasures

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVsD-bHA7oA –> a funny take on the superego’s guilty pleasures… (the law of desire)

Zizek: “How to Read Lacan”

4.   Troubles With the Real: Lacan as a Viewer of Alien

Let’ start with some simple “word-math”:

Man + Omlet = Manlet

Or in Lacan’s world ‘lamella’, that mythical creature of pure surface and no volume, belonging to the realm of the un-dead, that does not exist but rather insists (on always being there, never going away), an organ that is not of the body even though it should have been and survives without it, like the grin of the Chesire Cat suspended in midair when the rest of the cat disappears.

In less mythican terms, Lacan associates it with what Feud referred to as the’partial object’ and its never-ending insistence is the libido, Freud’s ‘death drive’ that persists (insists!)  on urging us to repeat painful previous experiences, as if ignoring all human limitations… Like Ridley Scotts Alien, it is indestructible, it is immortal and it can suck you in before you even realize what is happening! In all its monstrosity it resides in the realm of the Imaginary, just touching the limits of unrepresentable, representing the most terrifying imaginary dimension of the Real…

Imaginary———————–LAMELLA———————Real

Let us now explore Lacan’s take on the scientific mode of the Real and the relationship of the lamella with that… For Lacan, there is a scientific Real but we completely lack it, we are apart, it is too complex for us to fully perceive. The question then becomes:

It is the Real that for Lacan is at the core of human sexuality: the notion that “there is no sexual relationship” there is no mutual agreement, no common denominator and enjoyment only comes in comparison to a fundamental loss… We enjoy not because it is pure gain, but because it is ‘not loss’. The lamella then, baseon Freud characterization of this loss as ‘castration’, becomes the positive to the negative of castration, that which is left un-castrated when a living being enters the realm of sexual difference.

Taking into additional consideration Freud’s ‘latent thought’ expressed through his dream of Irma, we are caught between two “Reals”: that of the lamella, initiating from the Imaginary an image so horrific that it cancels imagery itself and the scientific Real, initiating from the Symbolic, an expression of nature’s automatic function. Lacan however adds a third Real, the je ne sais quoi or objet petit that goes beyond being the object of desire to being the cause of desire. Having said that, a new understanding of the word ‘melancolic’ as one “not mourning the loss of his object of desire but rather mourning the loss of his desire for the object he has come to posess”.

***

On a personal critical note I have to say here that expectations of what the object of our desire is and what it means to us lead us frequently to be disappointed in it when we finally acquire it, to become melancholic. And, as I recently replied to a comment on my previous post : “Fulfilling my desire IS potentially my truest nightmare because if my desire, my motivational force is accomplished what then is there left for me??? It is like Ithaca… It is the trip that matters not the destination, the process not the product… So if “all my life” I chase after a desire, if my actions, thoughts and feelings are driven or created by that desire, what is left for me when that desire is no longer there? What is left when I actually have it? My nightmare is that there will be nothing left! And then what?”

***

            So now we can finally define the status of this object/cause of desire; it is that of an anamorphosis, something that can only be seen, let alone have meaning, only from a certain point of view, only when looked at form a certain angle. In the Lacanian universe (“wink-wink” J ) this is referred to as “object a” and is simply the “the inscription of the subject itself in the field of objects”, visible only when part of this field is anamorphically distorted by the subject’s desire.

Passing on from desire to shame (two concepts that actually go hand in hand considering how often desires are not expressed because we are ashamed to admit them!!!) we have the lamella as shame at its purest form, as an intruding organ that is not supposed to be inside my body and brings me face to face with all that is excess within me. SO then the Real becomes de-substantialized, is no longer something external but resides in the tiny cracks within the Symbolic network…As a result we have a reversal in causality where trauma is concerned, just like Einstein’s general theory of relativity reverses the state of causality provided by his special theory of relativity! Look for example at Freud’s “Wolf-man” and what that says about trauma: it is something that comes from outside and results in the disturbance of our psychic balance; but look now at what happens to that theory when later it is turned on its head: a symbolic deadend is reached within our psychic existence and to explain/resolve it an experience stored away in memory is recalled and labeled traumatic.  As Lacan nicely sums it up the Real/the Thing is not the cause of inconsistencies in the Symbolic, but an effect of these inconsistencies. So even though natural objects know and automatically obey the laws of the Real, the same does not apply to humans as in their case laws may be forgotten or ignored…

***

             Arriving thus to Heisenberg and his theory on quantum physics there seems to be and inconsistency between that theory and Einstein’s… That is however solved if we note that while one theory neatly applies to the microcosm (Heisenberg’s), the other just as neatly applies to the macrocosm (Einstein’s) and the theory of superstrings unites them sooo… PROBLEM SOLVED! It is the same with Lacan’s approach to linking Freud’s: he speaks of le sinthome as a micro-unit of enjoyment reconciling psychoanalysis with the natural sciences

So many links so little time!!!

Slavoj Žižek. On Melancholy. 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNXY-JY9I-M

Slavoj Žižek. Object a and The Function of Ideology. 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq1F06J_HXo

Trauma Testimony Discourses/The Literary Sinthome as Testimonial of Trauma: The Case of(..)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HStv6I3R8hU

The Milgram Obedience Experiment

http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm –> Where the trauma lies…

And on a lighter note…

The Missing Piece

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gEjCJOzqXc  –> Melancholy,when we aquire the object of desire and it disapoints us… When we lose the desire…

RoadRunner Psychological Gravity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKZ3-IOlhIw  –> when the natural  laws of the Real meet Wile e Coyote…!

In the Artist’s World…

En Route Project – Sinthome (album preview)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djTTGcaOgGQ –> Lacan inspires music!

3D street art! What we see from the right and what from the wrong angle… Anamorphosis 😉

Anamorphosis – Snail

Anamorphosis – Living Room

One big question and a bunch of little ones…

What is it that keeps us attached to a place? What is it that makes us afraid to leave? Is it fear of not being able to come back? Is it the fear of losing all that we love in that place? OR is it actually the fear of losing the desire of wanting to come back, of losing the feelings we have that when we are in that place once we are far away for them to fade out?  Andwhat is then in our best interest as evlolving human beings but also as artist?

This first set of questions has been bugging me for quite a while now, as to where I want to live and why that choice has proven to be so hard for me to make… I guess since ” I am an artist and my craft is calling” I’ll just go wherever that craft drags me!

On the other hand:

How can such fears and insecurities be expressed and dealt with through art?

Can the tools given to us by technology facilitate a more universal creative art life?

Is a contemporary artist’s responsibility to help hold on to the desire or to show ways of letting go and finding new ones?

Is it an artis’s job to create desire? –> DOESN’T HE ANYWAY IN A WAY??

Is it an artis’s job to play with the boundaries of the Real? –> BY ALL MEANS I BELIEVE IT IS…

I, as an artist, actually enjoy messing around with other people’s desires… I enjoy provoking them and making them question what they believe to be acceptably do-able or true… Even if I that is simply done by the faintest notion of subtext… I know I am not being very clear, but that’s perhaps the fun of it… When one is not clear, one can support any contradictory set of options, one can shift and change, one can adapt and never have to explain how or why, one can sipmly say “that was the plan all along” 😉

3.    From Che Vuoi? to Fantasy: Lacan With Eyes Wide Shut

Starting out, Zizek points out the shift from the early Lacan to the later Lacan, from phenomenology (intersubjective dialectic of recognition) to structuralism (mechanism that regulates interaction of subjects).  Language and desire are the main focus of this chapter and concept of the subjectivised Other is introduced. On the topic of desire Lacan suggests that “man’s desire is the Other’s desire”, that man desires as Other, a statement that can be translated in two ways.

On the one hand what I desire is not decided by me but exists within the symbolic space and is determined beforehand by the big Other; even transgressive desires, those not ‘normaly’ expected, are rooted in the nature of that which they seek to transgress. Human rights are presented as the right to break the laws of the 10 Commandments (and in this I find a very to the point example of desire stemming from that which is forbidden).  On the other hand man’s desire being the other’s desire can be seen in a different light: that of the subject desiring what and when he/she feels the Other desire. I am then brought face to face with anOther’s desire, bewildered perhaps of what actually constitutes my own desire.

The impenetrability of the other human being was first tackled by Judaism and the notion of loving my neighbor as my mirror-image, only to be followed by Lacan and Freud pointing out the Otherness of my neighbor and the fact that I cannot be sure of what I really know about him. In contrast to this Jung brings the New Age approach of the neighbor being just a mirror-image, just a means to my own self-realization and finally just aspects of my own personality of which I am in denial. Because of this, Lacan’s ‘what do you want?’ becomes more a question of ‘what part of you afraid of and cannot control?’. So finally Emmanuel Levinas comes along to propose that “the ultimate function of the Law is not to keep us from forgetting the neighbor, but to keep the neighbor at a safe distance, to shield us from the monstrosity” (that is to say the potential evil hidden within the neighbor).

***

Skipping a bit ahead we come to the Theory of Performatives: “speech acts that accomplish in the very act of their enunciation the state of affairs that they declare”. SAY=DO. Declaring love then has the potential of being a traumatic experience for the subject on the receiving end of that declaration seeing as it may be forcing one to acknowledge intimate issues kept dormant inside. Lacan takes this notion a step further adding that by telling someone they are something to me I instantly attach to them the quality of that something and force both of us to treat each other in a particular way, abiding to that characterization.  My confrontation of the other is not just referring then to my mirror-image but to the absolute Other, stepping between me and my neighbor to facilitate our relations.

***

Althusser meats Lacan:

As a protection mechanism Louis Althusser proposed an approach of practical humanism and theoretical anti-humanism, that is  ‘be nice to humans, treat them with respect but keep in mind that humanism is ideology and humans are parts of a structure that follows its own laws’. Lacan however proposes practical anti-humanism, confronting in this way the inhuman core of humanity. To better understand this, consider Kant’s distinction between ‘not’ and ‘non’ the two forms of negating the same positive notion (i.e. when one is dead it is clear that he is dead, but negating this it is one thing to be ‘not dead’-that is alive- and another to be ‘undead’ –that is neither one or the other but a hazy inbetween state). The concept of ‘non’ brings us too close to the positive for something that is not positive, that is Other and that is traumatic. Fantasy (in the sense of why I desire what I do and not of imagining I something I desire but don’t have) is Lacan’s cure for this, for coping with our encounter with the Other and the Other’s desire. The desire created in fantasy is not the subject’s desire but the other’s. It is through fantasy that the subject attempts to form an identity that will satisfy the Other and make the subject the object of the Other’s desire.

In that sense sexual relations are real and in order to survive need to be seen through a degree of fantasy. In art, the need to filter out the Real of the sexual act and rid me of the burden of its presence is an issue has been frequently the chosen option, achieved either by directing the focus on other things at the same time or through audiovisual metaphors. The reasoning behind this is that contrary to psychoanalysis that states that sexuality is hidden within everything, the real sex itself in order to be digested needs to be camouflaged. Fantasy then falls into the category of the Objectively Subjective, that of how things actually seem to us even if we ourselves are not aware of it.

In that realm of unknown knowns I, as subject, am robbed of my innermost subjective experience  as I can never fully acknowledge what it is that brings on those thoughts and feelings and so I can never experience them in full consciousness; I am an empty subject. Paradoxical phenomenology without the subject (what appears to a subject but isn’t of the subject) leads to ‘aphanisis’, “the self-obliteration as a result of the subject getting too close to the phantasmic kernel of its being”. It has become the duty of the contemporary artist to bring us face to face with staged fantasies that are radically desujectivised, that can never be enacted by the subject. Frequent reminders that what takes place is fiction but also events that point out the reality of the stage should be perceived as escapes from the Real rather than versions of alienation, in the sense that at the end of the day what we have been taught to believe is turned on its head and ‘Reality’ is actually fantast while in ‘Dreams’ we encounter the traumatic REAL.

So for Lacan, the goal is ‘true awakening’ not simply from sleep but from fantasy, imposed by the Other and directing us as puppets even when we are awake…

ΑΦΥΠΝΗΣΗ ΟΧΙ ΑΠΛΑ ΞΥΠΝΗΜΑ

Potentially related links:

Jacques Lacan the Gaze and the Split: Seminar XI Chapter 6; psychosis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lg0IX-UmXo

Eyes Wide Shut = NEUROTIC view of the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n-ojOnrfYk

ΟΤΙ ΒΛΕΠΟΥΜΕ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΨΕΜΑ / WHAT WE SEE IS A LIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQtfMR-UKd0 –> an interesting  illustration of what is reality and what Real based on perspective…

HOW TO MANUFACTURE DESIRE: AN INTRO TO THE DESIRE ENGINE

http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/03/how-to-manufacture-desire.html –> how theories concerning desire are put to use as ‘marketing strataties’

Eating the Other:Desire and Resistance

http://www.scribd.com/doc/118302450/Eating-the-Other-bell-Hooks –> in a way flirting is creating desire in the other through our desire in them. In this case the other is the subject and I am the Other (far fetched, I know but as my blog is called ‘Food for Thought’ I figure why not???)

How to Get the Guy You Want – Flirting Advice for Women

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HrPuUWS_8E

In the “Aritsts’ World”…

Performance conducted for Art Degree (DNAP) at the Marseille-Mediterranean College of Art and Design (ESADMM).

Referring to the idea of the discovery or rediscovery of self in relation to others. A form of recall crossing the theory of the mirror stage developed by Lacan, the notion of faciality and the relationship of the self to otherness that is essential for perception of his own image.

https://vimeo.com/67881776

Α.Μ.Α.Ν-ΜΟΥ ΦΑΓΑΝ ΤΟ ΜΠΙΦΤΕΚΙ ΜΟΥ / THEY ATE MY BURGER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhY9-d0L8Wo  –> averyclear and humourous approach to the notion of a subject’s desire being the Other’s desire, to the concept that we only desire something when we experience it as being desireable throught the Other, from Greek comedians AMAN.

Inception – the movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpXngRB-VTw&list=PL4C321FF5688D3581 –> collection of videos from the movie ‘Inception’ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/) that is for me a mind boggling approach to what reality/Real is at the end of the day… A dream within a dream, a reality within a reality spiraling in and out and never knowing for sure what is Real.

Eudora Welty, On Writing