| AALEJANDRO NAVARRETE |
| Zones of Desire (Developing Conceptxual Meanings) The main purpose of my research is to map zones of desire. But what does a zone of desire mean? I am trying to produce a space where the desire is a kind of link in between different fluxes (sexuality, language and images). The space, as a tactile characteristic, modifies our behavior, our affections and our intersubjective relationships. As many places where subjects go to and have sexual or love exchange (like darkrooms or bathrooms), the space of gallery will become into a zone of desire. I am working in a site-specific project that involves those 'real' sites, public spaces that turn into private and vice versa. Then, this metaphor between those spaces (the real one and the gallery), try to apply the Henri Lefebvre's categories about what he calls rhythmanalysis. For this author, we can find rhythm in the 'interaction between a place, a time and an expenditure of energy'. When we analyze these kinds of categories we find that desire is the expended energy in a specific place and in a specific time, and it seems to have its own development. In other words, it means the ways as the desire moves, acts and forms connections in a specific time and place. It does not mean that desire is bound up only with sexuality, but it does with language too. In this sense, I am looking for the crossover between language (only writing system) and sexuality through photographic images. And at the same time, I am interested on sexuality as a flux linked with other fluxes (language or images) to create desire. That is why I call this project Conceptxual (the intersection of conceptual and sexual). In this sense, is quite useful the semiotic theory to understand sexuality, photographic images and text as different process of constructing meaning. Those are different systems of representation, constructions of signs, between need and its expression, between the subject who desire and its known or imagined object. Texts, images and body speech are in their own specific sign systems; codes; fluxes. In a very broad and inclusive way of using language, Stuart Hill says that a group of organized signs, like spoken or writing system, also visual or some other, express meaning. In this way, this interaction build 'discourse', it means that a particular topic is developed in a particular time. In other sense, when viewers go into the gallery it is like if he or she will be in a darkroom, or in a bathroom, they become objects and subjects of desire at the same time, and in this interaction the discourse is made. In my research viewers can approach to their own object of desire. Finally, the darkroom is like a white paper, a space where you can write (or draw), a space where you can penetrate and being penetrated by the pen-is, and semen is the ink. This space tries to develop the tactile approach, the gaze of flesh, the way as body build meaning. This is a geographical perspective, a point of view that tries to understand how the space modifies our conduct and our own desire, and how does it come 'real' through language. Utrecht, The Netherlands, Friday 3th November, 2006. [email protected] |
