CONCEPTXUAL. Zones of desire

My Heart on your Hands, Photograph and documentation, 2006

Una fotografía que llora // apenas dura lo que el texto se vuelve lágrimas // Al final nada queda, tan sólo el recuerdo // ese mecanismo que alimenta la ilusión del pasado // ese dispositivo que propone la identidad hacia atrás, es decir, dispositivo ontológico de la identidad, pues sin pasado no hay presente y mucho menos futuro posible (encuentro) // "En mi recuerdo, tú" // El recuerdo se vuelve una zona pantanosa, un topos donde la memoria y del lenguaje de dos se resguardan //

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 desire links with some other different fluxes like sexuality, language and images. In general, the space, as a tactile characteristic, modifies our behavior, our affections and our relationships between subjects. I am working in a site-specific project that involves those "real" sites, public spaces that turn into private and vice versa because of the way people use them. Those spaces try to apply Henri Lefebvre’s categories about what he calls rhythmanalysis. For this author, rhythm can be found in the "interaction between a place, a time and an expenditure of energy" (Lefebvre, 2004:15). This category is pretty useful to explain how does desire work, we could 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, we could approach the ways as desire moves, acts and forms connections in a specific time and place. It does not mean at all 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 (as writing system), sexuality and photograph, and how does desire is involved in this crossover to produce meaning, or to link chains of sense. The use of sexuality its a kind of personal writing system 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” (an intersection of conceptual and sexual meanings). In this sense, is quite useful to understand sexuality, photographic images and text as different process of constructing meaning within a specific place. Those are different systems of representation, constructions of signs, between need and its expression, between the subject who desire and its known or imagined desired 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.
Finally, this space is like a white paper, a site where you can write (or draw), a space where you can penetrate and being penetrated by the pen-is, where semen is ink and the other way around. This space tries to develop the tactile approach, the gaze of flesh, the way as body build meaning, the way as body speech becomes a kind of writing system. 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, November 3th, 2006.

Bibliography
Cameron, Deborah & Kulick, Don, 2003, Language and Sexuality, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Hill, Stuart, 2003, Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Cultural, Media and Identities Series), London: Sage.
Lefebvre, Henri, 2004, Rhythmanalysis. Space, Time and Everyday Life, New York: Continuum.