Here In Our Place ... A Little Lower Than The Angels

Fig. 1. Shusaku Arakawa - Untitled (from the portfolio No! Says the Signified), 1973


'The second degree is a way of life. All we need to do is change the focus of a remark, of a performance, of a body, in order to reverse altogether the enjoyment we might have given it. There is an erotic, an aesthetic of the second degree. ... We can even become maniacs of the second degree: reject denotation, spontaneity, platitude, innocent repetition, tolerate only languages which testify, however frivolously, to a power of dislocation: parody, amphibology, surreptitious quotation. As soon as it thinks itself, language becomes corrosive.'

Roland Barthes

It Is In The Unveiling Of Mystery That Desire Wanes

Figs. 1. & 2. François Lespingola - Hercules Rescuing Prometheus, late 17thC


'Our gaze can fall, not without perversity, upon certain old and lovely things whose signified is out of date. It is a moment at once decadent and prophetic, a moment of gentle apocalypse.'

Roland Barthes

It's A Saturday Thing: The (Dis)enchantments of Love

Fig. 1. Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) - Untitled (under the skin, thin skin, skin deep, thick skin, skin tight, skinned alive), 2003


'Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.'

Roland Barthes

Reprise #6: A Place Between Certainty And Oblivion

Fig. 1. Robert Morris - Bodyspacemotionthings, 1971


'The Photograph does not necessarily say what is no longer, but only and for certain what has been. This distinction is decisive. In front of a photograph, our consciousness does not necessarily take the nostalgic path of memory (how many photographs are outside of individual time), but for every photograph existing in the world, the path of certainty: the Photograph's essence is to ratify what it presents. One day I received from a photographer a picture of myself which I could not remember being taken, for all my efforts; I inspected the tie, the sweater, to discover in what circumstances I had worn them; to no avail. And yet, because it was a photograph I could not deny that I had been there (even if I did not know where). This distinction between certainty and oblivion gave me a kind of vertigo, something of a detective "anguish" (the theme of Blow-Up was not far off); I went on to the photographer's show as to a police investigation, to learn at last what I no longer knew about myself.'

Roland Barthes

If I Only Had A Heart

Fig. 1. Paris Bordon - Venus, Mars, and Cupid Crowned by Victory, c. 1550

'Laetitia

circonscrire/to circumscribe

To reduce his wretchedness, the subject pins his hope on a method of control which permits him to circumscribe the pleasures afforded by the amorous relation: on the one hand, to keep these pleasures, to take full advantage of them, and on the other hand, to place within a parenthesis of the unthinkable those broad depressive zones which separate such pleasures: "to forget" the loved being outside of the pleasures that being bestows.'

Roland Barthes (A Lover's Discourse)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #11: LOVE (MixPod Player)

1. Cat Power - I Found A Reason
2. The Brunettes - Mars Loves Venus
3. Ladytron - The Way That I Found You
4. Virginie Leydoyen - Mon Amour, Mon Ami
5. Catatonia - Mulder and Scully
6. Sinéad O'Connor - The Singing Bird
7. Feist - Feel It All
8. Beth Orton - I Love How You Love Me
9. Björk - All Is Full Of Love
10. Ute Lemper - Tango Ballad
11. Color Filter - Satellite Of Love
12. Leonard Cohen - A Thousand Kisses Deep