Researcher Theory / CLiC
01.01.09 – 31.12.10
What is an image? At first sight, we could say that an image is a simple thing; its features seem to be objective and self-evident. (When we see an image in a movie we are all more or less watching the same thing). A standard definition would be that an image is a stimulation on the eye’s pupil by light. Nevertheless, if we pay closer attention we will recognise that not everyone sees exactly the same thing when looking at an image. If we take the extreme case of a psychotic delirium, we can witness an experience of vision that is totally different: very far from the objectivity we usually take for granted.
According to Jacques Lacan, the inconsistencies in visual perception are not the consequence of an asymmetry of different points of view (like in a postmodern/relativist fashion where everyone is trying to approach an object that is always beyond any definitive grasp, but where a hypothetical absolute point of view is still implicitly presupposed). That would be true, if an image could be considered an object (a being-in-itself with substantiality and permanence), and the problem of vision would therefore be limited to the more or less accurate approximation of its reality (very accurate in the case of a ‘normal’ person, inaccurate in the case of a psychotic). But according to psychoanalysis, an image is not an object. What prevents it from becoming an object is what Lacan called object gaze (the visual register of objet petit a): the ontological uneasiness, pertaining to the dimension of desire, of visuality as such. Against a phenomenological tradition that still relies on the illusion that vision is something that goes from a subject to an object in a neutralised space, the lacanian gaze is rather an impersonal qualitative curvature of space. It is not referring to the eye: while traditionally vision is always linked to transitivity, here the gaze is eminently intransitive. It surrounds the subject and prevents him from having an experience of vision as a consistent whole. Despite its name (object), the gaze is quite the opposite: it is nothing concretely perceptible, but implied in every perception. In fact, it can only be grasped through different representations that are not equivalent between themselves (Deleuze would have called them incompossible) and that cannot be mediated by a third.
Cinema is not therefore the realm of images that need to be interpreted; it is rather the art of the morphing figures of the gaze.
Bergamo, IT
PhD Audiovisual Studies. Department of Arts, Music and Theatre, Università degli Studi di Udine, Udine, IT.
BA and MA Philosophy. Università di Bologna, Bologna, IT.
Visiting student. Department of History of Consciousness, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, US.
Erasmus exchange programme. University College Cork, Cork, IE.
Teaching assistant in Psychology of the arts. University of Bergamo, Bergamo, IT.
Researcher. Palea Institute, Center of Psychoanalytic Studies and Social Sciences, Milan, IT.
Founder and member of the cultural collective Millepiani, Bergamo, IT.
Member of Bergamo Film Meeting organisation and selection committee. Bergamo, IT.
Coordinator of the research project Beyond peace toward radical democracy. Bergamo, IT.
Frontiera. Passaggi metropolitani. (7 March – 12 April). Cinema, visual art and narrations on contemporary urban spaces and related issues. Bergamo, IT.
The addiction. Strategies for deciphering the contemporary. Video production, conference and screenings. Romano di Lombardia, IT.
Frontiera. Toward a counter-geography for the refugee. (24 – 27 October). Four-day visual event on borders and migrations. Bergamo, IT: Sala Curò.
La trasformazione in-politica. One-year research group on the crisis of democracy and new forms of political activism.
Pietro Bianchi, Matteo Cavalleri, Fiammetta Girola & Angelo Signorelli (Eds). Bergamo film meeting 2008 general catalogue. Bergamo, IT.
War porn. In: Matteo Bonazzi & Francesco Cappa (Eds). Pop porn. Rome, IT: Meltemi Editore.
Lo sguardo perverso della natura [The pervert gaze of nature]. In: Pietro Bianchi, Matteo Cavalleri, Fiammetta Girola & Angelo Signorelli (Eds). Bergamo film meeting 2008 general catalogue. Bergamo, IT.
Lacan torna al cinema. Žižek e una passegiata (perversa) tra le immagini del desiderio [Lacan back to the movie theatre. Žižek and a (perverse) walk between the images of desire]. In: Cineforum, 489.
Quentin, Sigmund e Carl. In: Cineforum, 489.
La scrittura e l’assente [The writing and the abscence]. In: Carte di cinema, 25.
La logica del captialismo [The logic of capitalism]. In: Cineforum, 488.
In direzione ostinata e contraria. Bergamo Film Meeting, un’attualità sempre presente [In the opposite direction. Bergamo Film Meeting, an inactuality always present]. In: Carte di cinema, 24.
Il desiderio oltre la catastrofe [Desire beyond catastrophe]. In: Cineforum, 484.
La sovversione dell’autorità [The subversion of authority]. In: Cineforum, 483.
Julio Medem e lo strano caso dello sguardo scomparso. In: Cineforum, 478.
Il desiderio mancato dietro la violenza maschile. (4 December). In: Il Manifesto.
N.X.M. tadiar. Fantasy production. In: Studi culturali, 2/2004.
Verso una politica del comico. O come ridere del discorso del padrone [Toward a politics of comics. Or how to laugh at the master’s discourse]. In: Palea. Published on: http://www.palea.it/materiali/la_politica_del_comico.pdf.
Jacques Lacan e l’antropologia politica contemporanea. Soggetto, struttura, godimento [Jacques Lacan and contemporary political anthropology. Subject, structure, jouissance]. Bologna, IT: Università di Bologna.
Pietro Bianchi (translator) & Dipesh Chakrabarty (author). Subaltern history as political thought. In: Studi culturali, 2/2004.