Belledonne : Interiors and Exteriors of the Sign
- Submitting institution
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University of Southampton
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 35279817
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- John Hansard Gallery
- Open access status
- -
- Month of production
- -
- Year of production
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Victor Burgin’s digital projection work, Belledonne, was commissioned for the exhibition Barthes / Burgin (2016) at the John Hansard Gallery (UK). It operated as counterpoint to a display of works on paper by Roland Barthes that had not previously been exhibited outside of Paris. While Barthes’ theoretical writings have impacted significantly on Burgin’s own thinking and practice, he had never previously produced artwork explicitly in reference to Barthes. The interchange provides the fulcrum around which an extended investigation is undertaken. Two lengthy interviews, interspersed with key references and citations from both Burgin and Barthes, evidence a series of critical reflections held through the curatorial and editorial processes that produced the exhibition and two related volumes, Barthes/Burgin and Seeing Degree Zero (Edinburgh University Press, 2016; 2019), with the latter including a standalone chapter by Burgin and a print rendering of Belledonne. The research is situated in light of a range of important posthumous publications by Barthes, which emerged only in the last decade or so, as well as a wealth of new scholarship on the late work (with Burgin also contributing to a special issue of a journal on this topic). While Barthes’ impact across the arts is well established (cf. Burgin’s The End of Art Theory; Foster’s Return of the Real), the unique combination of engaging with his creative work, reflecting upon his late writings, and offering new exploration through Burgin’s visual practice, enables a renewed critical account of semiotics through art practice: a making of both theory and practice as an enquiry into the sign and its frame (physical, psychical and political), which, as a set of strategies within the virtual space of CGI modelling, explores the interlacing of real and psychical images as means to advance an understanding of both interiorities and exteriorities of the sign.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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