by Laurence Meaurant | Vol 26 (1/2) 2008
Two storytellers (one deaf, the other hearing) relate their tales simultaneously in Sign Language (the Sign Language of Southern Belgium) and in French. This experience reveals how important it is for the linguistic consciousness of Deaf signers that they encounter stories. This is very often, even for Deaf adults, where they discover that their language, a signed language, is constructed according to a network of rules, just like any other language. And further that the signer or the speaker can play with these rules. Sign language then is not merely a communication tool: it is a symbolic structure that opens the way for creativity. This experience of storytelling also highlights the differences between these languages: neither the rules, nor the infinite array of possible plays on these rules, are identical in French and in Sign Language. The storytellers’ work is to translate, to negotiate between the languages. It is significant that these discoveries arise from encountering the stories in French. Signers seem to need first to follow the example given by the works in the dominant language which is then translated into Sign Language, before they feel allowed to create in their own language with its own specific rules.
by Sarah Willems | Vol 26 (1/2) 2008
In this contribution the work of Belgian artist Pierre Alechinsky is analysed from an interdisciplinary perspective. First, within the perspective of art history, the author traces the trajectory of the artist starting from his encounters with the Cobra movement, the Chinese artist Walasse Ting and the Japanese calligraphers, to the use of acrylic during the elaboration of a painted handwriting that characterises his work and that is partially determined by childhood experiences. Then, the author delves deeper into this work by elaborating a psychoanalytic hypothesis. Starting from the insistence of the signifier “graph” in the artistic trajectory and in the discourse of the artist, and using the method proposed by Freud in his essay on Leonardo da Vinci and the paradigm of dream interpretation, the hypothesis is formulated that, during the elaboration process of his own painted handwriting, the artist identifies himself with the desire of his mother, who had a passion for graphology. Moreover, it is argued that the left-handed “written” paintings take root in the unconscious of the left-handed Alechinsky.
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by Tanguy de Foy | Vol 26 (1/2) 2008
This article is a testimony to the work of an animation workshop over several years within an institution for delinquent girls. Over the course of a series of trials, both with the group of girls and with the institution, a particular position distinguished itself that allowed the subject to come into existence. It assumes, on behalf of the animator, an involvement both at the level of the transference and at the level of theory. As regards theory, the transference opens a window onto the series Female-Feminine-Femininity which allows for the consideration of a potential encounter which can avoid the sliding of femininity towards criminality. The tapestry of the stakes in the game of roulette allow for the structuring in the game of the testimony that writes itself.
by Marc Belderbos | Vol 26 (1/2) 2008
This paper on architecture and its effect on the subject tries to clarify the main arguments that support the title: “Architecture, infinitive augury”. Having established the argument –what is architecture about – and having indicated its essential aspects , the author strives to establish what is specific about architecture: Architecture does not exist; architecture consists. Architecture grounds the spirit. Architecture is real and is not realistic. Nothing of culture exists outside architecture. Architecture, inaugural event,… In the third part of the paper, entitled ‘subject of architecture’, the author treats this theme by traversing around fifty maxims which allows us to consider contemporary space and the subject as in-finite of an in-fini-tive architecture of pure “augury”. The main argument is probably the development of the statement by the architect Louis Kahn: “Purity lies in the incompletion.”
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by Jean Guiraud | Vol 26 (1/2) 2008
In this paper four conceptual trilogies are discussed as defining Cézanne’s contribution (Picasso called him “the father of all of us”) to modern art: i) the three aspects of the art work: what is seen, what is felt, what is painted, i.e., the three terms that according to Cézanne must correspond; ii) the three registers on which, also according to Cézanne, aesthetics should be established: sense, forms and forces; iii) the three operations by which we are moved and that sustain our art works: antagonism, homology and substitution; and iv) the three changes Cézanne realised: the inversion of space, the inversion of the Gestalt and the fusion of internal and external spaces.
by Damien Darcis | Vol 26 (1/2) 2008
This text aims to explore the political implications of the creative act of painting. The author refuses to describe creation within that field of creative art which is defined purely by its own history. His goal is to broaden this field by questioning it and also to determine what connection exists between the act of painting and its socio-historical context. The recognition of such a connection leads the author to reconsider the conditions of that creative practice. In fact, if an art work obeys any other conditions than its own, it would be important to explore their role in the creative process and also to evaluate these various practices regarding their real inscription in a history which is not reducible to art history. Only then will it be possible to speculate about the possibility of aesthetic politics. More simply, this text reformulates the problem of the power of visual creation by insisting on the relationship of reciprocity it maintains with a socio-historical context which is a condition of that creation but which is also simultaneously altered through its influence.
