Images and Circuits of Desire

Earlier this week I went to the opening address of a graduate conference at Columbia, "Divining the Message, Mediating the Divine," and I heard Bernard Stiegler present on "Transitional Objects and Systematic Infidelity." Here's the abstract:

"Building upon previous research that has established that theos (Aristotle's intellect qua spirit) constitutes the object of all desire, this presentation will interrogate the status of the object in general as it relates to the construction of desire, focusing particularly on the present moment where, at one and the same time, the object has become structurally obsolete, swept away in the logic of an intrinsically-destructive consumerism, and new objects appear to be creating what we can call an "internet of things." This analysis, based on a reading of "Playing and Reality" by Donald Winnicott, will be an analysis of the economic, moral, symbolic, and spiritual crisis to which the obsolescence of objects leads, inasmuch as it is the organization of a systematic infidelity, which itself causes a systematic stupidity."

Stiegler spoke of image culture, circuits of desire, and relations of outside/inside. This conjured reflection of photographs as "objects of desire," and I revisited Susan Sontag's essay, "The Image World": "Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. Or they enlarge a reality that is felt to be shrunk, hollowed out, perishable, remote. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images...As we make images and consume them, we need still more images; and still more...The possession of a camera can inspire something akin to lust. And like all credible forms of lust, it cannot be satisfied."

Then, onward to a personal leap, I thought of instances when photographing images is not allowed, such as in museums or even churches that hold sacred art. Not even the no-flash-negotiation is considered. Last month, I saw the Ghent Altarpiece, or Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (1432), in Belgium, by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. Cameras were prohibited, which conjures an unusual feeling of trying to "take it in" even further, without reliance on consuming the image via photography. The image can easily be found online, of course, and in the giftshop they sell postcards, etc, but not being allowed to take a photo leads to a hyper-awareness of the inevitable path of forgetting. And it also conjures a lust for remembering, and probably possession, in an impossible way.