Blog 5: Bracher Lichenberg-Ettinger- "Trans-Subjective Transferal Borderspace."

Lichtenberg-Ettinger, Bracher. Massumi, Brian Ed. "Trans-Subjective Transferential Borderspace". A Shock of Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari. New York: Routledge, 2002: 215 – 238.

Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger is a feminist theorist, psychoanalyst and an artist. In this piece of writing she relates psychoanalytical theories to painting. She talks about the idea of the painter being both patient and doctor and the artwork thus being a symptom and a remedy.

In my MFA seminar I was interested in opening up a space between the artist and the viewer. I think Lichtenberg-Ettinger talks about how the artwork is an object that opens up this space. She uses the example of the artist being both doctor and patient, the artwork as a border-space that is a symptom of the artist (artist as patient), but also as an object that can allow the viewer to think of things that they wouldn’t possibly think about, opening up the potential of their thoughts (artist as doctor).

"The doctor-and-patient borderspace finds its echoes in the viewer; its vibrations impregnate the viewer’s psychic borderspace. It sheds light on an archaic trans-subjective rapport between I and non-I and on a possible transmission between different subjects and objects, beyond time and space, in a potential in-between zone of object-and-subject borne and yielding by painting." (Lichenberg-Ettinger, 2002: 215 – 216)

The artwork can open up the viewer to new and different ways of thinking about the world. There is a space between the viewer and the object (the artwork) where thought is generated. It makes us want to know about what it means or represents. Mark Jeffery talks about Lacan and desire. He suggests that it is “desire that opens up the subject-object relation in the first place”. Both Jeffrey and Lichenberg-Ettinger talk about Objet A, the “object-cause of desire”. (Jeffrey 2006: 57). He talks of the image of the North Wall by Edward Weston as an example of how Objet A works in relation to desire. He says the work could be looked upon as a

"lure for the scopic drive, rather that a representation of the ‘holy’ or of perhaps a ‘life force’, it goes some way to explaining how a fascination with the image might develop, but without having to make the further speculative step towards defining the exact nature of the numinous life force itself. The point, perhaps, it that objet a works by fascination and that causes us to impute deeper meanings to the image." (Jeffery 2006: 58)

He explains that the image acts as an object that makes us want to know what lies beyond, it drives the viewer to want to know and the artist to want to create, it doesn’t represent the thing that lies beyond, but acts as an object that leads us to desire to know.

The borderspace here is between the viewer and the artwork and the artist and the artwork, where the viewer is affected by the art and the artist is by the artwork. The artwork is an object that drives the viewer to know and artist to discover and explore through making.

References:

Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. Anna Johnson 2002-2007. 6th April, 2008. http://www.metramorphosis.org.uk/

Jeffrey, Mark. "The Real and Edward Weston: The Last Years in Carmel". Journal for Lacanian Studies. 4(1), 2006: 50 – 75.

Lichtenberg-Ettinger, Bracher. Massumi, Brian Ed. "Trans-Subjective Transferential Borderspace". A Shock of Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari. New York: Routledge, 2002: 215 – 238.