other

There is a deferred tension in a title, an abrasion that marks the work, surrounding it with connoted meaning, yet wanting to be the work itself. If the title is to signify some possibilities for the reading of the object, it also creates signifiers for itself—though without the object (referent) it is simply a word with infinite signification. The tension occurs because the title wants to stand alone as a signifier with indeterminate signifieds (free range), yet its associative meaning is due to its linking with an object. The title (word) symbolicly functions through our cultural and social learning of its signification; we understand it’s meaning through context and application.

If one were to come up with a title for an object that was suitably open and indeterminate it would have to be a word like ‘other’. This word is both referring to its own openness of reading, while implicitly stating its distance from the object to which it refers. It provides a name, yet also describes a difference to that which it names; it makes the tension between itself and the referent palpable.

In terms of the image-repertoire, the other is the object of our projected affection, perhaps ‘love’ to prove the idea of love, that the feelings are not simply a matter of perception but have a basis in reality, of engagement with an other. But this other is a projection of our desire onto an object; the object of our desire is mapped with our own meaning derived from the slightest sign. These signs may be constructed from our intention to confirm reciprocated affection, there is no proof of their intention, or their existence.

In the same way an inanimate object may signify a range of meanings depending on what the reader wishes to project onto it. This object is the other of our gaze, it awaits our affection, the constitution of its signifieds.

I want this object to betray any intention by the artist; in the same way that the title ‘other’ creates a tension with the object it obtusely names, I hope the viewer will write a text to which they can project onto this ‘other’ object. Thus this ‘other’ is six of one and half a dozen of…

Other, plaster, found light globes, 2010

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