Ebook: Barthes/Burgin

A new critical consideration of the writings and works of Roland Barthes and Victor Burgin The influence of Roland Barthes on Burgin’s work is well documented. Equally, Burgin’s prominence as an artist and theorist concerned with text and image offers a productive dialogue with Barthes’ work. Victor Burgin has long been considered both theorist and practitioner, while Barthes is more known as a theorist and writer. In bringing to the fore Barthes’s practice of painting and drawing, Barthes/Burgin prompts a new critical consideration of Barthes/Burgin, theory/practice, writing/making and criticality/visuality.
Barthes/Burgin features two new interviews with Burgin, one concerned with his turn to new digital practices and the other a reflection on his reading of Roland Barthes. Also included are images and texts from the artists and an essay critically examining Barthes’ exercises in drawing and painting.
This book accompanied an exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery (Southampton, February to April 2016), bringing together projection works by Victor Burgin and a selection of drawings by Roland Barthes rarely seen outside of France. The exhibition played with Barthes’ use of the slash as established in semiology (and notably used in the title of Barthes’ key poststructuralist work S/Z).
Barthes/Burgin is the first part of a two volume set, alongside Seeing Degree Zero: Barthes/Burgin and Political Aesthetics. The two books represent the editors’ long-term collaboration with artist and writer Victor Burgin. Read together, the books set out the preparatory work for an exhibition, as well as detailed critical reflections and extended research, cutting across art practice, critical theory and the politics of aesthetics.
Key Features

Over 20 full-colour illustrations, including newly commissioned work by Victor Burgin and images of Barthes’ work on paper

Contains newly commissioned text by Victor Burgin and unpublished conversations with him on his recent projection works and their theoretical implications