To put an image on a wall is an act that implies a complex history of practices. I acknowledge this by deliberately inscribing traces of this history in my work.
Burgin, Victor.
Most of the times I allow what I shoot to be guided by my unconscious, to be informed by my 'desire' in the broader psychoanalytic sense of the word.
Burgin, Victor.
There is sexuality of some sort in all our relations So what else is there apart from sex?
Burgin, Victor.
It's narcissistic and self-serving for artists to pretend that they're changing society directly through their work.
Burgin, Victor.
What we can see happening in art today is a return to the symbolic underwriting of the patriarchal principle by means of the reaffirmation of the primacy of presence. The function of insistence upon presence is to eradicate the threat to narcissistic self-integrity;which comes from taking account of difference, division.
Burgin, Victor.
What I would like to see now, though, is going to be much harder to get. I would like to see the creation of a critical and curatorial climate in which long-term critical projects in art can be sustained and flourish. I would like to see novelty and "mediability" displaced from their present positions as paramount aesthetic values. I would like to see just a little less of museums being led by the nose by fashion. This is even more politically important now that being "right on" is becoming chic. I would very much like to see"critique" take forms other than simple accusation.
Burgin, Victor.
There's a great belief among self-defining "political artists" that theother guy did it. It's never our own fault, is it? So I would like to see an end to "the oversimplification of everything.
Burgin, Victor.
Modern space (inaugurated in the Renaissance) is Euclidean, horizontal, infinitely extensible, and therefore, in principle, boundless. In the early modern period it is the space of the humanist subject in its mercantile entrepreneurial incarnation. In the late modern period it is the space of industrial capitalism, the space of an exponentially increased pace of dispersal, displacement and dissemination, of people and things. In the 'postmodern' period it is the space of financial capitalism.
Burgin, Victor.
John Cage …once told me (philip guston), ‘When you start working everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.
Burgin, Victor.
I have heard references to the time when my work "used to be political". My work has never ceased to be political, what has changed is my understanding of the form of politics specific to art, rather than, for example, investigative journalism or agit-prop.
Burgin, Victor, Hilde Van Gelder (Interviewer). "Art and Politics: A Reappraisal." in: Eurozine. July 30, 2010.
Complementing "documentary" work in the art world are other kinds of work offering spectacle, decoration or scandal. Here again we have not left the discursive space of the media, we have simply turned the page or changed channels.
Burgin, Victor, Hilde Van Gelder (Interviewer). "Art and Politics: A Reappraisal." in: Eurozine. July 30, 2010.
I see no contradiction between a commitment to art as cultural critique and a taking into account of psychical reality.
Burgin, Victor, Hilde Van Gelder (Interviewer). "Art and Politics: A Reappraisal." in: Eurozine. July 30, 2010.
The political agency of artists is not "on the ground" in everyday life – at this level they must be content to act as citizens and/or, in my example, teachers (I have always considered teaching to be my most important political activity) – their agency is in the sphere of representations.
Burgin, Victor, Hilde Van Gelder (Interviewer). "Art and Politics: A Reappraisal." in: Eurozine. July 30, 2010.
As I have already said, I see the critical task of art today as that of offering an alternative to the media.
Burgin, Victor, Hilde Van Gelder (Interviewer). "Art and Politics: A Reappraisal." in: Eurozine. July 30, 2010.
At the present conjuncture it seems to me that society is most present in an artwork – as a critical project – when the artwork is most absent from society.
Burgin, Victor, Hilde Van Gelder (Interviewer). "Art and Politics: A Reappraisal." in: Eurozine. July 30, 2010.
Picasso declared 'I do not seek, I find.' The assertion succinctly confirms commonsense understanding: scientists and scholars 'research', the artist 'creates'.
Burgin, Victor. "Thoughts on ‘research’ degrees in visual arts departments." in: Journal of Media Practice. Vol. 7, No. 2, 2006, p. 101-108. (English).
I would suppose that the waning of the language of ‘creativity’ and the waxing of the language of ‘research’ has a political, rather than intellectual, cause – to be the consequence of external dictates, rather than of self-searching and self-redefinition within the art schools.
Burgin, Victor. "Thoughts on ‘research’ degrees in visual arts departments." in: Journal of Media Practice. Vol. 7, No. 2, 2006, p. 101-108. (English).
The hackneyed idea of ‘influence’ is not at issue here. I am not interested in the question of what one artist may or may not have taken from another. I am referring to the universally familiar phenomenon of looking at one image and having another image spontaneously come to mind.
Burgin, Victor. "The Separateness of Things."in: Tate. Spring 2005.
The characteristics of the space through which the figure moves in my work is derived not only from Hopper’s Office at Night but from the spatial attributes of his work in general.
Burgin, Victor. "The Separateness of Things."in: Tate. Spring 2005.
My aim was to transform the role of the woman from object of curiosity to that of subject of curiosity – to transform showing into knowing, exhibitionism into epistemophilia.
Burgin, Victor. "The Separateness of Things."in: Tate. Spring 2005.
You know, my videos are about the mix of the present moment in history and of the trace of history in that present moment, through very indirect means. There’s the fragment of sound track where class is very clearly inscribed.
Burgin, Victor. "The Separateness of Things."in: Tate. Spring 2005.
The classic narrative film became the sole and unique object of film theory only through the elision of the negative of the film, the space beyond the frame - not the 'off screen space' eloquently theorized in the past, but a space formed from all the many places of transition between cinema and other images in and of everyday life.
Burgin, Victor. The Remembered Film. Reaktion Books. October 15, 2004. Paperback, 176 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1861892152.
Incommensurability of elements makes the heterotopia a site of instability and contravention.
Burgin, Victor. The Remembered Film. Reaktion Books. October 15, 2004. Paperback, 176 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1861892152.
No recollection is without consequence and we may act on our memories. Why we feel compelled, seduced or persuaded to act on this memory rather than some other almost always remains mysterious.
Burgin, Victor. The Remembered Film. Reaktion Books. October 15, 2004. Paperback, 176 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1861892152.
The disjunction of activity and movement was recognized early in the history of painting.
Burgin, Victor. The Remembered Film. Reaktion Books. October 15, 2004. Paperback, 176 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1861892152.
The belief that much of what cannot be said may nevertheless be whistled is foundational not only to music but to the visual arts.
Burgin, Victor. The Remembered Film. Reaktion Books. October 15, 2004. Paperback, 176 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1861892152.
The space in and between images is crossed with the always already known of stories.
Burgin, Victor. The Remembered Film. Reaktion Books. October 15, 2004. Paperback, 176 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1861892152.
What have you learnt in three years? And I got deeply troubled by this, you know, at a sort of ethical level, about what was I being paid for? So I tried to set up courses where at least they would learn some history, and some philosophy, related to aesthetic issues. That’s how I started teaching, quote-unquote, ‘Theory’ except you didn’t use words like that then. You actually had to specify what it was that you were talking about. So that’s where it began.
Burgin, Victor. "Transcript from Victor Burgin at Venice Biennale 2001." in: Tate. from Audio Arts Magazine Vol. 21, No. 2, 2003.
I became convinced that the political specificity of my own work was primarily as a teacher and less as an artist.
Burgin, Victor. "Transcript from Victor Burgin at Venice Biennale 2001." in: Tate. from Audio Arts Magazine Vol. 21, No. 2, 2003.
Who decides what real play is? When are we simply playing at playing and when are we really playing?
Burgin, Victor. Q&A on 'Jenny's Room'. European Graduate School. Open discussion with Victor Burgin. June 2002. (English).
I think that almost any form of invention whether it's writing a paper or making an artwork, any way of thinking, if it's going to be creative, has to involve a certain element of risk. That risk comes when you suspend what you know to be the case in the interest of trying to produce in the space between you and the world, something which you do not yet know.
Burgin, Victor. Q&A on 'Jenny's Room'. European Graduate School. Open discussion with Victor Burgin. June 2002. (English).
Media is not interested in normality, it's abnormality that grabs viewers. None of this, as far as I was concerned, was about her motives.
Burgin, Victor. Q&A on 'Jenny's Room'. European Graduate School. Open discussion with Victor Burgin. June 2002. (English).
Our relations with cities are like our relations with people. We love them, hate them, or are indifferent toward them. On our first day in a city that is new to us, we go looking for the city. We go down this street, around that corner. We are aware of the faces of passers-by. But the city eludes us, and we become uncertain whether we are looking for a city, or for a person.
Burgin, Victor. Some Cities. University of California Press. Berkeley, October 1996. Paperback, 223 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520206363.
Our relations with cities are like our relations with people. We love them, hate them, or are indifferent toward them. On our first day in a city that is new to us, we go looking for the city. We go down this street, around that corner. We are aware of the faces of passers-by. But the city eludes us, and we become uncertain whether we are looking for a city, or for a person.
Burgin, Victor. Some Cities. University of California Press. Berkeley, October 1996. Paperback, 223 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520206363.
Work is one inescapable imperative, the other is love. Both meld in the romance of consumption staged on the Kings Road. The Romantic loves what is least accessible. Hence, most banal and most true of cliche's the British love the sun. These images of the Kings Road catch some reflected sunlight of a single Saturday afternoon.
Burgin, Victor. Some Cities. University of California Press. Berkeley, October 1996. Paperback, 223 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520206363.
The essential is that one should pass. The disillusion of love is almost invariably guaranteed by the passage from the generality of the image to the particularity of the individual: to their speech - which is to say their work. We may not always do what we say, but we say what we do.
Burgin, Victor. Some Cities. University of California Press. Berkeley, October 1996. Paperback, 223 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520206363.
There are books, - philosphical and scientific works, for example - where the author may assume that her or his audience has read much the same books as he or she has, and inhabits much the same professional culture. I cannot make that assumption as my work straddles two related but distinct professional milieus...My shifting address is to an imaginary audience that includes not only colleagues and graduate students but also undergraduates and interested people who are not professional academics. Readers who find they are being told something irritatingly familiar or find themselves reading something frustratingly opaque may skip the offending passage with a clear conscience and a light heart.
Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: place and memory in visual culture. University of California Press. October 1996. Hardcover, 333 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520202988.
To misappropriate a metaphor from Jacques Lacan, I hope that the occassional personal references I make may serve in the manner of "upholstery buttons" attaching the fabric of abstract "theoretical" speech to a frame of mortal and embodied experiences: of specific planes, of specific times.
Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: place and memory in visual culture. University of California Press. October 1996. Hardcover, 333 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520202988.
Those who sit on fences may imagine otherwise, but the directions we take unavoidably begin where we are, and in relation to where we have been.
Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: place and memory in visual culture. University of California Press. October 1996. Hardcover, 333 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520202988.
From a political standpoint, nothing is more appropriate than the application of radically deconstructive analyses to the imaginary identities of racism.
Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: place and memory in visual culture. University of California Press. October 1996. Hardcover, 333 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520202988.
As an insult "Elitist!" functions as a performative utterance (in the strictly Austinian sense), its meaning varying widely according to context.
Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: place and memory in visual culture. University of California Press. October 1996. Hardcover, 333 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520202988.
But if it were invariably true that one "cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools", then we would have to reinvent language itself.
Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: place and memory in visual culture. University of California Press. October 1996. Hardcover, 333 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0520202988.
I have reservations about self-consciousness. Art and politics alike are not only a matter of self-consciousness and voluntary, willful decision-making, but they also involve unconscious processes. One has to account for the ongoing movement of the unconscious in political life, the psycho-sexual dimension of politics. The tendency is always to think of politics in rational terms, in terms of a calculation of interests. But what was rational about the appeal of Reaganomics to the working-class people who were put out of work by it?
Burgin, Victor, Laura Cottingham (Interviewer). "Interview with Victor Burgin." in: Journal of Contemporary Art 4. Spring/Summer 1991, pp. 12-23. (English).
Artists who make art "without thinking about it" are simply acting out a script written long ago. And it's often quite a sophisticated one if you look at all the stage directions. So it's not that they work naively, without any theory. It's rather that they couldn't verbally tell you what the theory is. The theory is internalized in them to the point that it becomes a form of "unselfconscious" behavior.
Burgin, Victor, Laura Cottingham (Interviewer). "Interview with Victor Burgin." in: Journal of Contemporary Art 4. Spring/Summer 1991, pp. 12-23. (English).
Growing up working-class in Britain, where the class system is so oppressive and highly codified, also left me with indelible memories of humiliation, of feeling inferior, of experiences of a variety of forms of symbolic and real violence. All this allows me, perhaps, to empathize more than I might have done otherwise with other groups in marginalized and minority positions.
Burgin, Victor, Laura Cottingham (Interviewer). "Interview with Victor Burgin." in: Journal of Contemporary Art 4. Spring/Summer 1991, pp. 12-23. (English).
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)
