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An examination of the critical concept 'zero degree' through the work of Roland Barthes and Victor Burgin In the fields of literature and the visual arts, zero degree represents a neutral aesthetic situated in response to and outside of the dominant cultural order. Taking Roland Barthes' Writing Degree Zero as just one starting point, this volume provides an historical, theoretical and visual examination of the term and draws directly upon the editors' on-going collaboration with artist and writer Victor Burgin. The book is composed of key chapters by the editors themselves and Burgin. It includes an in-depth dialogue regarding Burgin's long-term reading of Barthes and a lengthy image-text, offering critical exploration of the Image (in echo of earlier theories of the Text). Also included are translations of two projections works by Burgin, Belledonne and Prarie, which work alongside and inform the collected essays. Overall, the book provides a combined reading of both Barthes and Burgin, which in turn leads to new considerations of visual culture, the spectatorship of art and the political aesthetic. Ryan Bishop is Professor of Global Art and Politics and Sunil Manghani is Professor of Theory, Practice and Critique. They are both at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-3141-5 Barcode
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Response/abilities of Seeing
Ryan Bishop and
Sunil Manghani
Reading Barthes, Again
Victor Burgin and
Sunil Manghani
BelledonneVictor Burgin
Part 1: Degrees and Variations
Saenredam, Barthes, Burgin
Sunil Manghani
I was Sitting in a Room: Cybernetic Aesthetics and Victor Burgin's Projection Loops
Ryan Bishop
The Situation of Practice
Victor BurginPart 2: Image Zero Degree
Painting, Photography, Projection
Ryan Bishop and
Sunil Manghani
The End of the Frame
Victor Burgin
Camera as Object and Process
Ryan Bishop, Sean Cubitt and Victor Burgin
Prairie
Victor Burgin
Part 3: Writerly Readings
Pre-occupations: Calling Up Ghosts in
A Place to Read and
Belledonne Christine Berthin
Prairie (
Argo)
Kristen Kreider and
James O'Leary
Photography as Rhythm: On
Prairie
Domietta Torlasco
The Work of Death in Burgin's
Belledonne
Gordon Hon
Notes on Contributors
Index
About the author
Ryan Bishop is Professor of Global Arts and Politics and Co-director of the research group Archaeologies of Media and Technology at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, United Kingdom. He co-edits the journal Cultural Politics (Duke UP), and is a series editor for Technicities (Edinburgh University Press) and Cultural Politics (Polity).
Sunil Manghani is Reader in Critical and Cultural Theory within Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton.
Summary
In literature and the visual arts, zero degree represents a neutral aesthetic situated in response to and outside of the dominant cultural order. Starting from Roland Barthes' 1953 book Writing Degree Zero, this volume examines the historical, theoretical and visual aspects of the term in collaboration with artist and writer Victor Burgin.
