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Victor Ballesteros

Plastic Bags

“We are unable to put our desires into language because we have imagined them. In reality, the crypt contains only images, like a picture book for children who do not yet know how to read. The body of desires is an image. And what is unavowable in desire is the image we have made of it for ourselves.

To communicate one’s desires to someone without images is brutal. To communicate one’s images without one’s desires is tedious (like recounting one’s dream or travels). But both of these are easy to do. To communicate the imagined desires and the desired images, on the other hand, is a more difficult task. And that’s why we put it off until later. Until the moment when we begin to understand that desire will remain forever unfulfilled — and that this unavowed desire is ourselves, forever prisoners in the crypt.” ¹

¹. Agamben, Giorgio. ‘Desiring’. Profanations. New York: Zone Books, 2007, p 53 and 54.

1. Film stills from Monument HD Video 13:43 minutes 2009

2. Film stills from Daylight Drawing HD Video 10:56 minutes 2008