The Object of Desire

Creator:

Flaxton, Terry
  • This work is part of the rewind archive.

    Duration: 6m 32s

    Year: 1992

    Media types:

    Video

    Type of work:

    Single Screen

    Videotape

    “After having developed The Inevitability of Colour a stage further with Echo’s Revenge, I realised I had another step to go – I had to visualise the fascination that Narcissus had experienced whilst being enchanted by his own image – a punishment from Nemesis in response to the prayers from a youth whom Narcissus had spurned. Though initially predicating a feedback loop between Echo and Narcissus, I felt I should take my basic strategy of generating an image and sound track which having utilised a developed and therefore artificial grammar to produce meaning in the Inevitability of Colour, I should now strip the work bare of my intent and try to see if when this had been removed – whether or not any meaning was left at all. If there were then I would have gone a step further than both Baudrillard’s proposition that I disagreed with that instigated the first work in the sequence – and also my own proposition to respond to Baudrillard. I liked the idea that both he and I were in fact wrong. Interestingly during the year after making, this work earned more than all my other work put together from sales to television – but then it was shown in isolation and its intellectual conceits were disguised. Critically during the making of the 3 parts of The Colour Myths, the concept of the digital was being developed and The Inevitability of Colour and The Object of Desire were one of the first works to utilise basic principles of the digital – simply that repetition of use would not degrade the content. In this work there are sometimes 10 layers of imaging.” – Terry Flaxton

    updatd April 2022

  • The Object of Desire

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