Seeing Degree Zero: Barthes/Burgin and Political Aesthetics

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’ 1953 book Writing Degree Zero as just one starting point, this volume examines the historical, theoretical and visual impact of the term and draws directly upon the editors’ ongoing collaboration with artist and writer Victor Burgin.

The book is composed of key chapters by the editors and Burgin, a series of collaborative texts with Burgin and four commissioned essays concerned with the relationship between Barthes and Burgin in the context of the spectatorship of art. 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 Prairie, 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.

• Explores topics including drawing, painting, image, projection, space, architecture, temporalities, gallery spectatorship, the neutral and cinematic heterotopia
• Includes the first print translations of two major projection works by Victor Burgin, Belledonne and Prairie, and two in-depth interviews with Victor Burgin
• Richly illustrated in colour
• Contributors include Christine Bertin, Domietta Torlasco, James O’Leary and Kristen Kreider
Contributors

Christine Berthin, University of Paris Nanterre, France.Ryan Bishop, Winchester School of Art, the University of Southampton, UK.Victor Burgin, artist and theorist based in the UK. Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.Gordon Hon, writer, artist and filmmaker, and Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK. Kristin Kreider, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.
Sunil Manghani, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK.James O’Leary, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London,UK.Domietta Torlasco, is a critical theorist and filmmaker, and Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University, Illinois, USA.

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