MUMMY and DADDY — the life of the dead
Text by Mark Fish inspired by the work of Joshua Goode
Bartosaurus, Joshua Goode
You go into the hotel room where the famous person had stayed. What is what? One is object, the other is the artifact. The room is just a room, same as every in that hotel, and same as all in our mind- room is a room, the tautology should suffice. The other ( object? )- the famous person- is somewhat interesting. It is a memory. Even if the room is referenced by some museum type exhibition of things that would stir up the memory, the room stays the same object. But, if you are the one whose memory gets stirred by the fact of once presence of someone famous, than that room becomes very specific, to the point of being special. That becomes object of desire which contains the object cause of desire (the memory of the famous one). Those two come as one, like in love.
More obvious version of the same is when you see an ancient structure- a simple object, that is special only by the fact of strong assumption that once the life, as a story, had attained it. Even the fact of life, like writings on the wall, do not differ from a photo of a famous person in our presupposed room. The story is the key- it is the memory unique for each ( whose fetishistic aim is the plain object ), even if the history is the same. It is the story where the object of desire and the object cause of desire link in love, for the love is nothing but being the subject of ( your own/other's ) desire.
That is one special relation, we call it relationship, where the objects of reality become the same as the ones of our fiction.
Desired object is desired because it is the object cause of desire. And desire is the story presupposed. Skull is a famous thing, because it can not but stir the memory of someone that had to be. And just like a memory, it becomes a story for each individual prosopopoeia. The skull becomes of the one whose story our desire put in prosopopoeia for us to attain it. There is one skull, but many stories, and each is desired in its own unique way, marrying the object skull with the object memory- that presupposes story where there is no being. In skull things appear to be, and appearance is what there is where the skull desires itself to desire through us.
There is only room, and there is only skull. There are things. Than there are things that are by the virtue of appearance and they appear to be in relation to skulls and rooms of this world. Those two are in relation that we like to assemble in what we like to fantasize as relationship. But the sad truth is that the only object relationship is ( with ) the fetish.
At which point comes the pharaoh, the sarcophagus, the dinosaur ( the fossil ), all the objects that had to become ( once) and parish into being ( forever ). Whatever had to become once, becomes again and again in a story, but for it to be ( like that ) the special object is needed. Well, whatever object presupposes the story- the subject of the/that object- is that special object. The room becomes special, the rock becomes worshiped, the skull becomes the person.
Coming back to that room, where the famous had been, we come to a conundrum that the only object that matters does not exist but in story- in a presupposition. And that is the subject. Through desire, the presupposition of someone/something that only is through its appearance, we come to a subject of the matter in quite literal sense- the skull is never just a matter of objects, it is inescapably the matter of the subject. Hence, the room of a famous person. The room is only the object as a subject matter.
We come to Bartosaurus than- intentionally made fossil- the process put in reverse. Where for the fossil the history is made afterwards, the Bartosaurus is the end of history. It is the punctuation of the history as we know it. It is the subject whose story we know. And it is the same for all. It's like a famous person without a room. Like a true mirage. It is subject that is the object. It causes no desire, but relieves us from one. If there is a superego injunction to enjoy, this allows us not to enjoy. Instead of disavowing the matter that later comes into existence as the fossil for our stories, it avows us to create the story into existence of an object fetish of the Gods of now.
The Bartosaurus is materialized ( fossilized ) desire, and a such it can no longer function as desire. It's the unconscious, ideology put on display, like a photo of a famous person in a room ( a triviality when fantasy is put ( down ) to an image, which than further trivializes itself into the fetish ). Bartosaurus reversely puts us out of fetish and into the subject matter directly- the content turns into the form, the specie becomes its genus. Bartosaurus is the end of story. And even than, it presupposes a ( new ) story. Like from BC to AC, it creates the pass to a new.
It is weird to know the BC without knowing the AC. It is certainly the punctuation, a puncture. It opens by ending. It punctuates to/towards nothing. And that is exactly where the art goes. Every work of art ends and leads us nowhere. To a freedom from desire by engineering the desire itself. Bartosaurus is prematurely fossilized matter of our time, by the process of engineering of desire, that is the art. Like making food by engineering it- like strong smelly cheese- it becomes digestible, but it's still an acquired/required taste. Which makes it a contradictory one, but conceptual through a skill of the artist to make a contingent thought occurrence into the solid form. Everybody has the intuition, but only the artist makes it into the solid object. In/through art intuition comes into existence, while for the rest of us, it is what it is- the tautology that can not suffice- unlike the room we started with- because it is nothing, even though it certainly has its being.
