Technology, Contemporary Media and Transversality in the Construction of Victor Burgin's Gradiva.

Abstract

This article explores and examines the photoliterary series Gradiva, by Victor Burgin (1982). In Gradiva this artist and theoretician of the image reflects on the cultural assumptions that limit the language and the expressive possibilities of two principal media: photography and cinema. Through the story of Wilhelm Jensen's novel Gradiva: A Pompeian Fantasy (1903), Burgin combines his interest in Psychoanalysis and his work as a philosopher of communication media. The iconology of the heroine Gradiva is enriched by the possibilities for distinct readings that arise through the use of rebus as an expressive instrument in the work of Burgin.