<documenta X><blast> Matrixial Borderspace
Bracha Lichtenberg - Ettinger (bracha@easynet.fr)
Mon, 30 Jun 1997 16:52:48 +0200
I would like to discuss the possible inter- and trans-subjective spaces
that can be articulated via the notions of Matrix and Metramorphosis, as
those have emerged in my artistic work and were further developped in the
field of psychoanalysis. Matrix is a psychic borderspace of simultaneous
co-emergence and co-fading of the I and uncognized non-I, neither fused nor
rejected. Trans-subjective "entities" share and transmit joint, hybrid and
diffracted psychic objects via conductible borderlinks. The matrixial
stratum or sphere is based on a certain proposition or a model of
feminine/prenatal rapport conceived of as an originary, archaic joint
psychic borderspace in which differentiation-in-co-emergence and
distance-in-proximity are continuously reattuned by metramorphosis created
by, and further creating - accompanied by matrixial affects -
relations-without-relating on the borders of presence and absence, subject
and object, me and the stranger. In the matrixial borderspace subjectivity
is an encounter.
Metramorphosis is an archaic, blurred but nevertheless indelible mental
link-lane of a process - as well as the process itself - of inter-psychic
trans-individual communication and transformation between/with-in several
entities in a matrixial borderspace. It is a passage route through which
matrixially affected events, materials and modes infiltrate and diversify
onto non-conscious margins of the Symbolic through/by sub-symbolic webs. In
a joint and marginal trans-individual awareness, perceived boundaries
dissolve into becoming new boundaries; forms are transgressed; borderlines
surpassed and transformed into becoming thresholds; conductible borderlinks
are conceived, transformed and dissolved. Contingent transgressive
borderlinks and a borderspace of swerve and encounter emerge as creative
instances of difference which engrave traces that may only be
revealed/invented in withness-in-differentiation. In the matrix,
rapport-without-relating transforms the unknown other and me and turns both
of us into partial subjects - still unknown to each other - in
subjectivity-as-encounter. Metramorphosis is a co-poietic activity in an
inter-psychic web that remembers, conducts, transfers and inscribes
non-phallic jouissance, swerve and rapport. Indefinite compositions of
experience are exchanged; phantasies and affets are conducted through
slippery borderlinks - transforming the co-emerging I and non-I, their
borderspace and their shared objects, creating and redistributing an
ontogenetic becoming memory. I suggest that we use these concepts to revise
the creative process in the context of a netspace where contributions of
several subjects interweave and -co-emerge, and to re-view art as a
metramorphic process-and-product in a matrixial borderspace. Via art the
effects of specific borderlinks' activities transform culture.
Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger