Abstract- Projection: Vanishing and Becoming
In Pliny's account of the origins of painting, in Leroi-Gourhan's account's of paleolithic art, in Melanie Klein's psychoanalysis of childhood, in Gorky's memoir of the first film screenings in Russia, from Plato's cave to apparatus theory, and from cartography to financial projections, projection is the key category in which both the origins of visual culture are traced, and its fatal flaw revealed. Accused of distortion, perspective is frequently, even predominantly associated with loss, absence and the posthumous world beyond death. By looking at some examples of the use of projection in contemporary art to contest the hegemony of the four-square, flat projection, I want to ask whether the field of projected light has more to offer than the emulation of the real. Is projection a psychological fantasy of domination? Is it doomed to reproduce the separation of object and subject? Fantasies of projected light as weapon may reveal not only a fatal relation of dominance but a new term in the series subject - object - project.