Statements on desire

Harbourfront Centre asked me to write an artistic statement on my relationship to 'desire' for their 2007 ideas-based programming. my response incorporates text from dictionary.com and wikipedia.org.

Statements on desire

“the language we use / is the language we desire” – Jill Hartman

Desire wants something very strongly. Desire wants to have sexual relations. Desire wishes, craves, longs, aspires, fancies, yearns, hankers, hungers, enthuses, yens, itches, joneses, lusts.

Desire is a potato of a pink-skinned variety with yellow, waxy flesh.

Desire is from Middle English, Old French, Latin.

Desire is a concept in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, tanha in Buddhist philosophy, a thought that leads to an action on which microeconomic theory is based.

Desire fixates on the sensual materials of language, the sonic production of phonemes of morphemes, strung together in words in sentences in senses or the visual suggestion of a letter and the movement indicators of syllables, stresses, and punctuation.

Desire is a ship, wrestler, telenovela, documentary, comic-book character. Desire is words in and out of orifices, luscious, tangled in the saliva and wax of bodies.

Desire is a Bob Dylan album, a Pharoahe Monch album, a song by U2 by Talk Talk by Geri Halliwell by Do As Infinity by 2 Unlimited by Airway Lanes by Ozzy Osbourne. Desire is a Polish R&B band.

Desire is passion is eagerness is enthusiasm determination sensuality passion, passion.

Desire is the shapes and sounds of letters and the body’s physical response to text. Desire’s eyes move across the page. Desire mouths words.

Desire mouths, oh yes.