Acknowledgments

Response/abilities of Seeing
Ryan Bishop and Sunil Manghani

Reading Barthes, Again
Victor Burgin and Sunil Manghani

Belledonne
Victor Burgin

Saenredam, Barthes, Burgin
Sunil Manghani

I was Sitting in a Room: Cybernetic Aesthetics and Victor Burgin's Projection Loops
Ryan Bishop

The Situation of Practice
Victor Burgin

Part 2: Image Zero Degree

Painting, Photography, Projection
Ryan Bishop and Sunil Manghani

The End of the Frame
Victor Burgin

Camera as Object and Process
Ryan Bishop, Sean Cubitt and Victor Burgin

Pre-occupations: Calling Up Ghosts in A Place to Read and Belledonne
Christine Berthin

Prairie (Argo)
Kristen Kreider and James O'Leary

Photography as Rhythm: On Prairie
Domietta Torlasco

The Work of Death in Burgin's Belledonne
Gordon Hon

Notes on Contributors
Index

An examination of the critical concept 'zero degree' through the work of Roland Barthes and Victor Burgin In the fields of literature and the visual arts, zero degree represents a neutral aesthetic situated in response to and outside of the dominant cultural order. Taking Roland Barthes' Writing Degree Zero as just one starting point, this volume provides an historical, theoretical and visual examination of the term and draws directly upon the editors' on-going collaboration with artist and writer Victor Burgin. The book is composed of key chapters by the editors themselves and Burgin. It includes an in-depth dialogue regarding Burgin's long-term reading of Barthes and a lengthy image-text, offering critical exploration of the Image (in echo of earlier theories of the Text). Also included are translations of two projections works by Burgin, Belledonne and Prarie, which work alongside and inform the collected essays. Overall, the book provides a combined reading of both Barthes and Burgin, which in turn leads to new considerations of visual culture, the spectatorship of art and the political aesthetic. Ryan Bishop is Professor of Global Art and Politics and Sunil Manghani is Professor of Theory, Practice and Critique. They are both at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-3141-5 Barcode

Ryan Bishop is Professor of Global Arts and Politics and Co-director of the research group Archaeologies of Media and Technology at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, United Kingdom. He co-edits the journal Cultural Politics (Duke UP), and is a series editor for Technicities (Edinburgh University Press) and Cultural Politics (Polity).

Sunil Manghani is Reader in Critical and Cultural Theory within Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton.