Amor Vacui & Horror Vacui in Visual Form

Amor Vacui & Horror Vacui in Visual Form Visual Form in Philosophy, Psychoanalysis & Art Theory

I možda je upravo to njegova ''bolest'' ne to što vidi, već što više ništa ne može da ne vidi kao prazno. To je suštinsk...
22/05/2026

I možda je upravo to njegova ''bolest'' ne to što vidi, već što više ništa ne može da ne vidi kao prazno. To je suštinska tragedija Čarlsa. Njegov problem nije samo u tome što razume protivrečnosti sveta, već što njegov pogled više nije sposoban da se zaustavi pre potpune dekonstrukcije značenja. Kao da svaka stvar pred njegovom svešću gubi simboličku gustinu i raspada se do svog praznog jezgra. Ljubav postaje igra moći, religija institucija bez Boga, humanost prazna retorika, politika ideologija, psihoanaliza još jedan diskurs autoriteta. Sve što bi moglo da funkcioniše kao oslonac želje pred njegovim pogledom gubi unutrašnju živost i ostaje samo kao prazna struktura.

Njegova jasnoća nije samo kritičko mišljenje niti obična svest o besmislu sveta. Problem je u tome što njegova svest više ne uspeva da se zaustavi na simboličkoj površini stvari. On ne može da ostane unutar iluzija koje omogućavaju čoveku da živi.

To ne znači da su te iluzije lažne u banalnom smislu. Ljubav, religija, umetnost, politika, identitet, pa čak i sam jezik, jesu simboličke konstrukcije kroz koje subjekt organizuje svoje iskustvo postojanja. Čovek ne živi samo od istine, već od sposobnosti da investira želju u te strukture, da kroz njih pronađe smisao, pravac i mesto u svetu. Kod Čarlsa se događa nešto drugo. Čim se pojavi neka struktura smisla, njegov pogled počinje da je rastavlja.
Kada vidi religiju, odmah vidi instituciju i moć iza nje. Kada vidi ljubav, vidi zavisnost, manipulaciju ili igru. Kada vidi politiku, vidi ideologiju. Kada vidi psihoanalizu, vidi diskurs autoriteta. Kada vidi humanost, vidi prazne reči. Njegov pogled ne ostaje na iskustvu. On odmah prolazi iza forme i počinje da razara njenu simboličku funkciju. Kao da ne može da prestane da dekonstruše stvarnost.
Kod zdravijeg odnosa prema simboličkom čovek može istovremeno da zna da je ljubav nesavršena, da su institucije pune manipulacije, da je jezik ograničen i da su ideologije kontradiktorne, a da ipak nastavi da voli, govori, stvara, želi i živi. Čarls to više ne može. Kod njega dekonstrukcija nema granicu.

Tu se njegova pozicija približava onome što Žižek govori o ideologiji, odnosno ideji da iza simboličkih struktura ne postoji neka čista istina, već praznina koju simbolički poredak pokušava da organizuje. Većina ljudi može da živi uprkos toj praznini. Čarls ne može. On ostaje zaglavljen u direktnom susretu sa njom

Upravo zato njegovo 'jasno viđenje' nije oslobađajuće. Ono ne vodi istini koja otvara novi odnos prema životu, već ga zatvara u beskrajni proces razaranja simboličkog sveta. Problem nije u tome što vidi iluzije, već što više ne može da učestvuje ni u jednoj simboličkoj konstrukciji koja čoveku omogućava da voli, želi, veruje, stvara ili pripada. Kao da je izgubio sposobnost da simbolički prekrije Realno.

I tu se otkriva duboki paradoks njegove pozicije. Čarls želi apsolutnu istinu iza svih iluzija sveta, ali kada se sve dekonstruiše do kraja, ne ostaje nikakva konačna istina, već samo praznina bez oslonca. Zato njegova svest ne proizvodi slobodu, već paralizu. Njegova analiza ne otvara svet, već ga prazni. On ne može da živi unutar fragilnih simboličkih fikcija koje omogućavaju subjektu da opstane, pa ostaje direktno izložen Realnom kao praznini koja više ne može biti organizovana kroz želju, govor ili smisao.

Možda je upravo zato The Devil Probably toliko uznemirujući film. Ne zato što prikazuje nihilizam, već zato što prikazuje čoveka koji više ne može da prestane da vidi raspad značenja iza svega. Čoveka koji je dekonstruišući svet do kraja, na kraju dekonstrui­sao i sopstvenu mogućnost da živi u njemu.

Film The Devil, Probably (1977). Directed by Robert Bresson, koji je bio inspirisan Lakanovim radom.

The Image of a Woman as a Phantasm. Construction of the Gaze in film La Pu**in Respectueuse (1952) written by Jean-Paul ...
22/05/2026

The Image of a Woman as a Phantasm. Construction of the Gaze in film La Pu**in Respectueuse (1952) written by Jean-Paul Sartre (1946).
In image, we see a woman framed through the classic femme fatale aesthetic: stark contrasts of light and shadow, Venetian blinds cutting the space into fragments, perfectly waved hair as an icon of constructed femininity, a cigarette held like an emblem of desire and discipline, and a still, distant gaze. The image immediately evokes the visual grammar of film noir, where the female figure is never entirely a person, but a surface onto which desire, danger, fantasy, and anxiety are projected. Light does not simply illuminate her face; it stages her. The composition organizes her body into an aesthetic object suspended between seduction and isolation.
This is an image in the psychoanalytic sense because it shows not who the woman is, but how she is seen. It is not her subjectivity; it is the image society wants to see. Her face is fixed, smooth, unreadable, almost sculptural, a pure Imaginary mask. Jacques Lacan would say that the image is the place where the subject appears only as the Other’s phantasm. Everything about her appearance is carefully stylized, without cracks, without spontaneity, without visible excess. She appears less as a living subject and more as an arrangement of signs: hair, smoke, shadow, pose, silence.
Her sideways gaze reinforces this structure. She does not look at the camera or at the viewer; her eyes drift somewhere beyond the frame, as though caught between visibility and withdrawal. This is crucial. She is not the master of the gaze but the object organized by it. The image constructs distance around her. Even though she occupies the center of the frame, she remains inaccessible, enclosed within the visual architecture surrounding her.
The Venetian blinds behind her are especially important. They divide the image into bands of light and shadow, transforming the room into something halfway between an interior and a prison. The geometry of the shadows creates an atmosphere of surveillance, moral pressure, and containment. Space itself begins to function psychologically. The room no longer feels neutral; it becomes charged, almost oppressive, as though the image were holding the woman in place. The frame produces enclosure long before any narrative explains it.
The cigarette she holds carries a double movement. It suggests autonomy, elegance, composure, and erotic control, yet at the same time it belongs to a long cinematic history in which female desire is aestheticized for the gaze of the Other. The gesture feels rehearsed, almost ritualized, as though femininity itself has become performance. Smoke softens the contours of the image, blurring solidity and making the figure appear transient, untouchable, nearly spectral.
At the center of the image there is also a profound relation to emptiness. The photograph is visually dense, yet emotionally hollow. Everything is present except immediacy. The stylization of the woman functions as a defense against absence, vulnerability, and the unknown dimensions of subjectivity. Her perfection attempts to close every opening through which something uncontrolled or real might emerge. The image therefore organizes itself around a void that cannot be shown directly.
This relation to emptiness appears precisely in the tension between surface and depth. The woman is hyper-visible as an image, yet absent as a subject. She is offered completely to the gaze while simultaneously disappearing within it. The stillness of her face, the distance of her eyes, the frozen elegance of the pose produce the feeling that something essential has been evacuated from the image. Beauty here becomes inseparable from erasure.
The violence done to the image becomes unmistakable. The woman is not represented as a subject but as a consumable phantasm. The violence appears in the constructed perfection of the scene: hair, makeup, posture, lighting, framing, all transforming her into a produced visual object rather than a person. It appears in the removal of her gaze; she cannot look directly because the image itself does not permit reciprocity. And it appears in the emotional tension of the photograph, in the expression of someone who must continuously embody what others expect to see.
This is precisely what happens to Lizzie in La Pu**in Respectueuse. She becomes trapped inside someone else’s narrative and someone else’s image of her. Her identity no longer emerges from her own experience but from the social fantasy projected onto her. She ceases to exist as a speaking subject and becomes a figure circulated through the desires, fears, and moral structures of others.
Yet the image never becomes completely closed. Something escapes. In the silence of the frame, in the distance of the gaze, in the coldness between visibility and concealment, another presence appears: the trace of a subject that cannot be entirely reduced to representation. The photograph therefore oscillates between capture and disappearance, between aesthetic construction and the possibility of withdrawal from it.
This is why the image feels so unsettling. It does not simply portray femininity; it exposes the mechanisms through which femininity is visually produced, controlled, aestheticized, and emptied. The woman becomes an image precisely at the point where her voice disappears. And yet, within that disappearance, the image also reveals the fragile instability of the fantasy trying to contain her.

In the film Bin-jip, (빈집, Empty House) the question who is the dreamer?, who leads the dream? cannot be reduced to only ...
22/05/2026

In the film Bin-jip, (빈집, Empty House) the question who is the dreamer?, who leads the dream? cannot be reduced to only one character. The film functions as a space in which the dream circulates between subjects, spaces, gazes, and the image itself. Precisely because of this, Kim Ki Duk’s work transcends a purely psychological story and simultaneously opens itself toward intercontextual reading.

At first glance, it seems that Tae Suk is the dreamer of the film. He enters empty houses, inhabits other people’s spaces, imitates the lives of others, photographs himself with their photographs, repairs objects, and performs small rituals of everyday life. He appears as a subject trying to survive in a world without a real relationship. Psychoanalytically speaking, his life is organized around quasi-relations and repetitive actions that protect him from emptiness and conflict. The houses he enters resemble inner psychic spaces, temporarily inhabited but essentially empty.

But with the appearance of Sun Hwa, it becomes clear that Tae Suk is not the only dreamer. She dreams of liberation from a violent relationship, the fantasy that someone will come like a ghost and open the door of her prison. Tae Suk then becomes the figure of her dream, a rescuing object, the possibility of tenderness and another life. Opposite them stands the husband who dreams of total control over the Other, a world without uncertainty and without an inner space that escapes him. The film therefore becomes a collision of fantasies: the fantasy of rescue, the fantasy of union, and the fantasy of possession.

However, Kim Ki Duk does not present these fantasies through classical psychological realism. His film functions through what Gilles Deleuze calls the “time-image.” This means that the frame is no longer merely a representation of action but a space in which affect, thought, duration, and presence flow simultaneously. Meaning is not produced primarily through dialogue but through silence, the rhythm of bodies, the emptiness of space, and the relation between the visible and the invisible.

The image carries unconscious desire, fantasy, and a relation toward the object. At the same time, that same image poses the question of being, presence, and the boundary between reality and dream. Simultaneously, the frame functions as an autonomous visual composition of affect, duration, and emptiness.

When Tae Suk stands silently behind the husband, the frame functions simultaneously on all three levels. He is the return of the repressed third whom the husband attempts to deny. He becomes a figure of invisible presence, a being between presence and absence, almost a shadow or a ghost. The scene is organized through silence, the emptiness of space, and bodily choreography; meaning emerges visually and affectively rather than verbally.

The same applies to the empty houses themselves. They are simultaneously psychic spaces of loneliness, ontological spaces of uninhabitedness, and minimalist visual compositions that produce a specific atmosphere. In Kim Ki Duk’s work, space is never merely scenography, but a space that thinks, feels, and dreams.

That is why the question “who leads the dream?” remains open. Tae Suk is not the only one dreaming. Sun Hwa is not the only one dreaming. Neither is the husband. It seems that the film itself dreams through images, emptiness, bodies, and silence. Empty House-빈집 becomes a space in which the boundaries between inner and outer, real and imaginary, subject and image continuously dissolve.

Perhaps that is precisely why the final sentence of the film feels so powerful: “It is difficult to tell whether the world we live in is reality or a dream.” In Kim Ki Duk’s world, the dream is not the opposite of reality, the dream is the way reality becomes visible.

Film 빈집 2004, by Kim Ki-Duk

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