It would be possible to say that for artists, if not for everyone, the most important source of creative capital would be our subjectivity. Paradoxically enough, at the same time some of us would be at a loss in defining what that word means. Through this residency we will try to primarily differentiate the concept of subjectivity from that of consciousness. We will examine two different models of subjectivity. We will explore on the one hand a conception of the subject largely based on a Cartesian premise, perceived as mysterious and natural, and on the other the Lacanian paradigm of the artist as a 'sign maker,' a synthetic subject constructed through language and a symbolic order.

The conception of the individual, generally confused with the concept of the subject, comes from the Renaissance and in particular from the thought of Renee Descartes. Descartes in his Discourse on Method and Meditations on the First Philosophy, sought to find a universal and eternal truth regarding his own existence, and consequently that of man in general, one that was independent from the unreliability of perception and of the cumulative opinions that constituted cultural history. In contrast, the importance of Lacan for us as artists resides in the radical set of propositions that he formulated in the early part of the twentieth century, based on previous breakthrough work in psychoanalytic and semiotic theory, regarding the nature of the subject, subjectivity, the unconscious mind and the role of language in the emergence of these concepts.

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