Ego Sum: Opening

Buccal Exscriptions: Ann Hamilton’s face to face Photographs*

“…For the subject comes into existence in the act itself of the mouth opening -'a faceless mouth'where 'this articulated opening, in its extreme contraction, forms: I [ … ] it forms itself into an I, it feels itself I, it thinks itself I'. 28 In this articulated opening, what remains in play is thus the act of speaking in and through which each of the photographs comes into being. This is the act of speakingthe uttering, a scene of enunciationin and through which each of the photographs comes into existence, but this act is the literal opening of the mouth and the act in which the mouth speaks and something is about to be utteredthe condition of all locution, allocution, the elocution, the intonation, the enunciation, the address, the expression, the declaration, the proclamation, the performance, even as the open mouth remains irreducible to their articulationin short, that which foregrounds the saying rather than what is said.…”

“…In the closing pages of Ego Sum, Jean-Luc Nancy argues that 'the incommensurable extension of thought is the opening of the mouth'. 9 It is the mouth that 'opens and forms' the Cartesian ego ('other lips', he says, 'had already opened to deliver into the world this "me" when it let out its first cry')it is the mouth that utters ego sum, ego existo. The role of the mouth in Nancy's reading of Descartes is decisive here, for if 'the mouth is the opening of Ego, Ego is the opening of the mouth'.…”

“…Within a place, within the extension of a face, it makes up the gaping of a non-place'. 26 Figure As the mouth opens, the world comes into being, comes into appearance.…”