#524 Borromean Knot

This work is made out of three closed rubber loops I inserted together in a Borromean knot. The loops don’t intersect but are joined together so that if one of them is removed, all fall apart.

The Borromean rings have been used as iconography in many cultures, including Japanese, Christian and Norse mythology.

The Borromean rings are also an example of topology, a mathematical branch concerned with the deformation of geometric objects.

Jacques Lacan uses the figure to illustrate the relationship between the three registers in his theory about the subject and desire - the Symbolic, the Real and the Imaginary. My take on this theory is that the Real designates matter before it’s symbolised and structured by language. The Kantian notion of matter-in-itself, I guess. The Imaginary is the field of language before it is expressed and thus tainted by matter—the register of pure language. Lastly, the Symbolic is where we are—how matter is perceived with the aid of language to make it comprehensible. The two first registers are outside our scope; they may not even exist (though quantum theory might indicate otherwise).