DeArmond
The notion of presque vu belongs to the family of psychological phenomena encompassing déjà vu and jamais vu. Whereas its more common cousin déjà vu is the experience of a ‘previous reality’ (the sense of having already lived through the present moment), presque vu is the experience of ‘a reality yet to be realised’ (the sense of being on the brink of an epiphany) or, simply, of having something ‘on the tip of your tongue’.
However, the experience of presque vu – often cited by those suffering from epilepsy or seizure-related brain conditions – rarely leads to an actual breakthrough for the subject. And it is the innately symptomatic and subjective nature of presque vu that raises the question of how subjective experience can be objectively communicated.
For in as much as presque vu acts as a perceptual disturbance preventing the subject from directly experiencing that which is perceived yet beyond their grasp, it is precisely by repeated engagement with this process that the subject gains access to a temporary internal realm (the Imaginary), bypassing the external world laden with the weight of symbols and signifiers (the Symbolic).
For Aaron and Hannah Beehre, the collaborative act is this type of symptomatic mechanism, bearing the hallmarks of an autistic intervention in the experience of the Real.
Their work focuses on the Imaginary, which functions as part of a fantastical screen in which we find objects of desire that are normally inaccessible to our direct experience. These objects however, cannot be possessed as things in themselves, because the Imaginary can never be definitively grasped since any discourse on it will always inevitably take place within the Symbolic.
The Beehres’ work, therefore, becomes defined by the experience of experience – the objects they create are not desirable because of their intrinsic (objective) desirability, locating their work in the Symbolic; the objects they create are desirable instead because they permit the subjective experience of desire in the viewer, locating their work firmly in the Imaginary.
Their work is therefore as ephemeral as the respective emotions it produces in the viewers. And it is in the viewer’s relationship to the work, rather than in the work itself, that the Symbolic order is fully realised.
It is here, then, that communication of the subjective can be mechanised and sustained. Instead of evangelising with the significant import of their work, the Beehres simply engage in continual acts of presque vu, collaborative acts that fail to elicit claims of an epiphany, yet in the process produce works of translucent beauty rarely grasped in any other way.
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