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Burgin-VI. 1973

Work in ten parts. Each part is constituted of a black and white full-page litho offset picture, with text in the lower margin; and one page, text printed black.

“A work of 1973, VI, furnishes another variant of text and image combinations. Here, the same photograph is repeated in tandem with a changing narrative and, in this case, includes socially pointed subject matter. Appropriated from a British mail order catalogue, the photograph presents the image of a happy, nuclear British family. Large-type captions, composed by the artist, deal directly with dominant social values and beliefs in order to suggest links between photographic and verbal content. The first, for example, maintains ‘Any physical object is to be positively valued only if it may be instrumental in the achievement of a goal’ and the last, ‘Precipitance in the achievement of goals is to be positively valued.’ Likewise, the remaining captions comment abstractly on the positive value of goals. They are interpretatively linked to the photograph by expectations incurred in relation to their proximate positioning beneath the image. Another, separate group of texts written by Burgin in the theoretical language of structuralism, runs concurrently through the work in counterbalance to the consumerist values embedded in and evoked by text and image. The work in this way, lays bare the methods employed in its construction rather than cloaking them in the manipulative terms of advertising. At the same time, it proffers such methods to decode the proselytizing texts and images rampant in modern society.”
Anne Rorimer, in “New Art in the 60s and 70s. Redefining Reality”, 2001.

The ten text leaves:

I
A complex of phenomena so integrated as to to be seen as unit with properties not derivable from the parts of that unit in summation; a sector of a given perceptual field identified, at a given moment, as a whole and as having attributes more extensive than the sum of the attributes of it constituent elements; a gestalt
II
1. A gestalt serving to direct the attention with respect to some thing other than that gestalt; a signifier
2.1. A signifier which is to some degree isomorphic with its referent, one which is motivated
2.2. A signifier whose referent is construed from a knowledge of arbitrary conventions governing the use of that signifier and only from that knowledge, one which is unmotivated
III
1. A corpus of signifiers and of rules governing their combinations, in common use within a society for the interpersonal communication of commonly accessible meanings; a totality of signifying elements and relations; a code
2. A corpus of signifiers and of rules governing their combination, abstracted from a code, employed within a society for the interpersonal communication of meanings additional to those construed in strict conformity to the established code; a sub-code
IV
An assembly of signifiers drawn from and structured according to a code; a message
V
1. That signified by a message which in accord with a code may be identified by both sender and receiver as constituing the explicit, manifest, content of that message; that which remains invariant in translation; that which, in accord with III 1, is denoted by IV
2. That signified by a message which in accord with a sub-code may be identified by some senders and some receivers as constituing an implicit, latent, content of that message; that which, in accord with III 2, is connoted by IV
VI
1. The juxtaposition of a visual image and a supplementary linguistic message, this latter indicating prefered meanings from amongst the connoted meanings of the former; anchorage
2. The juxtaposition of a visual image and a complementary linguistic message indicating a meaning not signified by either of the component messages; relay
VII
A complex of propositions concerning constituents of the natural and social world, and the relations between these constituents, generally accepted in a given society as describing the actual and necessary nature of things; taken-for-granted realities of everyday life; pre-given determinations of individual consciousness; that which is commonly held within a given society as a necessary frame of reference for the projection of individual actions; that which is considered necessarily, in the nature of things, to be the case; a world-view
VIII
1.1. The individual elements of which a world-view is composed; all things which are defined within a given society as discrete entities; cultural units
1.2. Those cultural units by which the worth of a thing or of an action is judged; conceptions ideally governing individual selections from alternative courses of action; standards by which the desirability of modes of behaviour and the goals towards which behaviour is directed are assessed; values
IX
Those assemblies of cultural units which, emphasising values, provide the context within which individual biographies and institutional orders may be legitimated; typifications of common-sense thinking which provide order for the subjective apprehension of biographical experience; contingent frames of reference for the projection of individual actions; systems of concepts which give individual experiences their meanings; ideologies
X
1. Complete congruence between the sub-codes of sender and receiver with a resultant decoding of a message in terms of the prefered meanings of the sender; interpretation of a message in the context of full concordance of ideologies
2. Partial congruence between the sub-codes of sender and receiver with a resultant decoding of a message in terms of an amalgamation of the prefered meanings of the sender with the prefered meanings of the receiver; interpretation of a message in the context of partial concordance of ideologies
3. Complete incongruence between the sub-codes of sender and receiver with a resultant decoding of a message in terms of the prefered meanings of the receiver to the exclusion of the prefered meanings of the sender; interpretation of a message in the context of discordance of ideologies

Text and image reproduced from http://archives.carre.pagesperso-orange.fr/Burgin%20Victor.html