Belledonne

Victor Burgin's projection work, Belledonne (2016), which poignantly evokes the sanatorium in which Barthes lived for a number of years in his youth due to tuberculosis, is rendered in print in this chapter. The impossible panoramic views of this work along with the numerous inter-titles often using Barthes' beloved haiku form evoke a poetic imagining of life in the asylum where Barthes spent World War II. Scattered throughout the projection piece are allusions to Barthes' entire body of work while evoking the work being done to his body. The rendering of Belledonne offers a vivid visual preface to the 'zero degree' that pervades the book, and which beckons the exploration of a political aesthetic of 'zero degree seeing'