ABSTRACT
The lighthouse is a figure for the art objects itself, emerging in a place mysteriously between the material and the imaginary, a covert category that changes and redefines the relations and perspectives of everything around it. Beginning at sea level with the journey to the lighthouse, the horizon splits the screen, depicting only sea and sky. Air replaces water, and the lighthouse emerges framed against the sky, appearing untethered, floating, more like a space station than a lighthouse. Thus, beyond the abundance of historic representations, lighthouses continue to inspire new creative responses. The lighthouse might be most obviously read through its external phallic and vertical prominence, jutting upwards and spraying light outwards to mark territory and steer and regulate maritime mobilities. The simple act of reversing black and white, light and dark, generates the literally and existentially unheimlich –a beam of dystopian darkness, which, in its confusion of homecoming and horror, might sear the imagination.
