The image corresponds to a performance we are trying out in Rome. The title, “Little object < a >” is a direct reference to Lacan’s objet petit a and an indirect reference to many other things. For Lacan, shortly said, the objet petit a is the object of desire, often felt as an unattainable and forever separated body part; but in a more complex definition, it is the object that obturates the hole produced by language in the real—the real, which is not reality, but that which cannot be expressed with language: “It refers to what does not make sense, what is located outside of all order, the indistinct, the dispersed, Thanatos.” 

The performer holds in his/her palm a gold coin and adopts a position often seen in representations of sanctity and mysticism, indicating grace, or showing stigmata. But there are other indirect references, such as the shiny flat disk in the hands of Mr Tagomi in Philip K Dick’s The Man in The High Castle, or Saint Lucia holding her eyes in her hands / on a tray after martyrdom, an image Lacan often comments as a representation of objet petit a. To me, the position adopted by the performer and the image of the gold disk in his/her hand evokes a connection to the sacred and the unspeakable.