Love is a thing that affects us all, but seems intangible. In turn fragile, passionate, alarming or an all-powerful driving force behind many affairs, it is actually difficult to define.
Two separate galleries – the gallery of attachments and the gallery of science – present an exploration of the ever-changing worlds of love, swept and turned upside down by technological revolutions.
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The gallery of attachments presents an assortment of objects, situations, poems, quotes, images, etc. which are categorised by four Greek words: eros, desire, physical passion; storge, love of family; agape, disinterested love; philia, friendship, social bond. Where English has only two terms – love or like – to express fondness for a friend or a passion for chocolate, Greek allows further shades of meaning.
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The gallery of science brings together seven eclectic subjects explored by philosophers, sociologists, sexologists, psychoanalysts and neuroscientists. They are fragments of a scientific message, a reference to Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments published in 1977, which builds into an abundant dissertation on love. The book’s structure is like a network whose entrances are such varied concepts as ‘Absence’, ‘Delight’ and ‘Jealousy’. It is still a remarkable work in the field of literature devoted to love.