In the passage of the Phenomenology of Spirit which is discussed and played with in my performance, Hegel uses the positions of master and slave to show the impossibility of communicating freely with one another. A consciousness is always aiming to have its desire, which is its will to live, recognised by another.

In his Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke sees everything stepping away from itself into the flow of time. Recognition is impossible: time wrestles away the possibility of pure presence.

In post-structuralist theory, the subject suffers because it/she/he cannot reveal itself fully - language is snatched away from it, as meanings always exceed intentions. The shape of the communicating self gets lost in the structures of meaning.

Can we conceive of the endless desire between subject and language as a choreography of steps towards difference?