[Blancage] - Entry n° 04 – A Heart in the Rain

Quimper - Blancage n°04 - Un cœur sous la pluie— (c) Fabrice Laudrin 2025

[French]

A Heart in the Rain

Description

Irregular bloc of blancage (approx. 40 × 40 cm) applied to a residential wall in a central street.

When dry, the surface appears uniform, slightly grainy, offering no sign of any prior mark.

During rainfall, a distinct shape — a heart — emerges through hygrometric contrast: the zone of the old graffiti remains lighter, while the surrounding coating darkens.

The figure is visible only in the rain; it disappears entirely as the wall dries.

The form is not intentional. It is material rémanence — what returns when the blancage fails to fully erase.

Erased: heart not sustained

The municipal gesture aimed to neutralize a big heart — likely made with a spray can — classified as a parasitic inscription.

The single-layer coating produces a superficially smooth surface, yet its micro-variations in thickness remain detectable under rain.

The blancage acts as an opacifying veil: efficient in appearance, but unable to suppress the underlying difference in pigment density.

The erasure intended to be total; it succeeded only in removing immediate visibility.

Remained: hygrometric imprint

No colour, no line has survived.What persists is physical rather than graphic:– altered porosity,– modified surface tension,– a memory of absorption where the heart was once drawn.

Rain exposes this latent structure: a phantom heart, exact in its contour, appearing as an “apparition” and then withdrawing back into silence.

Analysis

The municipal erasure acts as a symbolic reset: an attempt to return the surface to “zero.”

Yet the material contradicts this intention.

Blancage does not suppress — it stratifies.The heart returns as sediment, not as a deliberate symbol.

Reading 1 — Lacan.

Blancage seeks to protect the domain of the Symbolic — the clean façade — but the Imaginary punctures this device as soon as rain exposes the material refoulé.

The heart is no longer a sign of affection; it becomes the resurgence of a signifier that was meant to disappear.

Reading 2 — Material spectrality.

The form is no longer tied to a subject; it emerges from the physics of recouvrement.

The heart is not projected — it is recalled by the matter itself.

Here, the wall produces its own image without human intention, functioning as an autonomous organ of memory.

These two regimes — symbolic repression and spectral emergence — coexist.

The heart is no longer a drawing; it is an act of resistance.

Problematic

What does it mean for a city to erase a heart with the same determination used against a hostile slogan?The question shifts:

– is this the neutralisation of the political,

– or the neutralisation of the living itself?

The recurring heart interrogates the municipal logic: the system does not only erase what contests — it erases what feels.

An emblematic piece for questioning the status of tenderness in public space: can it still exist without being immediately covered?

Collection Status

Catalogue: Blancage

Section: Figures born of erasure

Number: 04

Internal title: A Heart in the Rain (40 cm)Location: Quimper, city centre, residential wall

Status:

A major hygrometric piece: a form appearing only under meteorological conditions, exposing the structural limits of blancage.

A paradigmatic rupture within the corpus: erasure here produces a conditional, intermittent form, strictly dependent on water.An apparition. A discreet refusal. A remainder.

Bibliography

Freud, S. (1920). Au-delà du principe de plaisir. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.(Trans. J. Laplanche & J.-B. Pontalis, PUF.)

• pp. 17–23 — Definition of the compulsion to repeat (essential for understanding why an erased heart returns in the rain).

• pp. 43–55 — Analysis of repression and its return through non-symbolic routes (key for material rémanence on walls).

• pp. 70–73 — Notion of persistent psychic “trace” (direct parallel with hygrometric trace).

Lacan, J. (1966). Écrits. Paris: Seuil.(Original edition, “Le Champ freudien”.)

• pp. 11–61 — The Purloined Letter: structure of the signifier, visibility / invisibility, the return of meaning despite concealment (central for reading forms reappearing after blancage).

• pp. 497–526 — The Instance of the Letter: the material support of the signifier (theoretical basis for the wall as a “speaking surface”).

• pp. 801–824 — Notes on the gaze in “The Mirror Stage”: apparition of a figure on a surface that was not meant to show anything.

Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard.(“Bibliothèque des Histoires”.)

• pp. 27–33 — Disciplinary logic of surfaces; control of bodies through controlled appearances (direct parallel with municipal blancage).

• pp. 195–200 — Normalisation, elimination of irregularities, production of a neutral façade.

• pp. 302–308 — The city as a field of diffuse surveillance; erasure as a technique of managed visibility.