The exposition involves the adaptation of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's logical square, to convey an idea of artistic research practice considered from the perspective of the human subject's position in its midst. As part of the discussion the author has used some evidence of a previous lecture presentation, integrating such material with that of a newer project concerning the visualization of a nightmare image of a phantom in a portal. The tools of the research are a hybrid form of writing that embroils fictional and academic modes as a language-based practice, and visual artistic practice. The author takes Lacan's idea of the confounding of any logical argument by automatic obfuscation of it by unconscious process, and imagines that he has an other to him as a subjective second voice. The question of voices is central to the research; the suggestion that one does speak to oneself in various ways simultaneously that may be fashioned as distinct and separate. It is argued that the research aspect of artistic practice involves just a section of Lacan's logical square, particularly concerning contingency. This orientation may call to question one's tendency to reason and find meaning from the necessary locus of inquiry from the vantage-point of the language-based Symbolic – of Lacan's three psychic structuring registers Imaginary, Symbolic, Real. The element of fiction provides a literary inclination whereby, while the artistic research speaks about itself as research and references a visual practice, the exposition could also be considered a language-based practice in its own right.
