Workshop - Psychoanalysis and Art History

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

WORKSHOPS ON PSYCHOANALYSIS AND ART HISTORY 

A collaboration between the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies and the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex.

• FIRST EVENT: University of Essex (Colchester) Friday April 26th.                                         Keynote session: Professor Margaret Iversen (University of Essex, author of Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes).
• SECOND EVENT: London (venue tbc)  Friday May 24th.
• THIRD EVENT: May be added, subject to demand.

Deadline:  15th March, 2013
Interdisciplinary crossovers between art history and psychoanalysis have a long, rich and productive history. Since Freud, many analysts have incorporated the study of visual art into their work, and art historians and theorists frequently incorporate concepts, methods and frameworks from psychoanalysis into theirs. However, while there can be no doubt that these exchanges have been incredibly fruitful, they also throw up significant methodological issues. What happens when ideas migrate from the analytic context into an artistic one and back again? What differences are there between the analytic situation and the artistic context? How can we incorporate modes of artistic experience into psychoanalytic frameworks? Do psychoanalytic concepts sometimes get lost in translation?
Despite the sheer volume of studies which have encountered these issues, it is rare that analysts and art historians come together to discuss them. This series aims to fill this gap by bringing together lecturers, practitioners and postgraduates from both disciplines who are interested in thinking around this divide. The events will be practical workshops, focussed around methodological questions in current research. Each session will include a number of short presentations (around 10 minutes) from researchers who are currently dealing with issues in either the use of visual art in the psychoanalytic context or the use of psychoanalysis in art history/theory. Rather than presenting the results of research, each presentation should open up a question for discussion, providing an opportunity to consider methodological issues with a larger group and to share skills and ideas between disciplines. Possible issues include, but are not limited to:

• The migration of concepts from psychoanalysis into the study of visual art.
• The study of artists who are themselves influenced by psychoanalysis.
• Similarities/differences between art and the analytic situation.
• The role of the object in psychoanalytic studies of visual art.
• The role of the viewer in psychoanalytic studies of visual art.
• Combining psychoanalytic ideas with other forms of interpretation.
• Psychoanalysis and the artist-viewer relationship.
• The role of aesthetic experience in psychoanalysis.
• The critique of particular studies which explore artworks psychoanalytically.
• The psychoanalytic interpretation of technical processes of artistic production.
• The relation between visual art and unconscious phantasy (Kleinian) or fantasy (Lacan,
  Zizek).
• The use of psychoanalytic ideas/thinkers that have generally been overlooked in art history (e.g. Bion, Winnicott, Laplanche, Milner).

Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent to artandpsychoanalysis@essex.ac.uk by Friday March 15th. 

For more information, please contact organisers David Hodge, Natasha Adamou and Matt Ffytche at the above address.

Spring Meeting Dates - The Psychoses

This Spring term the reading group will be meeting every two weeks, from 2:00 - 4:00 on a Friday, in Laurie Grove Baths G3.

In addition to discussions arising from the text, every month one session will be introduced by a presentation by one of the group members on a related theme.

As always, everyone is welcome. 


01/02
XII: The hysteric's question

15/02
XIII The hysteric's question (II): What is a woman?

01/03
XIV: The signifier, as such, signifies nothing

15/03
XV: On primordial signifiers and the lack of one

Thursday 28/03 (Friday is a bank holiday)
XVI: Secretaries to the insane

12/04
XVII: Metaphor and metonymy (I): "His sheaf was neither miserly nor spiteful"

26/04
XVIII Metaphor and metonymy (II): Signifying articulation and transference of the signified

10/05
XIX: An address: Freud in the century

24/05
XX: The appeal, the allusion

07/06
XXI: The quilting point

21/06
XXII: "Thou art the one who wilt follow me"

Autumn Meeting Dates - The Psychoses

In line with our aim to race through Lacan's seminar on The Psychoses (1955-1956) this autumn, please see below for chapter titles and dates of the weekly meetings.

All sessions will take place in Laurie Grove Baths Rm G3 and further notices will be posted on this blog in case of date or room changes.

05/10
I: introduction to the question of psychoses
II: the meaning of delusion

12/10
III: the Other and psychosis
IV: "I've just been to the butcher's"

19/10
V: On a God who does not deceive and one who does
VI: The psychotic phenomenon and its mechanism

26/10
VII: The imaginary dissolution
VIII: The symbolic sentence

02/11
*No Reading Group*

9/11
IX: On nonsense and the structure of God
X: On the signifier in the real and the bellowing-miracle

16/11
XI: On the rejection of a primordial signifier

23/11
*Ecrits reading*
'Kant avec Sade'

Psychoanalysis and German Idealism

In this video we could hear three different perspective on the relation between psychoanalysis and German Idealism by Zizek, Alenka Zupancic and Mladen Dolar. I personally liked Dolar presentation. He talked about awakening and its relation to the experience of modernity was novel and thought provoking. In establishing the relation, Kafka' Metamorphosis played a role which was new to an admirer of Kafka like me. Hope you enjoy it!

http://youtu.be/lm_QlzuKKco

Next Meeting - 05/10 - The Psychoses

This autumn Goldsmith's Lacan reading group will enter its third year. It's open to everyone - staff, students, and members of the public - and will run every Friday from 2-4 in Laurie Grove baths, room G3.

 

We'll be attempting to race through one of Lacan's seminar's each term, starting with Seminar III: 'the psychoses' and moving forward after Christmas.

 

The first session will take place this Friday the 5th of October, and we'll be discussing the first two chapters of the seminar 'introduction to the question of psychoses' and 'the meaning of delusion' (up to p29).

Next Meeting - 30/08 - Direction of The Treatment, Part II

On Thursday 30th August, we'll be continuing with 'The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power', reading up to section IV: 'How to Act with One's Being' on p. 512. Laurie Grove Baths G1, 4-6 p.m.

Next Meeting - 22/08 - Direction of the Treatment

On Wednesday we'll be taking the first 14 pages of 'The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power' (sections I and II), which can be found in Ecrits (trans. Bruce Fink). Laurie Grove Baths G1, 4-6.