Description
This course explores neuroses that come from obsessing over something, possessing something (or many things), or being possessed by something. Related to this are the concepts of spirits, ghosts, collectors, phobias, philias, compulsions, repetitive acts, hoarding and the disposal of possessions. Most of these issues relate to art in one way or another and there are countless examples of artists that are either possessed or obsessed. The course will also look at the relation between obsession, possession and perversion, especially when related to objects. Using psychoanalytic theory on neuroses as a starting point, the course will examine behaviour, and a connection to objects and thoughts in practice. What is the creative potential of obsessions and possessions? As neuroses mainly come from a conflict between mind and body, and reality and pleasure, these relations will be discussed. The course will work at the points where theory “mainly psychoanalytic” meets practice and will aim to refine your articulating and critical capabilities both in thinking and making. The works of Andrzej Zulawski, Andrei Tarkovsky, Christopher Nolan, Sophie Calle, Paul Noble and Sue Webster, Kurt Schwitter’s Merzbau, Lauren Adams, Cildo Meireles, Yayoi Kusama, Song Dong’s work “Waste Not”, Michael Landy, Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin, Piero Manzoni, Marcus Harvey and the practice of tarantism will be discussed, amongst others, in class. I will ask you to bring your most treasured possession, a talisman, something important to you in object form, to keep it on you for the whole week, to look at it, analyse it and see who possesses whom, to make a work around it; to explore strategies obsessives use (collections, repetitions, focus, avoidance) and apply them to your work; to become possessed or haunted by something or someone (including, perhaps, a nostalgic time); to devise a fetish object and to put yourself in the picture in relation to it.
Bio
Laura Gonzalez is an artist and writer. She has spoken at numerous events, including the MFIT in New York, the Medical Museum in Copenhagen, CAA and the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society. When she is not following Freud, Lacan and Marx’s footsteps with her camera, she supervises students at the Glasgow School of Art. She has written on the seductive qualities of Philippe Stack’s Juicy Salif for a book on creativity. She co-edited a collection of essays titled “Madness, Women and the Power of Art” (2013) to which she contributed a work, written with Eleanor Bowen. She has performed with various dance companies, including Michael Clark, Barrowland Ballet and Scottish Dance Theatre. Her current work explores knowledge and the body of the hysteric through text, dance performance and video and she is writing a book on art and seduction, to be published by Cambridge Scholars in 2016. http://www.lauragonzalez.co.uk/profile/
Art and research topic interests
Psychoanalytic approaches to art; mind/body conflict; fetishism and perversion in art, design and architecture; reflexive and self-reflexive methodologies; performance for the camera; theories of the gaze in photography; dance and art; and innovative forms of writing.
Keywords:
Transart, Memory, Forgetting, Trauma and the Archive; Creative Fiction and Experimental Non-fiction; Language/Image; Role of Art in Peace, Meditation, Performance Activism; Foreignness, Otherness and the Uncanny
