Conference Report

SPACES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

The conference was presided over by the eminent Art Historian and British Academician Professor Dawn Ades, who has worked extensively on surrealism as a writer and as a curator of international exhibitions. She began the day by situating the literary and artistic avant-garde movement of surrealism as contemporaneous with the emergence of psychoanalysis in 1920s Paris. Both contributed to the creation of a radical approach to poetry and art, the banishment of superstition and fancy in favour of the meaningful exploration of dreams, imagination and unconscious phantasy. The previously uncharted territories of the unconscious became the subject of intense and inspired artistic and scientific endeavour.

Dr Krzysztof Fijalkowski from Norwich University School of Arts, an Art Historian with a specialist research profile in surrealism, introduced the conference theme by talking about the enigma of unconscious space. He situated the multi-media installation by the artist Kathleen Fox showing at the Freud Museum at the heart of the conference. He referred to Freud’s use of the architectural metaphor in relation to a house, describing how consciousness resides in the hall and unconsciousness in the drawing room. Kathleen Cox’s exhibition was installed in the space that was once Freud’s bedroom, the ultimate chamber of privacy and enigma. The space was divided into two areas, an illuminated ‘conscious’ area housing Freud’s domestic furniture and personal belongings, separated from a dimly lit area representing the unconscious. In the darkness, hidden beyond a gossamer screen, mysteriously delicate images revealed themselves inside peep show apertures. A cabinet of miniature phalli was just visible in the shadows. Going back into the ‘camera lucida’ area, it was a bit of a shock to encounter the bizarre object of Freud’s delicately crafted jaw prosthesis.

Roger Cardinal, a distinguished Art Historian, famous for coining the term ’Outsider Art’ in 1972 and creating a major body of critical writing flowing from this concept, presented his ideas on Freud’s collection of antiquities. He is particularly well placed to do so on account of his publication ‘The Cultures of Collecting (1994). Interestingly, he mentioned that Andre Breton (the founding father of surrealism) was also a collector of curiosities (art, ethnographic material, unusual trinkets), now dispersed although some survive in the Pompidou Centre in Paris. He described Freud the collector as a ‘compulsive neurotic’, as well as a connoisseur of his beloved chosen objects. It is well known that the collection includes significant mythical figures that inspired the evolution of psychoanalysis in Freud’s mind. Cardinal’s talk encompassed the material embodiment of an idea in an object, the fetishistic, religious and magical properties of objects, the possible origins of surrealism in tribal art, and illuminated the overriding compulsion to accumulate, possess, classify and arrange.

Dr David Sorfa, Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer in Film Studies Liverpool John Moores University, presented his research on the founding father of the Czech surrealist movement Bohuslav Brouk (1912-1978). Brouk was seriously involved with psychoanalysis, believing that it had delivered a severe blow to human consciousness because it could not cure what it had revealed. Nonetheless, he thought Freud’s discoveries more important than Einstein’s theory of relativity. Combining political, poetical, artistic, psychoanalytic, scientific and technical ideas, Brouk dedicated himself to resolving the conflicts of freedom and taxonomy for the good of the individual and society. Amongst a host of publications, his most extraordinary work at the age of 23 was a detailed taxonomic study of masturbating practices across the world!

Karl Foster, Lecturer, Designer and Educationalist, with a background in art, sculpture and psychoanalytic observation, presented an experience of ‘Small Catastrophe or Applied Surrealism’. Seeking to make ’creative interpretations and interventions’ usually reserved for gallery or museum spaces and the involvement of school children, Karl presented a series of bizarre objects for viewing and handling, such as a teapot globe, a scrubbing brush with bristles constructed from miniature figures and a large jug of buttons that was ‘spilt’ onto the floor. This glimpse of the surreal through strange objects and unexpected disruptions did not quite move the knowing audience towards the degree of ‘negative capability’ that Karl had sought.

After lunch Dr Claire Pajakowska, Senior Research Tutor in Fashion and Textiles at The Royal College of Art, and a serious psychoanalytic scholar (see for example her recent publication with Ivan Ward, Shame and Sexuality: Psychoanalysis & Visual Culture, 2008) spoke cogently about the way in which new technologies have changed the way unconscious space is formatted, unseating the surrealists purchase on it, and paving the way for a different culture to evolve through new syntactic structures. Tracing a path through the legacy of surrealism, Claire considered the way in which matter can be used to transform imaginary spaces through visual and tactile experiences of a work of art. The scopophilic and the epistomorphilic instincts metamorphose so that the desire to see becomes the desire to know, creating libidinal desires. To illustrate this, Claire turned to the life and works of Louise Bourgeois who believed that ‘emotion was the stuff of art.’ Becoming an artist grew out of Louise’s experience of her parents’ tapestry restoration business. From an early age she joined in the processes of cleaning, washing, weaving and invisible mending of tapestry fabrics. Claire made a case for the transformation of this formative tactile experience into another register, that of the artist. She described how a relationship that was once physical became emotional through the illusion and phantasy that is the stuff of symbolism. Referring to Klein, Bion, Winnicot and Daniel Stern, she considered the tactile experience of the baby being held in a mother’s arms, and how the holding and fondling is carried into psychic experience through the vital threads of attachment. She then turned her attention to Bourgeois’ sculpture of the giant female spider ‘Maman’ (1999). This spectacular arachnid alludes to the strength of the mother with metaphors of spinning, weaving, nurture and protection (see below).

Art Historian, journalist and Japanologist Dr. Majella Munro presented her research thesis ‘Excavating the Subconscious: Psychoanalysis in Japan and the Surrealist Response’. Majella presented evidence of surrealism and psychoanalysis being widely discussed by poets, artists and medics in pre-war Japan. The work of both Freud and Jung were a burgeoning area of interest in the late 1930s. Translations of Freud’s ‘Introductory Lectures’ and other works were available despite psychoanalysis having a generally concealed existence. Majella displayed images by artists of the same period showing the influence of surrealism and psychoanalysis. It was especially interesting to consider how a more pluralized eastern variation of the Oedipus complex, based on a traditional Japanese folk tale, stood in relation to the more monolithic western version. This posed an interesting challenge to the presumption that the Oedipus myth is a universal unconscious phantasy. The myths that provide people with the means of expressing unconscious phantasies must of course vary according to culture and experience. Freud in fact described psychoanalysis as the study of mind and culture.

Michael Richardson, an Art Historian and a visiting fellow from Goldsmiths University of London, brought the alchemists quest to the proceedings by way of Rene Alleau’s essay ‘Gradiva Rediviva’, published in a surrealist magazine in 1956. The original story of Gradiva was written by the German novelist Wilhelm Jensen in 1903. It is the story of Norbet, a young archeologist who falls in love with the idealized form of Gradiva in bas-relief, before realizing his actual love is for his childhood sweetheart Zoe. As well as captivating Freud’s imagination (Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva 1907), it also inspired Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali who all made works about Gradiva. Richardson took us on a lively and scholarly exposition of the layers of the story and the transforming effects of love from the perspective of the analyst, alchemist and surrealist.

The final session of the day was presented by Professor Steven Pile, a Human Geographer from The Open University, who spoke about the spaces of the unconscious. He opened up the mysteries of the mind-body relationship by retracing the origins of psychoanalysis to the hysterical patients who ‘performed’ symptoms and memories. He then moved into terrain beyond the body, to unconscious experience distributed through space. Familiar external representations of memory through ‘mapping’ i.e. photographs, posters, notes, routes, were extended to include unconscious thoughts and wishes transferred beyond the reach of the body i.e. the telekinetic powers of the mind. Stephen drew attention to the remote viewing research/experiments conducted in Los Angeles 1972-89, in which typically a remote viewer some distance away is able to describe a hidden object with some accuracy. He went on to describe how the porous membrane between the conscious and the unconscious is revealed within the new spaces of virtual reality, where form and expression is given to the unconscious theatre of the mind. He questioned what sort of space consciousness is and how easily duped people are in this space. He described the space of the unconscious as being more real, and consciousness being a space inside it, not outside it. This was a tour-de-force of ideas concerning the unconscious and materiality, from a new disciplinary perspective.

The conference set out to consider how Freud’s theory of the unconscious has been utilized and developed within surrealism, and how surrealism has influenced the cultural, inter-personal and internal worlds. In this it was entirely successful but didn’t quite reach the second aim of the conference, which was to explore the presence of phantasy images and bizarre objects in everyday life. The screen between conscious and unconscious experience is being seriously challenged as the digital revolution proceeds with breathtaking pace. A further conference on the way in which contemporary culture has changed on account of digital phenomena would be most welcome.

Celia Goto
Oxford
October 2010