I will be speaking at the delightful Architexture: Exploring textual and architectural spaces conference at te University of Strathclyde, which will run from 15 to 17 April 2008.

My paper is scheduled on the 17th April, from 13.30 to 15.00. Here’s what I will be talking about:

Reflections on Seduction

Every morning, I get to work 10 minutes late. What keeps me is the fact that I have to wait for the women at the jewellers in Glasgow’s Argyle Arcade to appear in the shop windows, polishing and displaying diamond rings. This compulsion to repeat represents the core of this paper. The regular stop in my journey is pleasurable and has qualities associated with what is commonly known as retail therapy. At the same time, and like everything related to desire, it provokes anxiety.

The rings and I are mediated by real (public) and imaginary (private) screens. These define my position, which is similar to that of the viewer in the art gallery or the analysand in the analytic room. In those situations, the privileged enclosure and the distance between subject and object structure both encounters. The screens regulate the relationship and, through them, new spaces appear, in which the objects and I are positioned together, in close proximity, as happened in Lacan’s experiment of the inverted bouquet. The rings are mine; I am theirs.

What occurs, every morning, is an act of seduction, like the one that took me all the way to Philadelphia to see what a Spanish door hid behind. Gaze, of course, is crucial to this relationship. Those rings hail me; they say: hey you! Look at me! And I let myself being led astray because I know that commodities, with their fetish qualities, are mysterious and enticing by nature. But the concept of seduction, although pervasive in contemporary culture, is complex and will need teasing out. In this journey — which takes the form of a walk and a practice-led investigation — Duchamp, Marx, Freud and Lacan are my companions and to them I will look for help to understand what makes an object seductive.

I have updated the website with shiny new lightboxes and have uploaded some of the new photographs I took over the summer. In preparation for the printing work I have ahead of me (and the exhibition in April/May), I thought I should publish them in order to gain some distance, and to encounter them in some form.

I am off to New Brunswick, NJ, for a week. I will be talking about mothers, daughters and cryptophores as part of a Volver roundtable at the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society 2007 annual conference. The event, together with the proximity of New Jersey to Philadelphia —and therefore to the famous Duchamp room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art— makes me feel really excited. I’ll be sure to report upon my return on the 6 November…

Rigorous Holes: Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Theory in Art and Performance Research.

A conference on the use of Psychoanalytic Theory in Art and Performance for doctoral students, organised by The Research Centre at Wimbledon College of Art and the School of Social Sciences, Brunel University.

The Red Room, Chelsea College of Art, Millbank 29 and 30 May 2007

Speakers include: Dr Malcolm Quinn, Professor Dany Nobus, Dr Stijn Vanheule, Dr Joanne Morra, Dr Jane Rendell, Dr Maria Walsh, Professor Naomi Segal.

I will be chairing the session entitled ‚ÄòPsychoanalysis in Doctoral Research‚Äô on the morning of the 30th May. My opening presentation is provisionally entitled ‘When Freud visited the Acropolis‘. Want to know what happened?

I am doing a talk on Juicy Salif next Wednesday… That reminds me I must bookmark this, which comes from a very interesting blog on Art and Design. No, not as a subject area, but as two ways of thinking and seeing that talk to each other. Pretty groundbreaking conception, no?

Talk info:
Juicy Salif as a cultish totem. The Discipline of Creativity: Exploring the Paradox, Session: ‘Ars longa’: establishing value, Institute for Capitalising on Creativity, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow, 2 May 2007.

Baudrillard has died. I was a bit sad when I found out. After all, seduction ruled the world for him and we had that in common.

Some of my thoughts on Melanie Carvalho’s book Expedition have been published on
ART & RESEARCH, Volume 1. No. 1. Winter 2006/07, a new e-journal looking at research in contemporary art practice. Something much needed, in my opinion…

I have uploaded images of work-in-progress created as part of my PhD project. Engaging in practice has been productive, even if difficult. The practice of analysis and of art are beginning to converge in a weird sense and I am hoping that writing my confirmation report will bring that very point into some clear focus. At the moment it is just a list of shared characteristics and references. A hypothesis. Bijoux #4 (engage and commit) is probably the one that best reflects this connection: it is awkward; wearing it hurts. I agree with S‚Äî. The practice is a little illustrative of what I read, see, like… Yet, it is a first step, like laying on the couch. Where forces are pulling in different directions ‚Äîtheory here; art there; psychoanalysis, up; epistemology, down; my own practice this other way‚Äî, this attempt to crete is a step towards a kind of negitiation. What I now need to do is to create seduction, not to seduce (which may be impossible, as seduction is always in flux, never still)