I am off to the Transmission: Hospitality conference, my second one this summer and one I am particularly looking forward to, as I will be part of a panel I proposed a few months back and which will be chaired by Dany Nobus. Here’s what Nicky Bird, Bran Nicol and I will be discussing on Saturday morning:
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On the 5th of June, I will be giving an overview of my recent work on seduction at the Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society conference at Middlesex University. Here’s my abstract, to whet your appetite (if psychoanalysis, culture and society are your thing, of course): Make me yours: studying the psychodynamics of seduction through works of [...]
An exhibition of work by researchers. Grace and Clark Fyfe Gallery, Scott Street, Glasgow 16-28 April 2010 You are cordially invited to the Private View of the show, which will take place on Friday 16th April, at 6pm.
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If you think I have been quiet since Christmas (or even before) it is because writing a thesis does not leave me much to say. All my energy is thrown into those pages, into those words, but today I had a lovely surprise when other words I had written a while ago, turned up, nicely [...]
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2000: Moved from Manchester to Sheffield. Met Hayley and Oli and Stuart who took me to the pub. Finished BA. Met Neil. Got attacked by a goose. Moved to London. Started MA. 2001: Westminster Bridge Road. Depression. Finished MA. Started work in academia. Lost ability to make art. Won Mr and Mrs competition. 2002: Tooting. [...]
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I received feedback on my second chapter from my Director of Studies. Very fair and helpful but it filled me with dread in relation to losing the plot and the focus of the thesis. It is more difficult to write a thesis-as-piece-of-work than a thesis report. I know the challenge would be here all along. I have had it pretty easy until now, no data gathering in the conventional sense, no number crunching, no narrative analysis, no conventional, run of the mill method. Because of this, it is not, at the time of analysis and evaluation that I am finding it difficult. What I do requires a lot of thinking and a lot of looking because it is evanescence. It disappears in my hands as I write. Then, at times, it also surprises me.
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I have uploaded the paper Sharon Kivland and I delivered at last year’s Research into Practice Conference. In it, we tried to answer the question of interpretation in Art and Psychoanalysis, through a different approach to one expects in this sort of conferences. To me, it was a great learning exercise.
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The first realisation I had during my PhD was the fact that what I was looking for, the objects of seduction I longed for, were already out there. I did not need to spend unfruitful hours trying to re-create, imitate what industrialization, and capitalism had already achieved. To compete, in terms of seduction, what I had to devise was a way to capture the relationship, to apprehend what was going on, to replicate it in order to study it in depth. Photography was my discovery.
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On Monday, I taught my session on Supervision for which I use Lars Von Trier film ‘The 5 Obstructions’ (and for which I have to thank Dr Malcolm Quinn). The movie is compelling and work as a teaching tool. At the beginning, students don’t know what to make of the relationship and the works produced but, by the end of the second obstruction, something falls into place and the blank stares and silences turn into comments, opinions, ventures. They change from the role of student to the role of the supervisor.
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The other day, someone accused me of lack of engagement. This was mainly directed at my online life but also had a bearing in what I do in real life. Lack of engagement is not a good thing when you are trying to study seduction, which needs mindfulness. I was engaged when I took my photographs, I was there 100% and remember every action, every thought related to my fall for the object.
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Laura Gonzalez is an artist and writer. Her practice encompasses drawing, photography and sculpture, and her work has been exhibited in the UK, Spain and Portugal. She has participated in numerous conferences, including Research into Practice (2008), College Arts Association and the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (2007). When she is not following Freud, Lacan and Marx's footsteps with her camera, she lectures postgraduate students at the Glasgow School of Art.
She is currently immersed in an interdisciplinary project, which investigates psychoanalytic approaches to making and understanding objects of seduction within the fields of fine art, consumption studies and material culture. Her research includes an examination of parallels between artistic and analytic practices, a study of Manolo Blahnik's shoes as objects of desire, a disturbing encounter with Marcel Duchamp's last work, and the creation of a psychoanalytically inspired Discourse of the Artefact, a framework enabling the circulation of questions and answers through a relational approach to artworks. She seeks refuge and inspiration in psycho-geography, especially if it takes her to shopping centres, those mysterious places.