A woman displays strange behaviour on her way to work: despite having to rush to attend to her duties on time, she finds herself stopping in her tracks, unable to look elsewhere. She is in distress, even if this is not a hysteric fit. The cause of this conduct seems to be related to a diamond and platinum ring. The diamond, a natural, round brilliant one of 1.00 carat, is very sparkling and blinds her. She cannot resist seduction’s call. She is terrified by its meaning and its consequences. She is terrified when addressed to by the object, when faced with her own desire. The encounter is uncanny. She asks: ‘What does the object want from me?’

These photographs are part of a project entitled ‘Make Me Yours’. They are concerned with the relational and psychodynamic aspects of the engagement between object and subject, between work of art and viewer;
one that, when seduction operates, is characterised by interplay, flow and conflict.

I am also updating, uploading and making some things available. In general, dragging things out until I they lead me somewhere else.

You can now see the photobook I submitted for my PhD here … As for the textual work, well, that somewhere else I want to go might be publication so I am holding the text for a while. Still, if you want a copy, do get in touch and I will happily respond.

I found the time between submission and examination to be very complex and contradictory. I knew I was not done; yet, in my head, I was done. I had no idea how to prepare for the viva and felt the work was in the past. I had already moved on, especially in relation to the practice, which became more performative. I had even moved on physically, in relation to space, as rather than spending my time in the photography lab or in front of the computer, I was many hours a week rehearsing in the dance studio.

This cognitive dissonance was on the back of my mind between 1st of December 2010 (when I submitted) and 16th February 2011 (the date of my viva) so I asked everyone I knew what their advice was as to how I should prepare. Here’s what I found out:

– Don’t read your thesis, you will find mistakes. I did not follow this one, as I did read my thesis (more than once, in fact), but it helped me to realise that finding mistakes is inevitable. It is also better to find them before the examiners do, so you can show you have done your job properly. I certainly wanted to leave a perfect thesis in the library, with as few mistakes as humanly possible.

– Re-read your thesis and mark it well so you are able to find specific passages. This is fundamental and was very helpful in my viva, as I referred various points to my writing.

– Read your examiners’ works, especially the latest books and papers. Then, think and write specific questions you think they may ask you and try to answer them. In this way, I predicted a few of the questions I had.

– Re-read key sources you mention in your thesis (especially if they are close to the work of your examiners). It is amazing how much opinions change throughout the work of the PhD, and how much one forgets. Most of the answers to the questions in the viva are in these sources.

– Have a mock viva. I could not recommend this enough. It does not matter when you have it: it is better before submission, so you can make changes but to have it after submission is still better than not having it. My mock was extremely useful, it was able to predict most of the questions, it was harder than my actual viva (thus, prepared me well) and it was surprisingly helpful at making me focus on aspects one forgets too often (clothing, space, where to sit, how to behave). Choose your mock examiners well and do give them plenty of time to read your work.

– If your thesis is too open (as mine is) think about the steer of the viva. What is it that you want discussed?

– Phillips and Pugh suggest you write a one-sentence summary for each page of your thesis. I personally think this is a little overkill but it may work for some texts.

– An analytical philosophy student and friend of mine suggested I read Arthur Schopenhauer’s ‘The Art of Always Being Right: 38 Ways of Winning when you are Defeated’. I found this online illustrated version informative and fun, as well as quite useful.

– Think about how to react and answer to the examiners if/when they are having a negative reaction to the material, or to your answers.

– Wear comfortable clothing and footwear. You do not want anything distracting you on the day.

– Be confident in asking examiners to repeat a question or clarify anything. It is normal to be nervous.

– Have water with you.

– Do not put too much hand cream on. You will get slippery, will not be able to open your water bottle and will get self-conscious when shaking hands with your examiners.

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Do you have any others? Let me know by commenting, as this resource will be very useful to future PhD candidates (including my own students).

***

As a postscript, here are some of the texts I read, which reiterated the points my supervisors made (but I needed to hear them again, and again, and again):
Survive your viva (The Guardian, 16 September 2003).
Guidance on preparing for your Viva, School of Nursing and Midwifery, The University of Sheffield.
How to Prepare for your Viva, Lynn Clark and Michelle Sheehan, Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Sciences, Newcastle University.
Preparing for the research viva, Dr David Twigg, University of Sussex

I should not be surprised by this phenomenon. I have experienced it many times, with broken hearts and the stopping of my analysis. We all have, more or less. yet, the absence of the love object is always unexpected. I should be feeling relief, joy, pride. I don’t. Not yet, at least.

I don’t know how long this will last, or how I will recover, how my mind and my body (for I feel it in the body, a kind of hollow) will take the decision to move on. There is not much more I can say. The only thing I can do, for the time being, is to keep occupied, carry on as normal, dance from this loss, think about work, talk to people, write, get back to writing here and tell you about the last months of the research.

Flashing Nipple Remix, #3. 2005
3 black and white transparencies in light boxes.
38 x 48 x 5″ ; Edition of 3 + AP

I am so sorry I have been neglecting writing to you. The end of the self-inflicted exile from these pages is near. Here’s a quick calendar update:
—— The practice was submitted on Friday 1 October 2010
—— The thesis submission is planned for 1 December
—— The Mock Viva is on the 19th January
—— The real thing is scheduled for 16 February

After that, I am, hopefully, all yours.

In the meantime, you can read a lovely conversation I have had with Alexandra Melissa Korley, published in Illywords. We talk about colour, Duchamp’s Étant Donnés and Casanova, and I give an essential reading list. Don’t expect straight answers for me, though. I have learned enough about seduction to know how to work a tease. Still, I hope you enjoy it.

Till February, with trepidation,

Laura

Here’s what Nicky Bird, Bran Nicol and I will be discussing on Saturday morning:

ART AND THE STRANGER: LISTENING, SEDUCING, STALKING

How does one relate to whom one doesn’t know? The stranger is all around us; we cross his path many times per day. The position of the stranger is a reversible one: for the other, it is us that take its place. The question has implications in relation to the work of art, as artists have attempted a direct engagement with strangers as part of their practices, or, indirectly, though the encounter of their work with the viewer. The stranger also has significance in the psychoanalytic setting, where the patient reveals her innermost secrets to a stranger, and the analyst invites one to the consulting room, also usually his home. Drawing from a variety of practices, from film and art to literature and psychoanalysis, this panel proposes three approaches to the unknown person, the stranger.

First, through the act of listening, we attempt to recognize ourselves in the stranger, to establish a bond, a relationship with him. Listening, however, is a very complicated endeavour. How can one listen, really listen, to an other? In his writing, Sigmund Freud proposes a technique called evenly-hovering-attention, which aims at shifting the emphasis from the meaning of the words to a more rounded approach to the other’s speech. This paper will draw from collaborative and performative practices, where the work emerges either from a conversation with a person or a group, then unknown, but becoming something else through the engagement, or from a playful and slightly mischievous activity: eavesdropping.

The consequences of being involved in the acts of talking and listening can be very varied, from friendship to love, transference and countertransference –the particular relationship of identifications between analyst and patient. But before these are arrived at, there is another interim stage, which the second paper in this panel will explore: seduction. Attracted by the stranger, we surrender our free will to his mystery. Works of art use diverse techniques to seduce so the second speaker will perform, impersonate, frame and follow –to name but a few strategies– to engage with the strangers in the audience.

But seduction hangs in a fine balance, it is already at the edge of morality. The obsession with a stranger, whom, in a delusional state, one believes one knows, will be the subject of the third paper. The act of stalking is the pursuit of someone as part of an investigation, or with a criminal intent. It involves a multitude of acts and is often the continued return of a rejected proposition –just like the repressed returns. The outcome can, as in the case of Sophie Calle, lead to a nice trip to Venice, a court appearance or, as happened to Agnetha Fältskog, a relationship ending in disaster.

These three papers, with their differing approaches and strategies to engage with the stranger, will make the audience consider their own everyday encounters in, for example, supermarket queues, art installations, trains, therapeutic relationships, lifts.

The full papers will be published on the website or the new Transmission: Annual journal after the event so watch this space!

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 art

In Fatal Strategies, Jean Baudrillard writes that music and literature are seductive in themselves. Given his later interest in photography and the works of Sophie Calle, it could be argued that seduction is also an attribute of the visual arts. But what makes a work of art seductive? My research is concerned with the relational and psychodynamic aspects of the encounter between the work of art and the viewer; one that, when seduction operates, is characterized by interplay, flow and conflict.

The first step towards disentangling this research problem is to define seduction, a concept that is contingent, ridden with confusion, contradictions and connotative interpretations. Any attempt at pinning down the term, however, shows that it is pervasive and, as a ruling principle, it operates everywhere –especially where efforts to study it are made. The question, then, becomes a methodological one: how might one study seduction as it operates in the encounter with works of art? I put forward a subjective, practice-led approach, comprised of three strands: artistic –in particular photography–, psychoanalytic and writing. All three enact the self-reflexive methodology that is at the core of the contribution my project aims to make, and which is constituted of three steps: recognition, capture and reflection.

In this paper, my own (nearly missed) encounter with a work of art, Marcel Duchamp’s Étant Donnés, and a bold shoe in a New York shop window will be used as props to explain this complex problem. Jacques Lacan’s mysterious objet petit a, the object cause of desire and Freud’s abandonment of the seduction theory will be discussed in the context of these experiences. There will also be the occasional appearances of a detective –who will provide the forensic gaze required of a presentation by a final year PhD student– and other minor characters.

You are cordially invited to the Private View of the show, which will take place on Friday 16th April, at 6pm.