She films movement from within, she dances with the camera and the effect is one of convulsion, but also joy.

So, since my PhD, I have changed the space I work in, from a crowded artist’s studio, with papers, notes, images, computers and sketchbooks to an empty dance space.

It is here that I rehearse the movements of hysteria, its body practice, like the famous arch of hysteria (remember La Grande Hysterique I wrote about a few weeks back), in which you may recognise the high arch prone of contemporary dance and which some of you may know in the guise of Louise Bourgeois’ sculpture. In hers, the hysteric is a man.

For hysteria is a body practice and, moreover, a choreography.

Look at Charcot’s movement classifications, from his attitudes passionelles (passionate attitudes, the seduction in hysteria), to the clownisme, epileptoide phase and delirium. All pervert (exhibitionist) phases too, I think.

So, with the clues I have been giving you, through my recents texts, works and my PhD, you probably have figured out that what my current project is about is hysteria.

Forgive me if my writing is inarticulate. This is something that started forming in my head barely three months ago, and I have not done, thought, or written much about it. It does not have words of it own, yet. I am testing the waters here but if there is anything I learned from my PhD is that it is good to do that, as it helps to organise muddled thinking.

Hysteria, well, a hysteric this is something one cannot be, medically speaking. It is an outdated diagnostic category, now translated as post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociation or conversion disorder (and these are only some of its many names). Hysteria is the physical manifestation of psychological traumas. The first accounts of hysteria relate a ‘wandering womb’. Swooning, convulsing, contracting, fainting, and aphasia – loss of speech – are some of its common symptoms. It is related to gender roles, to sexuality and, like everything in psychoanalysis, to the Oedipus complex.

What led me to explore hysteria – apart from my own hysteric episode in 2009, for which I was treated – was a re-encounter with a scene of a film. In Andrzej Zulawski’s 1981 film Possession, Anna (or Helen), played by Isabelle Adjani, has a violent hysteria attack on a tunnel of a Berlin U-Bahn station. She throws herself against the walls and self harms, savagely. What is her body reacting to? What does it know that the rational (conscious) mind does not?

Since the French aliénistes and even before, hysteria has had an air of mystery about it, even trickery. The conflict between mind and body in hysteria, as Zulawki’s film shows, relates to a ‘depraved epistemology’ as Christopher Bollas names it, an understanding of womanhood and a choice of sexual objects.

The viewing of this film showed all my perversions, for the more violent and gruesome it became, the more I enjoyed it (a little like Isabelle Adjani herself). My interest in hysteria is about its history, gender and the performance of a psychological issue. Also its place in the history of psychoanalysis and the link to perversion. PTSD does not have that clear link. Does this diagnosis need to be revived?

So, what next? Well, I have been invited to the Sensuous Objects conference, which will take place at the Medical Museum in Copenhagen in at the end of September. The aim is to speak of hysteria by interacting with the objects in their collection, and link it to seduction. The objects I have chosen will not surprise you: a leather restraining belt and a photographic camera.

Watch this space.

The novel has now been published in a variety of formats and will launch at the Collective gallery in Edinburgh on Saturday 20th August, 6-8 pm.

There is an e-pub version for Kindle and iBook (to be launched shortly) and the paperback version is available for purchase now (print-on-demand) via Lulu.com. Alternatively around 40 copies will be available to buy at the launch event.

Read more about the project in www.badromancer.co.uk

Paradise Row Gallery
74 Newman Street
London W1T 3EL

MARGARITA GLUZBERG
AVENUE DES GOBELINS

18 NOVEMBER – 23 DECEMBER 2011

Borrowing its title from one of Eugene Atget’s iconic photographs of Parisian shop fronts, Avenue des Gobelins is a meditation on the mystical, ritual nature of material desire and consumption. The central work of this exhibition is a slide-loop projection, The Consumystic. By double and triple-exposing the film, Gluzberg adopts the analogue photographic techniques of the Surrealists to produce a mesh of consumer signs and spaces: the black gleaming lacquer of Chanel, reconfigured by the chaos of a Saturday afternoon at Primark.

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.

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.