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3 Weeks: Psychoanalysis, Art and the Quest for Freedom

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Venue: External

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3 Weeks: Psychoanalysis, Art and the Quest for Freedom

Wednesdays, 5, 12 & 19 June  
6.30 – 9.00 pm

With reference to the exhibition A Tale of Mothers Bones by surrealist duo Grace Pailthorpe and Reuben Mednikoff, Dr Amber Jacobs will lead this course exploring the relationships between art practices, the unconscious, fantasies and quests for freedom. Participants will explore different models of the unconscious, using an eclectic range of resources from psychoanalysis, philosophy, art theory and literature to find ways of prizing open ideas of breaking away and breaking free. The course will combine theoretical discussion and practice-based activities, involving free association, word collage and analytic collective thinking.

Session One: The Prison


Through a mix of theoretical, political and literary examples we will take the prison as our starting point, thinking around the most basic notions of enclosed spaces to actual incarcerations. From bodies to dreams, fairy tales, myths, institutions and political realities we will trace the way in which the prison underpins psychosocial and spiritual realities.

Session Two: Art as Research


This second session will study art as a healing and therapeutic process and consider its role within research into the unconscious and the occult. Participants will explore ideas from dream analysis and art therapy with reference to the works of Marion Milner, Emma Kunz and Hilma af Klint. The children’s book ‘Marianne Dreams’ by psychoanalyst and children’s writer Catherine Storr will be the starting point for the session.

Session Three: Binaries and Beyond


The final session will consider the role that binary oppositions play in the organisation of our thought, sociocultural artistic practices and lived experiences. We will work with existing binary structures manifested in ideas of time and transformation, as well as notions of collaboration, difference, androgyny, gender and more, while attempting to sketch out what it might mean to think through and beyond binary oppositions.

Readings and materials will be provided before the sessions.

Dr Amber Jacobs will lead this course. Amber is a senior lecturer in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has published widely in the fields of psychoanalysis, feminist theories and philosophy, Ancient Greek myth and tragedy, literature, cinema and visual culture. She is the author of the book On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis and the Law of the Mother (Columbia University Press, 2008).

Please find further information about prices and how to book here: https://www.camdenartscentre.org/whats-on/view/1920a14# 

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Contact phone: 020 3073 8015