Politics of the Unconscious: Second Sessions

“If a truth is never communicable as such, it nevertheless implies, at a distance from itself, powerful reshapings of the forms and referents of communication.”
(L’ethique: Essai sur la conscience du Mal (1993), Alain Badiou)

The Politics of the Unconscious:
Hysteria, Surrealism, and Avant-Garde Dance
With a Surrealist Brunch on Day Two
Marija Krtolica
Two Sundays

Starting with the fin-de-siècle Parisian hospital Salpêtrière, we will touch upon the historical resonances of the invention of mental pathology, and aesthetic forms that resonance has instigated. We will first engage Freud and Lacan on hysteria, and then consider feminist and other critical re-readings of their work. This will bring us to look at the images of the mental patients of this period, many of which challenge the boundary between artistic representation and medical documentation. In light of day one, during the following Sunday, over a Surrealist Brunch, the political meanings of Dadaist and Surrealist art, film and poetry will be discussed along with the grotesque dances by Valeska Gert (Weimar Era), and dance-theater of Pina Bausch and Mats Ek (1970s-80s). We will explore how the aesthetic de-hierarchicalization and commodity culture inform our practices as witnesses and art makers. We will investigate ways of synthesizing the critical writings on capitalism and schizophrenia (Gilles Deleuze, 1972) and the politics of aesthetics (Jacques Rancière, 2004 ), with a performance event.

Marija Krtolica (b. 1973, Belgrade) is an international movement artist, dance researcher and teacher (BFA NYU, MFA UC Davis, MA NYU, completing PhD in dance at Temple University in Philadelphia). Her current research focuses on the meanings and symptoms of hysteria in the nineteenth century, and critical re-investigation of hysterical scenes in Tanztheater. Recently, she presented papers at CUNY at Graudate Center conference Approaching Dance, NCSA Caucus in Charleston, the Department of Visual Arts conference at UCSD (2015), ACLA 2015 in Seattle, a Graduate Conference of the Department of English at the University of Chicago (2014), and Choreography Symposium at the University of Cologne (2014), At the artistic residence in Spread Art in Detroit (2015), the University of Arts Belgrade (2015), and at the Le Couvent artistic residence in Auzits, France (2016). Marija has worked with the lecture/performance mode of examining elusive boundaries between practice and theory. Marija has published papers in The International Journal of the Arts in Society (2009 and 2011), and The Journal of Arts Theory and History (2013). She has written articles and conducted interviews for the Belgrade dance publication Orchestra.