Politics of the Unconscious: Second Sessions

We will look at the images of the mental patients in the fin-de-siècle Parisian hospital Salpêtrière, 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,

Politics of the Unconscious and Surrealist Brunch

Over brunch, discover some of the grotesque dances by Valeska Gert (Weimar Era), and dance-theater of Pina Bausch and Mats Ek (1970s-80s). Dada and surrealism will not be left behind. We will explore how the aesthetic de-hierarchicalization and commodity culture inform our practices as witnesses and witnessed art makers.

Existentialism and the Anti-Psychiatry Movement

We are normal, and we want our freedom!
We will read a selection of this new approach to psychic individuation alongside the Laing/Cooper nexus that sprung the anti-psychiatry movement and resulted in open psychiatric institutions, mental health liberation activity, and an on-going critique of “bourgeois” psychiatry and contemporary behaviorism, cognitive and psycho-pharmacological approaches to the question of what is mental health.