The “Institute for Transcultural and Historical Research” based at Sigmund Freud University, deals with inter- and transcultural as well as postcolonial topics, with the history of mentalities, cultural studies, philosophical foundations of psychotherapy science, and the history of psychotherapy.
A jour fixe is held four times a semester to provide a forum for discussion of guest lectures, SFU projects, and student research. The jour fixe is open to all interested parties, and external visitors are expressly welcome. There is free admission to all events.
For the first Jour fixe after the COVID break we are looking forward to a lecture by
Abigail Susik (USA)
“Surrealist Automatism, World War I, and Psychoanalysis”
In his Manifesto of Surrealism of 1924, André Breton defined surrealist automatism as follows: “psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express –verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner– the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.” This lecture and discussion will introduce students to the theory and history of surrealist automatism, as conceptualized by writers such as André Breton and Louis Aragon, and artists such as André Masson and Salvador Dalí. How did the traumatic experience of World War I influence the rise of surrealist automatism, and in what ways did the developing field of psychoanalysis have an impact?
Abigail Susik is Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University (Portland/OR). In her wide-ranging research devoted to Modern and Contemporary Art History and visual/material culture, Abigail Susik focuses on the intersection of international surrealism with anti-authoritarian protest cultures. She is the author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester University Press, 2021) and co-editor of the volumes Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (Manchester University Press, 2021) and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State University Press, 2022). Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and she has contributed many essays to publications on the history of the avant-garde, including Surrealism Beyond Borders (Metropolitan Museum of Art; Tate Modern, 2021). She is currently a City of Vienna/IFK Fellow at the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, University of Art and Design Linz.
Date: Wednesday, 25th January 2023, 18:30
Location: SFU Vienna, Freudplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, room 1002
→ For PTW students, participation in the event is eligible for credit in the “Doing Research” program.
The team of the Institute for Transcultural and Historical Research looks forward to your participation.