Freud Museum London: Psychoanalysis Podcasts

In Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976), Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski portrays a series of fragmented psyches confined in claustrophobic spaces. Fear objects move progressively from sexual intercourse (Carol), via pregnancy/childbirth (Rosemary), culminating in the blurring of gender identities (Trelkovsky). In her Projections lecture, Mary Wild offers a Freudian psychoanalytic interpretation of Polanski’s ‘apartment trilogy’, a genre-defining set of films with an influence as far-reaching as 2010’s Black Swan. PROJECTIONS is psychoanalysis for film interpretation. PROJECTIONS empowers film spectators to express subjective associations they consider to be meaningful. Expertise in psychoanalytic theory is not necessary - the only prerequisite is the desire to enter and inhabit the imaginary world of film, which is itself a psychoanalytic act. Please watch Roman Polanski’s ‘Repulsion’, ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘The Tenant’ before attending the lecture as there may be spoilers! MARY WILD, a Freudian cinephile from Montreal, is the creator of PROJECTIONS.

Author's Talk - Gohar Homayounpour introduced by M Fakhry Davids Is psychoanalysis possible in the Islamic Republic of Iran? This is the question that Gohar Homayounpour poses to herself, and to us, at the beginning of this memoir of displacement, nostalgia, love, and pain. Twenty years after leaving her country, Homayounpour, an Iranian, Western-trained psychoanalyst, returns to Tehran to establish a psychoanalytic practice. When an American colleague exclaims, "I do not think that Iranians can free-associate!" Homayounpour responds that in her opinion Iranians do nothing but. Iranian culture, she says, revolves around stories. Why wouldn't Freud's methods work, given Iranians' need to talk? Thus begins a fascinating narrative of interlocking stories that resembles--more than a little--a psychoanalytic session. Homayounpour recounts the pleasure and pain of returning to her motherland, her passion for the work of Milan Kundera, her complex relationship with Kundera's Iranian translator (her father), and her own and other Iranians' anxieties of influence and disobedience. Woven throughout the narrative are glimpses of her sometimes frustrating, always candid, sessions with patients. Ms. N, a famous artist, dreams of abandonment and sits in the analyst's chair rather than on the analysand's couch; a young chador-clad woman expresses shame because she has lost her virginity; an eloquently suicidal young man cannot kill himself. As a psychoanalyst, Homayounpour knows that behind every story told is another story that remains untold. 'Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran' connects the stories, spoken and unspoken, that ordinary Iranians tell about their lives before their hour is up. The foreword was written by Abbas Kiorastami who is an internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker. His most recent film is 'Certified Copy', starring Juliette Binoche, and 'Like Someone In Love'. Gohar Homayounpour is a practicing psychoanalyst in Tehran. She trains and supervises the psychoanalysts of the Freudian Group of Tehran and is Professor of Psychology at Shahid Besheti University Tehran. M Fakhry Davids MSc (Clin Psych) F Inst Psychoanal, is a psychoanalyst and adult psychotherapist in full-time clinical practice in London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society, a Member of the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists, and a founding Board Member of PCCA (Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities). He has held academic and clinical positions in South Africa and the UK, and is a Visiting Lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic. He has written on a number of psychoanalytic topics, and has a long-standing interest in whether psychoanalysis is able to journey beyond its Western bourgeois birthplace across boundaries of race, class and culture. His book, Internal Racism: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Race and Difference, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.

Author's Talk - Gohar Homayounpour introduced by M Fakhry Davids Is psychoanalysis possible in the Islamic Republic of Iran? This is the question that Gohar Homayounpour poses to herself, and to us, at the beginning of this memoir of displacement, nostalgia, love, and pain. Twenty years after leaving her country, Homayounpour, an Iranian, Western-trained psychoanalyst, returns to Tehran to establish a psychoanalytic practice. When an American colleague exclaims, "I do not think that Iranians can free-associate!" Homayounpour responds that in her opinion Iranians do nothing but. Iranian culture, she says, revolves around stories. Why wouldn't Freud's methods work, given Iranians' need to talk? Thus begins a fascinating narrative of interlocking stories that resembles--more than a little--a psychoanalytic session. Homayounpour recounts the pleasure and pain of returning to her motherland, her passion for the work of Milan Kundera, her complex relationship with Kundera's Iranian translator (her father), and her own and other Iranians' anxieties of influence and disobedience. Woven throughout the narrative are glimpses of her sometimes frustrating, always candid, sessions with patients. Ms. N, a famous artist, dreams of abandonment and sits in the analyst's chair rather than on the analysand's couch; a young chador-clad woman expresses shame because she has lost her virginity; an eloquently suicidal young man cannot kill himself. As a psychoanalyst, Homayounpour knows that behind every story told is another story that remains untold. 'Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran' connects the stories, spoken and unspoken, that ordinary Iranians tell about their lives before their hour is up. The foreword was written by Abbas Kiorastami who is an internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmaker. His most recent film is 'Certified Copy', starring Juliette Binoche, and 'Like Someone In Love'. Gohar Homayounpour is a practicing psychoanalyst in Tehran. She trains and supervises the psychoanalysts of the Freudian Group of Tehran and is Professor of Psychology at Shahid Besheti University Tehran. M Fakhry Davids MSc (Clin Psych) F Inst Psychoanal, is a psychoanalyst and adult psychotherapist in full-time clinical practice in London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society, a Member of the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists, and a founding Board Member of PCCA (Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities). He has held academic and clinical positions in South Africa and the UK, and is a Visiting Lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic. He has written on a number of psychoanalytic topics, and has a long-standing interest in whether psychoanalysis is able to journey beyond its Western bourgeois birthplace across boundaries of race, class and culture. His book, Internal Racism: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Race and Difference, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.

Filmed at the Anna Freud Centre on 7 March 2013 How should we read Anna Freud's work today? At one point her classic work, 'The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence', was described as 'perhaps the single most widely read book in our professional literature', but today a great deal of her work is out of print and her prominence in psychoanalytic thinking (at least in the UK) has been eclipsed by the work of Klein, Bowlby, Bion, Winnicott and others. In this lecture Nick Midgley considers some ways in which Anna Freud's work can be read today, and suggest that her work is still of value for the way it uses psychoanalytic thinking - both within and beyond the clinical setting - to help us make a difference to the well-being of children and young people. Nick Midgley is a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Anna Freud Centre, London, and Course Director for the MSc in Developmental Psychology and Clinical Practice at UCL. He is the author of 'Reading Anna Freud', published by Routledge / the New Library of Psychoanalysis in 2013.

Filmed at the Anna Freud Centre on 7 March 2013 How should we read Anna Freud's work today? At one point her classic work, 'The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence', was described as 'perhaps the single most widely read book in our professional literature', but today a great deal of her work is out of print and her prominence in psychoanalytic thinking (at least in the UK) has been eclipsed by the work of Klein, Bowlby, Bion, Winnicott and others. In this lecture Nick Midgley considers some ways in which Anna Freud's work can be read today, and suggest that her work is still of value for the way it uses psychoanalytic thinking - both within and beyond the clinical setting - to help us make a difference to the well-being of children and young people. Nick Midgley is a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Anna Freud Centre, London, and Course Director for the MSc in Developmental Psychology and Clinical Practice at UCL. He is the author of 'Reading Anna Freud', published by Routledge / the New Library of Psychoanalysis in 2013.

Join Freud Museum Curator Sophie Leighton as she talks to Rebecca Fortnum about her exhibition "Self Contained" which is running at the Freud Museum London from 6 March 2013 - 26 May 2013. “.. only where I find a face do I encounter an exteriority and does an outside happen to me.” G. Agamben, Means without End, Notes on Politics (2000) Rebecca Fortnum’s exhibition at the Freud Museum, 'Self Contained', develops several strands of her recent work on the formation of identity, dreams and the power of the gaze. The series 'Dream' depicts children with their eyes closed in paired pencil portraits. In these small, intimate works we can look at the subjects very closely but they never look back. No blinking, no flinching; we are struck by their interiority. They shut out the intrusive viewer. The imagery responds directly to notions of the power relations of the subject’s gaze, introducing on a suggestive level the ideal of the child’s dreams and imaginings that are inaccessible to the viewer. The portraits are completed in pairs in a process developed to question the authenticity of the single image. These works will be displayed in Anna Freud’s room at the Freud Museum, along with works in silverpoint, to draw out connections with Anna Freud’s writings on the child’s relationship with the adult world. The series 'Wide Shut' includes three large paired portraits, each with a veil of colour over the image. These are of older girls, one image of each pair with open eyes. They act out the duality of proper and improper, of communication and communicability, of potentiality and action.

Join Freud Museum Curator Sophie Leighton as she talks to Rebecca Fortnum about her exhibition "Self Contained" which is running at the Freud Museum London from 6 March 2013 - 26 May 2013. “.. only where I find a face do I encounter an exteriority and does an outside happen to me.” G. Agamben, Means without End, Notes on Politics (2000) Rebecca Fortnum’s exhibition at the Freud Museum, 'Self Contained', develops several strands of her recent work on the formation of identity, dreams and the power of the gaze. The series 'Dream' depicts children with their eyes closed in paired pencil portraits. In these small, intimate works we can look at the subjects very closely but they never look back. No blinking, no flinching; we are struck by their interiority. They shut out the intrusive viewer. The imagery responds directly to notions of the power relations of the subject’s gaze, introducing on a suggestive level the ideal of the child’s dreams and imaginings that are inaccessible to the viewer. The portraits are completed in pairs in a process developed to question the authenticity of the single image. These works will be displayed in Anna Freud’s room at the Freud Museum, along with works in silverpoint, to draw out connections with Anna Freud’s writings on the child’s relationship with the adult world. The series 'Wide Shut' includes three large paired portraits, each with a veil of colour over the image. These are of older girls, one image of each pair with open eyes. They act out the duality of proper and improper, of communication and communicability, of potentiality and action.

A sold out event filmed at the Freud Museum London on 20 February 2013 and was a discussion following the film screening. This evening included  the screening of three short films which explore the complex and chaotic world of inner experience from a psychoanalytic perspective which was followed by a discussion between the director, Em Cooper and Andrea Sabbadini. For clips of the films and more information please go to: http://www.emcooper.com/ Em Cooper is a British director and animator specializing in combining oil-painted animation with live-action footage to produce short films based around psychoanalytic themes. She is interested in experimenting with film form and especially use of subjective perspectives. Her recent films have explored subjects such as infancy, obsessive compulsive behaviour and child abuse. Em's films have been screened internationally, including at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Her work has also shown at Turner Contemporary, Margate and discussed at various psychoanalytic conferences including the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival in London and the International Ferenczi Conference in Budapest. Her film Confusion of Tongues was nominated for the 2012 British Animation Awards, Best Student Film. Em is currently working on a feature documentary for the BBC. Andrea Sabbadini, C. Psychol. is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, its former Honorary Secretary and its current Director of Publications. He works in private practice in London, is a Senior Lecturer at UCL, a trustee of the Freud Museum, a member of the IPA Committee on Psychoanalysis and Culture, the director of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, and the chairman of a programme of films and discussions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). The Nest (2010) dir. Em Cooper 12mins It is seemingly just another school morning for Laura and her mother, Alice. But the differences between their two points of view leave us haunted by questions about Laura’s father. When memory and reality become confused, is it possible to understand what really happened?  The Nest is a film about the transmission of trauma through the generations of a family. It is a film snapped in two, both in narrative and in technique, using oil painted animation to bring out the unconscious motives which drive a difficult family dynamic. Confusion of Tongues (2010) dir. Em Cooper 6mins Inspired by the 1932 paper by psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi, Confusion of Tongues takes us into the world of a woman suffering a sleepless night. Haunted by a recurring childhood memory and gripped by her fear of a window left open, she begins to recall a much deeper trauma.  Combining film with oil-painted animation Confusion of Tongues vividly conjures up the tragic confusion of desire which can be a devastating effect of child abuse Laid Down (2007) dir. Em Cooper 15 mins Shot from the point of view of a newborn baby, Laid Downexplores the chaotic world of a developing infant. Set over the first few months of life, dipping in and out of animated dream sequences, we encounter the turbulent relationship between the baby's parents from the raw, emotional and preverbal perspective of the baby.

A sold out event filmed at the Freud Museum London on 20 February 2013 and was a discussion following the film screening. This evening included  the screening of three short films which explore the complex and chaotic world of inner experience from a psychoanalytic perspective which was followed by a discussion between the director, Em Cooper and Andrea Sabbadini. For clips of the films and more information please go to: http://www.emcooper.com/ Em Cooper is a British director and animator specializing in combining oil-painted animation with live-action footage to produce short films based around psychoanalytic themes. She is interested in experimenting with film form and especially use of subjective perspectives. Her recent films have explored subjects such as infancy, obsessive compulsive behaviour and child abuse. Em's films have been screened internationally, including at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Her work has also shown at Turner Contemporary, Margate and discussed at various psychoanalytic conferences including the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival in London and the International Ferenczi Conference in Budapest. Her film Confusion of Tongues was nominated for the 2012 British Animation Awards, Best Student Film. Em is currently working on a feature documentary for the BBC. Andrea Sabbadini, C. Psychol. is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, its former Honorary Secretary and its current Director of Publications. He works in private practice in London, is a Senior Lecturer at UCL, a trustee of the Freud Museum, a member of the IPA Committee on Psychoanalysis and Culture, the director of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, and the chairman of a programme of films and discussions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). The Nest (2010) dir. Em Cooper 12mins It is seemingly just another school morning for Laura and her mother, Alice. But the differences between their two points of view leave us haunted by questions about Laura’s father. When memory and reality become confused, is it possible to understand what really happened?  The Nest is a film about the transmission of trauma through the generations of a family. It is a film snapped in two, both in narrative and in technique, using oil painted animation to bring out the unconscious motives which drive a difficult family dynamic. Confusion of Tongues (2010) dir. Em Cooper 6mins Inspired by the 1932 paper by psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi, Confusion of Tongues takes us into the world of a woman suffering a sleepless night. Haunted by a recurring childhood memory and gripped by her fear of a window left open, she begins to recall a much deeper trauma.  Combining film with oil-painted animation Confusion of Tongues vividly conjures up the tragic confusion of desire which can be a devastating effect of child abuse Laid Down (2007) dir. Em Cooper 15 mins Shot from the point of view of a newborn baby, Laid Downexplores the chaotic world of a developing infant. Set over the first few months of life, dipping in and out of animated dream sequences, we encounter the turbulent relationship between the baby's parents from the raw, emotional and preverbal perspective of the baby.

Part 7: Glenn Adamson - More Than a Feeling: The Museum as Research Institution. This one-day symposium recorded at the Anna Freud Centre on 26 January 2013 was timed to accompany the exhibition DreamWork by artist and researcher Christie Brown. It considered the relationship between ceramic art practice and museum collections within the broader context of contemporary visual culture. The symposium address key areas of inspiration for artists within this context, by focussing on the dialogue between the concept, the collection and the specific nature of the site. Papers will feature a subjective response to Freud’s archaic figurative collection, the uncanny notion of the inner life in inanimate objects and the private house as museum, broadening out to raise curatorial and theoretical questions around the nature of this art practice within post modern culture and ideology. The symposium forms part of the research project Ceramics in the Expanded Field (www.ceramics-in-the-expanded-field.com) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the University of Westminster in London. Researchers Christie Brown, Julian Stair and Clare Twomey and PhD student Laura Breen form the team for this project and the exhibition DreamWork is a key element in the dissemination of the outcomes. The major objective of the project is to investigate the ways in which contemporary ceramic artists have used ceramic practice to initiate new ways of working and new dialogues within the context of museums. Speaker Biographies & Abstracts Glenn Adamson is Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dr. Adamson is co-editor of the triannual Journal of ModernCraft, and the author of Thinking Through Craft (Berg Publishers/V&APublications), an anthology entitled The Craft Reader (Berg, 2010), and theforthcoming book The Invention of Craft (Berg, 2013). His other publications include the co-edited volume GlobalDesign History (Routledge, 2011). He was the co-curator for the exhibitionPostmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970 to 1990, which was on view at theV&A from September 2011 to January 2012. Abstract: Museums are many things: spaces of entertainment, places to meet friends, repositories of objects. But of course they are also structures built on expertise. In this talk, Glenn Adamson will speak from his experience as Head of Research at the V&A. After a brief description of the way that research operates at this museum, he will address strategic priorities and opportunities for object-led research in the 21st century. Among the topics covered will be research in a digital space; issues of intellectual property; the relationship between academic and commercial content; and transformations in the nature of curatorial work and expertise.

Part 7: Glenn Adamson - More Than a Feeling: The Museum as Research Institution. This one-day symposium recorded at the Anna Freud Centre on 26 January 2013 was timed to accompany the exhibition DreamWork by artist and researcher Christie Brown. It considered the relationship between ceramic art practice and museum collections within the broader context of contemporary visual culture. The symposium address key areas of inspiration for artists within this context, by focussing on the dialogue between the concept, the collection and the specific nature of the site. Papers will feature a subjective response to Freud’s archaic figurative collection, the uncanny notion of the inner life in inanimate objects and the private house as museum, broadening out to raise curatorial and theoretical questions around the nature of this art practice within post modern culture and ideology. The symposium forms part of the research project Ceramics in the Expanded Field (www.ceramics-in-the-expanded-field.com) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the University of Westminster in London. Researchers Christie Brown, Julian Stair and Clare Twomey and PhD student Laura Breen form the team for this project and the exhibition DreamWork is a key element in the dissemination of the outcomes. The major objective of the project is to investigate the ways in which contemporary ceramic artists have used ceramic practice to initiate new ways of working and new dialogues within the context of museums. Speaker Biographies & Abstracts Glenn Adamson is Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dr. Adamson is co-editor of the triannual Journal of ModernCraft, and the author of Thinking Through Craft (Berg Publishers/V&APublications), an anthology entitled The Craft Reader (Berg, 2010), and theforthcoming book The Invention of Craft (Berg, 2013). His other publications include the co-edited volume GlobalDesign History (Routledge, 2011). He was the co-curator for the exhibitionPostmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970 to 1990, which was on view at theV&A from September 2011 to January 2012. Abstract: Museums are many things: spaces of entertainment, places to meet friends, repositories of objects. But of course they are also structures built on expertise. In this talk, Glenn Adamson will speak from his experience as Head of Research at the V&A. After a brief description of the way that research operates at this museum, he will address strategic priorities and opportunities for object-led research in the 21st century. Among the topics covered will be research in a digital space; issues of intellectual property; the relationship between academic and commercial content; and transformations in the nature of curatorial work and expertise.

Part 6: Andrew Renton - Deposits and withdrawals at the ‘collective memory bank’: ceramic artists and the National Museum of Wales. This one-day symposium recorded at the Anna Freud Centre on 26 January 2013 was timed to accompany the exhibition DreamWork by artist and researcher Christie Brown. It considered the relationship between ceramic art practice and museum collections within the broader context of contemporary visual culture. The symposium address key areas of inspiration for artists within this context, by focussing on the dialogue between the concept, the collection and the specific nature of the site. Papers will feature a subjective response to Freud’s archaic figurative collection, the uncanny notion of the inner life in inanimate objects and the private house as museum, broadening out to raise curatorial and theoretical questions around the nature of this art practice within post modern culture and ideology. The symposium forms part of the research project Ceramics in the Expanded Field (www.ceramics-in-the-expanded-field.com) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the University of Westminster in London. Researchers Christie Brown, Julian Stair and Clare Twomey and PhD student Laura Breen form the team for this project and the exhibition DreamWork is a key element in the dissemination of the outcomes. The major objective of the project is to investigate the ways in which contemporary ceramic artists have used ceramic practice to initiate new ways of working and new dialogues within the context of museums. Speaker Biographies & Abstracts Andrew Renton is Head of Applied Art at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. Since joining the Museum in 1999, he has emphasised the development of the Museum’s collection of contemporary applied art, seeking to work with artists and to use collections creatively as part of an active and ambitious acquisition strategy. He has curated exhibitions at the National Museum in Cardiff in collaboration with Edmund de Waal (Arcanum: mapping European porcelain, 2005) and Elizabeth Fritsch (Dynamic Structures: Painted Vessels by Elizabeth Fritsch, 2010). His other priorities have included research into and acquisitions for the full range of post-mediaeval applied art collections, in particular Welsh ceramics and historic silver. Prior to moving to Cardiff, he worked for six years at National Museums Liverpool as a curator of applied art, including three years at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Abstract: The first ‘intervention’ by a contemporary ceramic artist at the National Museum of Wales took place a century ago, thanks to Bernard Leach’s close relationship with his uncle who also happened to be the Museum’s founding director. However, it is only in the last two decades that the National Museum has engaged with ceramic artists in a sustained and strategic way. This survey of the Museum’s experience of this engagement will reflect on the interaction between curatorial and artistic practices, on the inspirational role of the Museum and its collections, and on the implications for the profile of contemporary ceramics within the Museum’s multidisciplinary context.

Part 6: Andrew Renton - Deposits and withdrawals at the ‘collective memory bank’: ceramic artists and the National Museum of Wales. This one-day symposium recorded at the Anna Freud Centre on 26 January 2013 was timed to accompany the exhibition DreamWork by artist and researcher Christie Brown. It considered the relationship between ceramic art practice and museum collections within the broader context of contemporary visual culture. The symposium address key areas of inspiration for artists within this context, by focussing on the dialogue between the concept, the collection and the specific nature of the site. Papers will feature a subjective response to Freud’s archaic figurative collection, the uncanny notion of the inner life in inanimate objects and the private house as museum, broadening out to raise curatorial and theoretical questions around the nature of this art practice within post modern culture and ideology. The symposium forms part of the research project Ceramics in the Expanded Field (www.ceramics-in-the-expanded-field.com) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the University of Westminster in London. Researchers Christie Brown, Julian Stair and Clare Twomey and PhD student Laura Breen form the team for this project and the exhibition DreamWork is a key element in the dissemination of the outcomes. The major objective of the project is to investigate the ways in which contemporary ceramic artists have used ceramic practice to initiate new ways of working and new dialogues within the context of museums. Speaker Biographies & Abstracts Andrew Renton is Head of Applied Art at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. Since joining the Museum in 1999, he has emphasised the development of the Museum’s collection of contemporary applied art, seeking to work with artists and to use collections creatively as part of an active and ambitious acquisition strategy. He has curated exhibitions at the National Museum in Cardiff in collaboration with Edmund de Waal (Arcanum: mapping European porcelain, 2005) and Elizabeth Fritsch (Dynamic Structures: Painted Vessels by Elizabeth Fritsch, 2010). His other priorities have included research into and acquisitions for the full range of post-mediaeval applied art collections, in particular Welsh ceramics and historic silver. Prior to moving to Cardiff, he worked for six years at National Museums Liverpool as a curator of applied art, including three years at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Abstract: The first ‘intervention’ by a contemporary ceramic artist at the National Museum of Wales took place a century ago, thanks to Bernard Leach’s close relationship with his uncle who also happened to be the Museum’s founding director. However, it is only in the last two decades that the National Museum has engaged with ceramic artists in a sustained and strategic way. This survey of the Museum’s experience of this engagement will reflect on the interaction between curatorial and artistic practices, on the inspirational role of the Museum and its collections, and on the implications for the profile of contemporary ceramics within the Museum’s multidisciplinary context.

Part 5: Calum Storrie - Turning Around/Going Back. This one-day symposium recorded at the Anna Freud Centre on 26 January 2013 was timed to accompany the exhibition DreamWork by artist and researcher Christie Brown. It considered the relationship between ceramic art practice and museum collections within the broader context of contemporary visual culture. The symposium address key areas of inspiration for artists within this context, by focussing on the dialogue between the concept, the collection and the specific nature of the site. Papers will feature a subjective response to Freud’s archaic figurative collection, the uncanny notion of the inner life in inanimate objects and the private house as museum, broadening out to raise curatorial and theoretical questions around the nature of this art practice within post modern culture and ideology. The symposium forms part of the research project Ceramics in the Expanded Field (www.ceramics-in-the-expanded-field.com) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the University of Westminster in London. Researchers Christie Brown, Julian Stair and Clare Twomey and PhD student Laura Breen form the team for this project and the exhibition DreamWork is a key element in the dissemination of the outcomes. The major objective of the project is to investigate the ways in which contemporary ceramic artists have used ceramic practice to initiate new ways of working and new dialogues within the context of museums. Speaker Biographies & Abstracts Calum Storrie has designed exhibitions for many of London’s major public galleries including the Royal Academy, the National Portrait Gallery, the Wellcome Collection and the National Gallery. He has worked in the museum sector since 1986 and has worked as part of an exhibition design office, been an in-house designer at the British Museum and now runs his own micro-studio (i.e. he works alone in a basement). As well as teaching on interior design and museum studies courses he has written the book The Delirious Museum; A Journey from the Louvre to Las Vegas - published in 2007.  www.calumstorrie.com Abstract: In this talk I would like to examine the allure of immersion as exemplified by the visit to the museum/shrine/home of the famous. To what extent does this ‘immersion’ depend on the illusion of an unmediated environment? What are the dangers of travelling in time and space? How can artists or designers find room to operate within these hermetic spaces? The pilgrim’s reading of the shrine can be disrupted in a number of ways…by intervention in the form of adding content (artwork, labels, vitrines and any number of museological knick-knacks) or by the displacement and removal of treasured objects. My usual rôle as an exhibition designer is to conspire in the removal of objects from one context (the collection) into another (the exhibition). So I would also like to look at the process of migration of objects between spaces and discuss what this does to them.

Part 5: Calum Storrie - Turning Around/Going Back. This one-day symposium recorded at the Anna Freud Centre on 26 January 2013 was timed to accompany the exhibition DreamWork by artist and researcher Christie Brown. It considered the relationship between ceramic art practice and museum collections within the broader context of contemporary visual culture. The symposium address key areas of inspiration for artists within this context, by focussing on the dialogue between the concept, the collection and the specific nature of the site. Papers will feature a subjective response to Freud’s archaic figurative collection, the uncanny notion of the inner life in inanimate objects and the private house as museum, broadening out to raise curatorial and theoretical questions around the nature of this art practice within post modern culture and ideology. The symposium forms part of the research project Ceramics in the Expanded Field (www.ceramics-in-the-expanded-field.com) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the University of Westminster in London. Researchers Christie Brown, Julian Stair and Clare Twomey and PhD student Laura Breen form the team for this project and the exhibition DreamWork is a key element in the dissemination of the outcomes. The major objective of the project is to investigate the ways in which contemporary ceramic artists have used ceramic practice to initiate new ways of working and new dialogues within the context of museums. Speaker Biographies & Abstracts Calum Storrie has designed exhibitions for many of London’s major public galleries including the Royal Academy, the National Portrait Gallery, the Wellcome Collection and the National Gallery. He has worked in the museum sector since 1986 and has worked as part of an exhibition design office, been an in-house designer at the British Museum and now runs his own micro-studio (i.e. he works alone in a basement). As well as teaching on interior design and museum studies courses he has written the book The Delirious Museum; A Journey from the Louvre to Las Vegas - published in 2007.  www.calumstorrie.com Abstract: In this talk I would like to examine the allure of immersion as exemplified by the visit to the museum/shrine/home of the famous. To what extent does this ‘immersion’ depend on the illusion of an unmediated environment? What are the dangers of travelling in time and space? How can artists or designers find room to operate within these hermetic spaces? The pilgrim’s reading of the shrine can be disrupted in a number of ways…by intervention in the form of adding content (artwork, labels, vitrines and any number of museological knick-knacks) or by the displacement and removal of treasured objects. My usual rôle as an exhibition designer is to conspire in the removal of objects from one context (the collection) into another (the exhibition). So I would also like to look at the process of migration of objects between spaces and discuss what this does to them.