Three Uses of the Knife: Performativity of Body and Mind II
A third meeting of the annual Three Uses of the Knife series will take place on October 26, Saturday, 7 p.m. at the Arts Printing House (Siltadarzio str. 6, Vilnius). In it, the participants will continue the discussions and experiences around the subject of performativity of body and mind, this time focusing on the relation between art and hypnosis. The guest speakers: intermedia artist Marcos Lutyens (USA) with curator and contemporary art historian prof. Pascal Rousseau (FR). Moderator of the discussion – Dovilė Tumpytė.
Marcos Lutyens has often worked with various tools and approaches to explore the unconscious and associated schema. During the meeting in Vilnius, he will lead a creative workshop The Un-conscious Un-iversity, in which the induction’s pathway will lead the participants in a hypnotic state through a typical day at this Un-stitution: from the building itself, automatic drawing, automatic thinking, and automatic being to generation of self and collective worlds. The shared impressions of the participants could be of used to incubate and develop a school and its curriculum in the future.
On the other half of the event, the participants will hear a lecture by prof. Pascal Rousseau. The curator contributed his essay Under the Influence Hypnosis as a New Medium for the (d)OCUMENTA 13 series 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts. In his notebook, philosopher Pascal Rousseau uses the medium of hypnosis and an account of its followers to draw a line from the fin de siècle to the beginning of the twenty-first century. At the moment, hypnosis is applied by various contemporary artists and cultural producers as a neo-conceptual method that transcends the polarity of active-passive and reflects on the historical roots of hypnosis. At the end of the 19th, the new psychology favours what could be named the “golden age of medical hypnosis” (Charcot, Bernheim). Far for being restricted to a medical discourse, this hypnotic paradigm is rapidly transferred into Aesthetics and the Arts, specifically into the performative arts (dance) where the cognitive relationship between body and mind is strategic. With a focus on Loie Fuller, Pascal Rousseau will attempt to outline how it’s possible to consider hypnosis as a real paradigm for modernism in arts.
The lectures will be held in English.
Sponsored by: Lithuanian Ministry of Culture, Lewben Art Foundation
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