The exhibition "Dis-Remembered: A Long History of Madness, Mis-Remembered: Reasonable Doubt" will be available between 6 and 19 December. A curatorial tour will be given by Mieke Bal on 7 December at 6:00 pm.
The installation is thought as a complementary event to the 7th Genealogies of Memory conference on the relationships between image, history and memory. It is build upon two of Mieke Bal's pieces: Reasonable Doubt and A Long History of Madness.
As the artist and cultural theorist herself explains:
"The two installations, consisting of five screens each, DIS-REMEMBERED and MIS-REMEMBERED, are both independent of each other and deeply connected. They address two ways in which collective memory is damaged by neglect, and the collective responsibility for these negative forms of cultural memory. DIS-REMEMBERED enters into a dialogue with Freud on the subject of trauma-induced afflictions. This was derived from the project "A Long History of Madness", made with Michelle Williams Gamaker. Instead of accepting the notion that psychosis cannot be analysed because psychotic patients are incapable of transference, the point of departure is reversed: society, with its violence and silencing of the consequences, is responsible for the affliction; hence, logically, also for helping people to overcome it. MIS-REMEMBERED takes on another collective responsibility: that of learning from past thoughts too easily dismissed as "obsolete". There is hardly a publication in cultural fields – theory, philosophy, and much more – that does not mention the name Descartes, only to proudly call ourselves "post-cartesian". Taking the legacy of Descartes' work seriously would compel us to recognise that his alleged mind-body split obscures a life-long struggle against it, while maintaining reason as a guideline. In other words, it would induce recognition that the world, today, is really in need of some more rationality. The two installations join forces in the suggestion that Descartes "invented" psychoanalysis, in a "post-Freudian", hence contemporary version. The dual installation goes to the heart of the issue of memory and its discontents; collective, cultural, as well as individual, or however we consider it. The forms of memory come together in the form of the immersive installation."
Date: 6-19 December, 9:00 am - 6:00 pm
Venue: Warsaw, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (address: Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie 37/39)
Entrance free
Mieke Bal
Mieke Bal is a cultural theorist, critic, video artist and occasional curator. She works on gender, migratory culture, psychoanalysis, and the critique of capitalism. Her 38 books include a trilogy on political art: Endless Andness (Bloomsbury, 2013) on abstraction, Thinking in Film (Bloomsbury, 2013) on video installation, and Of What One Cannot Speak (University of Chicago Press, 2010) on sculpture. Her work comes together in A Mieke Bal Reader (University of Chicago Press, 2006). In 2016 In Medias Res: Inside Nalini Malani’s Shadow Plays (Hatje Cantz) was published, and in Spanish, Tiempos trastornados (AKAL, 2016) on the politics of visuality. Her video project Madame B, with Michelle Williams Gamaker, is widely exhibited: in 2017 in Museum Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova in Turku, and combined with paintings by Munch in the Munch Museum in Oslo. Her most recent film is Reasonable Doubt, on René Descartes and Queen Christina of Sweden (2016). www.miekebal.org [photo: Rena Li]