Towards a visual poetic perspective on psychoanalysis: a study inspired by Hermann's 'Notes on China'

• Grant number: 14/50534-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: May 01, 2015
• End date: February 28, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Joao Augusto Frayze-Pereira
• Grantee: Fernanda Sofio Woolcott
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 16/22694-2 - Psychoanalysis, aesthetics and social thought: the role of interpretation, BE.EP.PD 15/19769-8 - Towards a visual-poetic perspective on psychoanalysis: a study inspired by Herrmanns Notes on China, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

By analysis of Fabio Herrmann's unpublished work Notes on China: A Psychoanalytic Voyage to the East (Anotando a China: Viagem Psicanalítica ao Oriente), the idea is to consider the visual poetic of the psychoanalytic writer, photographer and artist. To such an end, the concept of Vorstellung will serve as interpret, but considered as meta-representation. This work tosses the reader, automatically, in the direction towards a fundamental question: is this an unpublished book to be read for fruition, as appears to have wanted the artist? Or is it, additionally, material for a future exposition in the field of the visual arts, which may be interpreted by the curator. By inviting both possibilities, may this work be categorized as contemporary? More than this, does it inaugurate a psychoanalysis intrinsically in the artistic field? The work is constituted by poetical words and images (photographs and graphics), but it is not one or the other; it is the dialogue that occurs between them. Words and images shine light mutually, and it is the light shone, not that which they may illuminate, that invites a discussion about their relationship. This occurs whether considering small samples of images-words, whether the entire production; whether in the multiplicity of possible orders for an exhibition of the work, whether in that one chose by the psychoanalyst and artist. Although its producer did not consider the work in writing, there is an endopoietic (Green, 1997) dimension to my study, as I consider that it culminates in a twist to the psychoanalytic concept of representation (Herrmann, 1992), although I have considered it here as metarepresentation. There is an exopoietic (Green, 1997) dimension to my study, which considers Flusser (1983/2002) in his discussion of the relationship text-image and Frayze-Pereira (1984, 1995 & 2005/2010) in his perspective of considering the implied, contextual and diachronic poetic of each singular artist. Potentially other authors of similar significance to this study may emerge in its development. (AU)