Workshop (Part two of two events)
Date & Time: Friday 14 February 2025, 6.00-9.00pm (GMT)
Location: Archaeology Lecture Theatre G6, UCL – Bentham House (full address below)
In Person event. No ticket needed.
Conquistador Freud
~ Imaginaries, Fables, Fantasies
A video Essay by Richard Werbner
Workshop, consisting of two panels
The first panel will have as panellists, the psychoanalyst, Anastasios Giardis and the anthropologists, Richard Fardon and Mattia Fumanti. Richard Fardon will address the essay’s Prologue, by way of introduction, reviewing the main arguments on Freud’s visual imagination. With reference to the second episode, Anasatasios Giardis will examine and analyse the richness of autobiographical images in Freud’s consulting room. Finally, Mattia Fumanti will re-open and evaluate the 6th and last episode, by illuminating a radical change from Freud’s cosmopolitan placement in Vienna to his refugee displacement in London, after his escape from the Nazi take-over of Austria. One controversial question in this re-evaluation is the importance of Freud’s experience of the uncanny and its impact in the development of a museum from his final haven in London.
The second panel, with Rafael Schacter as moderator, will concentrate on episodes 3, 4, 5. Visual anthropologist Jolynna Sinanan will illuminate Freud’s micro-theatrics and meditation with the archaic figurines on his desk in his study. Frank Triggs will share his vision as a sculptor who wrestles with the essay’s arguments, given primarily in the fifth episode, on Freud’s Renaissance fantasies and imaginaries which he enjoyed on his veranda. Finally we come to the question of architectonics and transitional movement, of how, as indicated in episode 3, Freud created with tomb art and with steles a remarkable interior design for his own open portal and by contrast, for his patients closed doors. It is the question for a penallist yet to be announced.
Conquistador Freud, Imaginaries, Fables, Fantasies, is a new work taking the form of an experimental video essay by Richard Werbner, inspired by Freud’s own self-description to his close friend Wilhelm Fliess. This work departs from the familiar depictions of Freud as the psychoanalyst and scientist, inviting audiences to discover Freud as an artist, collector, and dreamer – a man captivated by the visual and symbolic power of objects and spaces. Freud’s cryptic inscriptions with images in his rooms at home are shown to be dramatic, creative of stage-crafted spaces where he could feel he belonged while somehow being a wayfarer, who could always be imaginatively transported in freizuegig, free passage beyond frontiers.
The essay’s first and last episodes are now available on the RAI’s YouTube website, through these links:
Conquistador Freud – Episode 1 YouTube
Conquistador Freud – Episode 6 – YouTube
In Werbner’s exploration, we encounter Freud not as the target of the “Freud Wars” or a figure in the Freudian industry but as a designer of intimate spaces and a collector with a curatorial sensibility. Freud’s fascination with imagery extended to his own life, where he saw himself not merely in words but in pictographic elements and symbolic spaces within his Viennese home. This included the autobiography inscribed on his walls, a Garden of Eden crafted for his patients, a micro-theatre of figurines on his study desk alongside a shielding table, in a contemplative niche to separate him from visitors, with an archaic imaginary of very eminent healers and scribes, and a masculine retreat on his veranda, each a multi-layered expression of his inner life.
Venue:
Archaeology Lecture Theatre G6
University College London
Gordon Square 31-34
London WC1H 0PY
