Time: 2 pm
Admission: $8 - Tickets HERE

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Tonight, join us as Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson introduce and kick off Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult, a curated series of events dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions.

Artificial Intelligence and the Patipolitical Body Dr. Isabel Millar

The body as simultaneously consumed and devouring is the ultimate goal of techno-capitalism. This body is surveilled, codified, isolated, tortured and ultimately kept undead in order to produce and enjoy. After the paradigms of the biopolitical (the production and governance of life) and the necropolitical (the production and governance of the walking dead), Dr. Isabel Millar discerns a patipolitical regime of suffering (from the Latin patior, ‘to suffer’) that aims to produce and govern bodies of extreme jouissance.

How can we imagine a future body that may be produced by potentially limitless augmentation and simulation? Where will this body be able to go and what will it do when it’s there? Or might we just prefer to disappear altogether?  

Freud’s Explorations of the Occult by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair  

In 1953, psychoanalyst and anthropologist George Devereux published a collection of works from various psychoanalysts entitled Psychoanalysis and the Occult, which explored the intersection between the practice of psychoanalysis and occult phenomena, including contributions from  Sigmund Freud on ‘Premonitions and Chance’, ‘Psychoanalysis and Telepathy’, and ‘The Occult  Significance of Dreams’. Additionally, Freud’s paper ‘Notes on the Unconscious’ was published in the journal of the Society for Psychical Research in 1912. At the same time, the topic of the occult was central to the split between Freud and Jung in 1914, as Freud insisted the burgeoning field of psychoanalysis be considered scientific and not spiritualist.

Despite this, Freud maintained an interest in occult phenomena longer than most people realize, conducting thought-transference experiments with his daughter Anna Freud and colleague Sándor Ferenczi, for example. This talk will explore this aspect of his work further.  

Isabel Millar, Ph.D. is a philosopher and cultural critic. Her work focuses on AI, sex, culture, film, and the future. Her book The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence is recently published with the Palgrave Lacan Series. Dr. Millar is a research fellow at The Centre for Critical Thought, the  University of Kent and Affiliate of the Global Centre for Advanced Studies (GCAS).  

Vanessa Sinclair, Psy.D. is a psychoanalyst, artist and author based in Sweden. She is the author of  The Pathways of the Heart (Trapart Books, 2021), Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: the Cut in  Creation (Routledge, 2020), and Switching Mirrors (Trapart Books, 2016). Dr. Sinclair is Senior  Research Fellow at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies (GCAS) and the host of Rendering  Unconscious Podcast. 

The Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult series of events, curated by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, is dedicated to exploring the intersections and integration of psychoanalytic theory, the creative arts, occult practices, and folk magic traditions. By inviting psychoanalysts, philosophers, artists, writers, and occult practitioners from a variety of theoretical orientations and worldviews to discuss their work, personal experiences, and areas of research interest with one another, dialogue is opened up between practitioners in fields of study that traditionally rarely engage with one another though often operate in similar and complementary ways.