Hej Everyone! Well, the end of the year is upon us! As we turn towards 2020, it’s a nice tradition to look back at 2019, and of course at the past decade. I can’t even begin to describe how much has changed since 2010. At that time I was living in New York City, working at a hospital HIV+ clinic, building my own private practice in the evenings and immersed in psychoanalytic training. Since then I’ve moved from corporate hospital work to working for myself, and of course gotten married and moved continents!
We met our Patreon goal, which means we'll be creating video shows monthly where we talk about our work, what we're creating and various artists and writers who we know and love. Join me there, as you won't see me much on other social media. I've been focusing on Patreon as it feels like a much closer knit community, a much needed respite from the echo chamber void of the majority of social media platforms. We also support various creative friends and intellectuals. Come see!
Carl and I had two exhibitions of our artwork, Cut to Fit the Mouth at Galleri Granen, Sundsvall, Sweden, and Mementeros at the Museum of Porn in Art, Zürich, Switzerland. Artwork from both exhibitions is available via Trapart. Cut to Fit the Mouth is also an album, available on cassette and streaming. We performed live at the opening party, which you can see here. Mementeros is a film, from which we used stills to create the basis for our artworks. Carl and I also performed at the closing ceremony of a fabulous art exhibition by our friend Kendell Geers at Rua Red, Dublin, Ireland.
Carl and I also held the second of our conference series exploring the intersections of psychoanalysis, art and the occult, this time Re-writing the Future: 100 Years of Esoteric Modernism and Psychoanalysis. The conference was held over 3 days, spanning two locations (both castles!) Schloss Pienzenau and Schloss Brunnenburg, the residence of Mary and Siegfried de Rachewiltz, the daughter and grandson of Ezra Pound, who were both in attendance. You may hear Siegfried’s lecture from the conference here as an episode of Rendering Unconscious Podcast. I turned several talks from the conference into podcast episodes: psychoanalytic psychologist Elisabeth Punzi on the relationship between HD and Freud; philosopher Kadmus Herschel with a pagan conception of self; Katrina Makkouk on Pound’s poetry, occultism and automatic writing in the Pisan Cantos; Ethan Clarke on Vietnam, film and collective mythology; and yours truly presenting The Crusade against Magical Thinking.
This year was a boost for RU Podcast! The first year of the podcast, I put together roughly one episode per month. Recently I launched episode 56, so that’s 44 episodes recorded this year! Almost one per week. Pretty stellar! People really seem to enjoy the podcast, and I enjoy putting it together and am looking forward to the year to come.
This year saw a lot of traveling and lecturing, as I gave talks about the new books as well as on the upcoming one. We found ourselves in Thailand in February, globe-trotting with the divine Little Annie Bandez; spent the summer solstice in Joujouka with the Master Musicians; enjoyed Yorkshire with Gail and Val Denham, created cut-ups and recorded for an upcoming album; also recorded for an album with Little Annie in Miami; explored Venice with dear friends, including Jesse Hathaway and Blanche Barton; Carl launched films on Kenneth Anger and Anton LaVey; he also rereleased a ton of White Stains material as well as new solo work via Highbrow Lowlife, and iDEAL Recordings released Carl’s third album with Gen Loyalty Does Not End With Death; Highbrow Lowlife and Trapart Editions teamed up to release an album of mine with Akoustik Timbre Frekuency The Chapel is Empty. It’s the first physical release in an upcoming line up of new work! I created a short film to accompany one of the tracks Nothing Can Stop It Now. Enjoy!
Coming up next, I’ll be editing together a book on Inpatient/ Outsider Art and another on psychoanalytic perspectives on the work of Ingmar Bergman, both from Trapart. I’m really looking forward to seeing these projects come to fruition, as well as to a conference I’m co-hosting in Copenhagen July 24-26, 2020, Psychoanalysis to Come: Community and Culture with Emma Lieber and Kasper Opstrup, where we are rethinking the idea of psychoanalytic community with an international network, the place of psychoanalysis within the broader culture and in relation to the arts and film. The call for papers is posted here and the submissions deadline for that event is coming up January 31!
Stay tuned! There's more to come! And as always, a huge thank you to my patrons and subscribers, friends, colleagues, collaborators, and of course to Carl most of all, for a fabulous year! Looking forward to many more! Skål!
