Originally broadcast live October 26, 2007 from my house in Rotterdam. (note: the stream is webcam quality )
For this archived Living Room Lecture, theorist Anke Bangma looks at how evidence is performed through the image of Augustine. As the veritable "star" of the photographic iconography of hysteria that was assembled under the direction of Jean-Martin Charcot in the late 19th century, Augustine has become an icon of a particular fantasy of femininity. Her photographs have been a source of inspiration as well as intense critical debate, both then and now. But Augustine also represents a particular fantasy of scientific representation, and exposes in an exemplary way how the scientific apparatus produces the phenomena it claims to merely examine.
*view the resource material she discussed here: geuzen.org/female_icons/Augustine/
Anke Bangma (the Netherlands) is a cultural theorist and independent curator based in Rotterdam. She co-edited a book around language, memory and the body entitled, Resonant Bodies, Voices, Memories. She is currently developing an exhibition with the working title ‘Performing Evidence’ for Smart Project Space in Amsterdam (forthcoming 2008). Previous publications include Experience, Memory, Reenactment (ed. with Steve Rushton and Florian Wuest, 2005) and Looking, Encountering, Staging (ed., 2005). She was course director of the Fine Art programme of the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (1999-2007), and is Associate Professor at the Art Academy of Bergen, Norway.
At the table were artist/writer/curator Steve Rushton, psychaitrist, Ljiljana Bamburac and De Geuzen: Riek Sijbring, Femke Snelting and Renee Turner
This Living Room Lecture was programmed as a part of the Female Icons project and was supported by the Fonds voor Beeldende Kunsten, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst and originally streamed with the assistance of V2.