Event | Psychoanalysis and… Architecture! A Site-Writing Workshop and Talk on Transitional Space in Psychoanalysis and Architecture with Jane Rendell (The Psychoanalysis and… Series)

Event | Psychoanalysis and… Architecture! A Site-Writing Workshop and Talk on Transitional Space in Psychoanalysis and Architecture with Jane Rendell (The Psychoanalysis and… Series)
Date: 15 May 2025
Time: 13:00-15:00 (Workshop), 17:00-19:00 (Lecture)
Location: University of Amsterdam, OMHP, Room C023 (Workshop), Room D009 (Lecture)
Organizers: Ben Moore and Alvaro Lopez
Registration: thepsychoanalysisseries@gmail.com (no registration needed for lecture)
Credits: 1 or 2 ECTS (1 ECT for attending the workshop and the lecture, doing the assigned readings, and sending questions in advance; 1 additional ETC for submitting a refined version of the workshop writing exercise)

Psychoanalysis and… continues its series of events connecting psychoanalysis, culture, and society, with a critical workshop and lecture on the crossroads between identity, architecture, and urban spaces. Professor Jane Rendell will join us for a double event—a workshop and a talk—to discuss spatial practice, interdisciplinarity, and the complexities inherent to the social, material, and subjective spaces we inhabit in the current world.

A few words on Psychoanalysis and Architecture

Jane Rendell is Professor of Critical Spatial Practice and Co-Director of Ethics at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Introducing concepts of ‘critical spatial practice’ and ‘site-writing’ through books, such as The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), Silver (2016), Site-Writing (2010), and Art and Architecture (2006), she led Bartlett’s Ethics Commission, 2015-22 (with David Roberts), and ‘The Ethics of Research Practice’, (for the GCRF-funded KNOW – Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality project) 2018-22, (with Yael Padan). Currently she co-curates www.practisingethics.org, and is responding through site-writing to ethical and ecological issues concerning blue green infrastructures in the Pyrenees.

Workshop – May 15, 13.00 – 15.00 o’clock, OMHP C023

Architecture and Site-Writing: a workshop exploring situated writing practice led by Jane Rendell

Jane Rendell, Les Mots and Les Choses (2003) Material Intelligence, Entwistle Gallery, London. Photograph: the Entwistle Gallery

This workshop is a chance to explore the situated aspects of your research through writing, discovering spatial possibilities in the ideological, psychic, architectural and material aspects of textual constructions, through a series of short open-ended and experimental writing exercises.

In preparation for the workshop please read the following:

Monika Rogowska-Stangret’s overview of Donna Haraway’s ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies, v. 14, n. 3, (Autumn 1988) pp. 575-599

Jane Rendell, ‘Pre-positions,‘ Site-Writing, (London, IB Tauris, 2010) and Marginal Modes, as well as some short site-writings: From To Miss the Desert to An Embellishment: Purdah, May Mo(u)rn; and Silver.

Come along to the workshop with the following:

-A material object related to a site that features in your current research: a photo, drawing, film, audio recording, map, artefact…. (but not a book or essay).

-Your usual writing tools – either computer and/or pencil/paper.

-Some other writing/drawing/making tools – audio recorder/video maker/phone, also drawing materials, textiles, paper, pens, paint etc.

Lecture – May 15, 17.00 – 19.00, OMHP D 009

Transitional Space in Psychoanalysis and Architecture

This talk will explore ‘transitional space’ in psychoanalysis and architecture through my site-writing practice. Much scholarship in this interdisciplinary terrain has focused on using psychoanalysis as a theoretical tool for interpreting architecture, here I am interested in reversing this relationship and thinking instead about the architectural structures already in place in psychoanalytic theory and practice. I will investigate, for example, how the architectural space of the setting features in the theory and practice of Sigmund Freud, D. W. Winnicott, and André Green, in relation to the transitional role of shared spaces in housing design, from Moisei Ginsberg’s Narkomfin Communal House, Moscow (1928-1929), to Alton West Estate, Roehampton, London SW15 (1954-1958) by the London County Council, via Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles, (1947-1953).

Suggested readings for the lecture:

‘Responding to what the World needs Now,’ an interview with Charlotte Erckrath and Sarah Stevens, for ‘Liminalities’, a special issue of OUO Scientific Journal, co-edited by Erckrath and Stevens (July 2024).

Podcast: Interview on The Architecture of Psychoanalysis with Ambrose Gillock for A is Architecture (July 2024) on apple, spotify, and youtube.

About the Psychoanalysis and… series

From literary to film studies, from political sciences and cultural analysis to queer and postcolonial perspectives, psychoanalysis has long provided a wealth of concepts and analytical perspectives to address issues at the core of our changing societies and culture. Not only has the psychoanalytic work put furth by Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, or Wilfred Bion addressed the subject constitutive role of society and culture, but also the work of Teresa de Lauretis, Homi K. Bhabha, and Slavoj Žižek has engaged with psychoanalysis as a means to contest and rethink our fields of knowledge and academic boundaries.

The psychoanalysis and… series aim at continuing with this boundary breaking—a breaking of academic, artistic, activist, social boundaries—by organizing talks, symposia, and roundtable discussions in which psychoanalysis is brought to the arena of our changing contemporary world. Different schools of psychoanalysis, different academic disciplines, and different artistic and activist perspectives will be drawn into a conversation aimed at rethinking the world around us. For this, we invite scholars, researchers, students, but also artist, activists, and anyone interested in the different topics that will be addressed in the series to join us in our different events.