Friday 23rd October 6-8pm
Dan Graham Pavillion
Hayward Gallery

Transgressive Sight and the Viewer Interrupted

Consortium student Oliver Harris will introduce his research on the myth of Actaeon as the starting point for an exploration of shame, guilt and voyeurism. Drawing on other myths of transgressive sight – Orpheus and Pentheus in particular – as well as contemporary debates regarding pornography and the law, Harris will also address the recent exhibition and closure of Richard Prince’s installation Spiritual America (1983) at Tate Modern.

Taru Elfving will discuss the act of witnessing and the address of the viewer in contemporary visual culture. Elfving with argue that when the viewer is addressed, or called to witness, the habitual positions and conventional modes of viewing are momentarily unsettled. Yet the viewer becomes simultaneously implicated through the act of witnessing, entangled with(in) the narratives and events witnessed, allowing for a rethinking of active spectatorship and the viewer’s sense of responsibility.

For those wishing to attend the following texts are suggested as contextual material:

Ovid, The Metamorphoses
Pierre Klossowski, Diana at her Bath/ The Women of Rome (Marsilio, 1998)
Jacques Lacan, ‘The Signification of the Phallus’ in Écrits (Routledge, 1977)
Benvenuto Bice, Concerning the Rites of Psychoanalysis, or The Villa of Mysteries (Routledge, 1994)
Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Femaleman©_Meets_OncoMouse™, (Routledge, 1997)
Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye. A Phenomenology of Film Experience (Princeton University Press, 1992)

Admission free but booking is essential as places are limited, to book please email: louisa.adam@gmail.com
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