Paul Broks, Stephen Frosh and Emily Wardill | 22.11.2013
Panel 1: The Self between Normality and Pathology
Paul Broks
Paul Broks is a freelance writer with a background in clinical neuropsychology and neuroscience. He gained recognition with his first book, Into the Silent Land, which mixed neurological case stories, fiction and memoir in an extended meditation on selfhood and the brain. A short story from the collection, To Be Two or Not to Be, is currently being adapted for the cinema (To Be Two, starring Casey Affleck; director David Lowery). Paul Broks has also written for the theatre including collaborations with the director Mick Gordon on two plays, On Ego and On Emotion, which premiered at the Soho Theatre, London, and which have gone on to successful productions worldwide. He co-wrote and narrated Martino Unstrung, Ian Knox’s feature documentary about the recovered-amnesic jazz guitar virtuoso, Pat Martino, and recently collaborated with Hugh Hudson and Maryam d’Abo on a film about stroke survivors – Rupture: Living with a broken brain. Paul Broks is also a regular contributor to WNYC’s Radiolab show. His next book will be published by Penguin and includes excursions into Greek mythology, madness and magic as well as brain science.
Stephen Frosh
Stephen Frosh is Pro-Vice-Master and Professor in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of many books and papers on psychosocial studies and on psychoanalysis, including Feelings (Routledge, 2011), Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic (Palgrave, 2010), Hate and the Jewish Science: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis (Palgrave, 2005), For and Against Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2006), After Words (Palgrave, 2002) and The Politics of Psychoanalysis (Palgrave, 1999). His most recent books are A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory (Palgrave, 2012) and Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions. He also co-authored, with Ann Phoenix and Rob Pattman, Young Masculinities (Palgrave, 2002) and with Peter Emerson, Critical Narrative Analysis in Psychology (Palgrave, 2009).
Emily Wardill lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. The artist’s works blur truth and fiction, symbolism and reality, rationality and emotion. Through this they unlock the hierarchical structures of knowledge and rearrange them. Wardill’s work was exhibited, among others, at the Serpentine Gallery London (2012), the Showroom Gallery London (2010), the Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow (2011), the Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe (2011), the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge,MA (2010) and the ICA, London (2008). In 2004 she realized the performance The Feast Against Nature in Grizedale (Lake District) at the New York PS1 Contemporary Art Center. In 2011 she took part in the Venice Biennale. Her work was awarded the Jarman Award in 2010 and the Leverhulme Award in 2011. Recently her films were shown in the context of solo shows in, for instance, the ARTES – Fundação Manuel António da Mota in Porto (2012) and in La Loge, Brussels (2014).