IMAGO-X Pathography, Psychoanalysis & Art
IMAGO-X is a new psycho-analiterarate broadsheet bringing images and text through the lens of psychoanalysis. Available quarterly.
The agenda of IMAGO-X, its broadsheet and associated events are to bring together two practices. To evoke the magic of poetry and the artistry which is found at the heart of psychoanalysis; we inhabit the ambiguity that exists at the heart of all of our relationships whilst aiming to create something both potent and playful.
‘American Imago’ was founded by Sigmund Freud and Hanns Sachs in 1939 as the successor to Imago, founded by Freud, Sachs, and Otto Rank in Vienna in 1912. In it Freud writes “Psychoanalysis is the art of interpretation”.
The art of seeing to make interpretations might produce a portrait or assessment, as evidence, displayed on a gallery or consulting room wall; the surfaces may be seen, at first glance, by most viewers as the same thing. The surface easily discussed, a diagnosis made, but what is seen? And what language do we speak of what is seen?
What lies beneath the surface is less definable, more uncertain and ever changing. This informs the surface. Seen differently, more importantly experienced, by whoever is looking, the surfaces can be described only from this position. Both past, present and future are in its making. Based on a more experiential and qualitative process of creative understanding within practice.
IMAGO-X brings the language of psychoanalytic discourse alongside that of the language of art and metaphor. Metaphor lies at the heart of much that we find in both art and the way we interpret language and personal history. It offers a place of contemplation and conversation that considers the art and alchemical magic at the heart of psychoanalytic practice—its discourse, theories and research—the relationship with words and the image, as a form of (re)searching becomes the language.
We read between the lines, converse with what we see and hear. The artefact, and how it speaks becomes the psychoanalytic subject.
IMAGO-X is imagined and curated by Spencer Rowell
Edited and published by Spencer Rowell & Donald Butler