Presentation of the book (Un)Tamed Bodies: Hysteria from Salpêtrière to the Café-Concert, with author Eva Smrekar, published by Maska, will reveal how the history of hysteria continues to shape normative understandings of gender and sexual politics today. The presentation will open with a short film Bal des Folles by Lara Reichmann and Eva Smrekar.
Through a review and selection of archival material from her personal collection, Eva Smrekar will analyze the connections between photography, the (scientific) document, and performance, as well as the relationship between the theatricality of political power and forms of (infra)political resistance that emerged during this still little-known historical episode of the medicalization of marginalized bodies and sexual identities in Paris between 1870 and 1939.
The event will also feature the premiere screening of the short film Bal des Folles, which, by combining documentary form, animation of archival material, and reenactments by three contemporary cabaret and drag performers (Edith Fiak, Mulov, and Toulouse Latric), explores the links between the masquerade balls of Charcot’s patients at the Salpêtrière and proto-drag parades in the Magic City hall between the two world wars. The film also addresses questions of the politics of the archive and the role of queer and feminist heritage in the construction of collective memory.
About:
The work (Un)Tamed Bodies: Hysteria from the Salpêtrière to the Café-concert by Eva Smrekar examines the operations of the Salpêtrière clinic in Paris in the second half of the 19th century, which, under the leadership of the pioneer of modern neurology Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), developed a complex apparatus of scientific and choreographic construction of female hysteria, one of the central gendered pathologies of the modern era.
Alongside the establishment of a technically sophisticated photographic studio, in which medical staff produced a bodily iconography of the “grand hysterical seizure,” and the modernization of the clinical amphitheatre, where Charcot publicly staged forcibly induced hysterical attacks of patients for selected audiences, the image of the hysterical woman soon entered the broader cultural space of the French capital. Among other things, it significantly influenced the reform of anatomy teaching at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the development of various hystero-epileptic stage genres in spaces of minoritarian performance such as the café-concert and cabaret, and the wider public discourse on gender and sexuality well into the first half of the 20th century.
At the event, the book (Un)Tamed Bodies: Hysteria from the Salpêtrière to the Café-concert will be available at a 20% discount.
The presentation will be moderated by Nastja Uršula Virk.
Organisation: Maska Ljubljana & Kino Šiška.
Free admission.
Film authors: Eva Smrekar and Lara Reichmann
Screenplay: Eva Smrekar
Animation and editing: Lara Reichmann
Sound and music: Tratenwald
Performers: Edith Fiak, Mulov, Toulouse Latric
Camera: Amélie Cabocel
Financial support: EUR ArTeC and Maska Ljubljana
Acknowledgements: Point Éphémère, ADOC Photos, Roger-Viollet, Bibliothèque Nationale de France
