We're delighted to welcome Zoe Beloff, a New York City artist who followed up on the fact that Sigmund Freud also visited Coney Island when he came to the United States for his Clark lectures.
She will be speaking in Razzo Hall at the Traina Center at 4:15 today, Monday, October 5th.
According to Beloff, the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society emerged as a consequence of Freud's visits. The Society took the notion of Coney Island as a "Dreamland" seriously and attempted to create a psychoanalytic theme park. In addition, they filmed their dreams.
The wealthy heiress Charmion de Forde (pictured) was an early supporter of the Society, as well as an avid amateur psychoanalyst. She claimed to have been a Clark alumna, although oddly the Clark alumni office seems to have lost all records of her attendance here.
For more on the exhibit, see the New York Times review, which concludes with some intriguing questions:
Curiously, no books on the history of Coney Island mention the Amateur Psychoanalytic Society. An online search yielded only references to Ms. Beloff’s exhibit. Knowing of Ms. Beloff’s past efforts to “conjure” the past, one might wonder how much of what she presents in “Dreamland” is historical fact, and how much is wish fulfillment and projection on her part. Did the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society really exist?
“That’s a good question,” she said with a smile. “What do you think? Let’s think about interpreting this. That’s what Freud was about, taking real things and recontextualizing them to see what that says about us. Maybe that’s the approach I took.”
Mr. Beebe’s reply was equally enigmatic.
“Asking what’s real and what isn’t is the wrong question in Coney Island,” he said. “This museum explores other issues than truth and fiction.”
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ReplyDeleteI found the last section of the presentation to be particularly interesting. Ms. Beloff shared with us several short films created by members of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society. While the films were rather bizarre (as dreams of course often are) I loved the idea of working class people making amateur films dipicting their own dreams. While the films may have not been made because of potential therapeutic effects, I can't help but think they must have (or at least could have) been very beneficial in analyzing their dreams. Having the ability to view one’s dream as a film, separated from the replaying of it that goes on in one’s mind would allow for valuable perspective. This distancing and observing could provide the dreamer with a valuable space to work through the underlying issues of the dream. Perhaps even having similar benefits that hypnosis can have? The powerful impacts that moving images combined with sound/music (ie movies, television etc) are known to have on the human mind, take on personal and significant meaning when the films are portrayals of our subconscious (dreams). Arguably, when one’s dreams are transferred onto this medium I would imagine it to be a potentially powerful tool for healing.
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