Natalija Subotincic: ‘Constructing Sigmund Freud’s Cabinet: A Physical and Psychical Terrain’
Aftertaste 2011, Saturday April 2nd 3:30 pm
Kellen Auditorium
66 Fifth Avenue

“In one particular plan, describing his long narrow residence room at the Vienna General Hospital in 1883, [Freud] placed furniture along each of the two longer walls and went so far as to name each side of the room: the animal side, containing his working world – desk, bookshelves, etc., and the vegetative side, containing everything for living – bed, washstand, cupboard, etc. The shorter ends of the room were labeled air and light side, where the window appears, and the outer world opposite this, where the door appears.”
Subotincic from “A Holding Environment: Drawing Out and Constructing Sigmund Freud’s Psychical Terrain”

Natalija Subotincic is a professor of architecture at the University of Manitoba in Canada. Her research and creative work explores the realm between the psyche and physical space, questioning how we individually and collectively construct, experience, and dwell within this territory. Her book “Never Speak With Your Mouth Full”, DoA Press (2008) conjoins her personal forays into collecting, an interpretation of Sigmund Freud’s work environment/collection, and the design for an expansion to the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California. She has lectured and exhibited internationally, including the select publications: “A Holding Environment: Drawing Out and Constructing Sigmund Freud’s Psychical Terrain”, Dead on Arrival, Winnipeg (2009) & in (French) Criticat, Issue 03, Paris (2009); “Design Build/Design”, The Design Studio: A Black Hole, YEM Yayin Press Istanbul (2007); “Incarnate Tendencies – An Architecture of Culinary Refuse” in Eating Architecture, MIT Press (2004); “Anaesthetic Induction” (re: Duchamp’s Large Glass/ Étant Donnés), Chora: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, McGill/Queen’s Press (1994); Polyphilo or the Dark Forest Revisited – An Erotic Epiphany of Architecture, MIT Press (1992).