{"id":{"repo_id":"arts-london","oai_identifier":"oai:ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk:20100"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/arts-london/oai:ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk:20100","repository":{"repo_id":"arts-london","name":"University of the Arts London","base_url":"https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/cgi/oai2"},"display":{"title":"Listening for echoes: Afterwardsness as a model for artistic practice","abstract":"Building on Freud's ideas on Nachträglichkeit (Afterwardsness), I ask how and why a work of art may become a site of emotional/psychological investment. The Freudian concept Nachträglichkeit describes how an experience that is either incomprehensible or traumatic is nonetheless retained unconsciously, then revivified at a later time in a different context. For André Green, this concept is fundamental to psychoanalysis, as it shatters the conventional temporal model while at the same time providing a basis for psychic causality, specific to psychoanalysis. This may be understood more broadly as the French conception, Après-coup, wherein the German term suggests a conception of time that involves a double movement: from the past to the present and from the present to the past, simultaneously. I employ this latter biphasic concept as a way to think about how the spectator engages with a work of art, which is outside conventional ideas of the direction of time in terms of past/present/future. I emphasise the simultaneity of a backward and forward movement through a practice-based response to three artworks, mapping the diachronic and synchronic associations (or echoes) through a framework of transdisciplinary methods, which provide the basis for case studies. These case studies represent a model of practice designed to provide a structure for speculation on meaning and dynamics in relation to psychic causality in artistic practice. The work of art gains its efficacy in/through representing unresolved affect categories, in a Nachträglich action. This finds correspondence with recent debates in psychoanalytic theory and neuroscience. My findings show that the act of identification with a work of art can be read as a formation of the unconscious in relation to biographical material.","abstract_html":"Building on Freud's ideas on Nachträglichkeit (Afterwardsness), I ask how and why a work of art may become a site of emotional/psychological investment. The Freudian concept Nachträglichkeit describes how an experience that is either incomprehensible or traumatic is nonetheless retained unconsciously, then revivified at a later time in a different context. For André Green, this concept is fundamental to psychoanalysis, as it shatters the conventional temporal model while at the same time providing a basis for psychic causality, specific to psychoanalysis. This may be understood more broadly as the French conception, Après-coup, wherein the German term suggests a conception of time that involves a double movement: from the past to the present and from the present to the past, simultaneously. I employ this latter biphasic concept as a way to think about how the spectator engages with a work of art, which is outside conventional ideas of the direction of time in terms of past/present/future. I emphasise the simultaneity of a backward and forward movement through a practice-based response to three artworks, mapping the diachronic and synchronic associations (or echoes) through a framework of transdisciplinary methods, which provide the basis for case studies. These case studies represent a model of practice designed to provide a structure for speculation on meaning and dynamics in relation to psychic causality in artistic practice. The work of art gains its efficacy in/through representing unresolved affect categories, in a Nachträglich action. This finds correspondence with recent debates in psychoanalytic theory and neuroscience. My findings show that the act of identification with a work of art can be read as a formation of the unconscious in relation to biographical material.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Edmonds, Gavin"],"institution":null,"degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2022,"date_issued":"2022","date_published":"2022","updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:00:50Z","subjects":["Fine Art"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["cc_by_nc_nd"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["Edmonds, Gavin (2022) Listening for echoes: Afterwardsness as a model for artistic practice. 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I employ this latter biphasic concept as a way to think about how the spectator engages with a work of art, which is outside conventional ideas of the direction of time in terms of past/present/future. I emphasise the simultaneity of a backward and forward movement through a practice-based response to three artworks, mapping the diachronic and synchronic associations (or echoes) through a framework of transdisciplinary methods, which provide the basis for case studies. These case studies represent a model of practice designed to provide a structure for speculation on meaning and dynamics in relation to psychic causality in artistic practice. The work of art gains its efficacy in/through representing unresolved affect categories, in a Nachträglich action. This finds correspondence with recent debates in psychoanalytic theory and neuroscience. 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