DIGITAL PORCH CONVERSATION ︎︎︎ Melancholia with Lawrence Chua, Nana Adusei-Poku, Gregg Bordowitz, and Arnika Fuhrmann
This conversation between myself, Nana
Adusei-Poku, Gregg Bordowitz, and Arnika Fuhrmann took place on August 28,
2022. Nana, Arnika, and myself were at Denniston Hill and Gregg was in
Provincetown.
I had thought to bring us into conversation because of the ways the concept of melancholia wove itself throughout our thinking and also because of the ways their work had transformed a historically Eurocentric understanding of the idea in psychoanalysis and art history. Although Freud’s linking of melancholia to the denial of a profound loss is perhaps the predominant understanding of the concept in modernity, the discourse on melancholia can be traced back to antiquity.
Nana’s show, “Black Melancholia” at the Hessel Museum of Art/Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College had recently deployed a critical understanding of melancholia to subvert racialized discourses in which longing, despair, sadness, and loss were not only pathologized, but also reserved for white cis (fe-)male subjects. It reframed melancholia as “a form of unfathomably profound collective gloom born of insistent socio-historical violence against Black people in every corner of the world.”[1]
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Installation image from Black Melancholia, June 25 – October 16, 2022. Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Photo: Olympia Shannon, 2022
I had thought to bring us into conversation because of the ways the concept of melancholia wove itself throughout our thinking and also because of the ways their work had transformed a historically Eurocentric understanding of the idea in psychoanalysis and art history. Although Freud’s linking of melancholia to the denial of a profound loss is perhaps the predominant understanding of the concept in modernity, the discourse on melancholia can be traced back to antiquity.
Nana’s show, “Black Melancholia” at the Hessel Museum of Art/Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College had recently deployed a critical understanding of melancholia to subvert racialized discourses in which longing, despair, sadness, and loss were not only pathologized, but also reserved for white cis (fe-)male subjects. It reframed melancholia as “a form of unfathomably profound collective gloom born of insistent socio-historical violence against Black people in every corner of the world.”[1]
Installation image from Black Melancholia, June 25 – October 16, 2022. Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Photo: Olympia Shannon, 2022Gregg’s media work articulates a reappraisal of
the politics of melancholia within the activism of the AIDS crisis. In Fast Trip, Long Drop in
particular, Gregg poignantly identifies a new sense of political agency within
a longer history of human loss, misery, and mourning.[2]
In Ghostly Desires, Arnika Fuhrmann has likewise sketched out a new relationship between trauma and agency from the perspective of Buddhist thought. She uses the term “Buddhist melancholia” to refer to a noneventful conception of trauma (or a kammic conception of trauma). In the films and media she analyzes in this study, the subject isn’t rendered incoherent through trauma but learns to inhabit the traumatic state in ever more canny ways.[3] Agency in this sense is a conglomeration of structural conditions and of individual and collective affect; it’s not just within the domain of the subject.
Our conversation has continued since this recording, a testimony to the generosity of spirit as well as the enduring importance of the ideas we discussed.
Since the recording was made, Nana joined the Departments of Art and African American Studies at Yale University and Gregg was appointed head of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program.
--Lawrence Chua,
Kyoto, September 2, 2023
[ 1] Nana Adusei-Poku, “Black Melancholia,” exhibition brochure (Annandale-on-Hudson: Hessel Museum of Art and Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2022).
[2] Douglas Crimp, Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (Cambrdige: MIT Press, 2002), 268-270.
[3] Arnika Fuhrmann, Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernaculary Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 85.
Nana Adusei-Poku was a resident at Denniston Hill in 2019 and 2022. Click here for Nana’s website.
Arnika Fuhrmann was a resident at Denniston Hill in 2022. Click here for Arnika’s website.
Gregg Bordowitz will be a resident at Denniston Hill...soon! Click here for Gregg’s website.
Click here for Lawrence Chua’s website.
In Ghostly Desires, Arnika Fuhrmann has likewise sketched out a new relationship between trauma and agency from the perspective of Buddhist thought. She uses the term “Buddhist melancholia” to refer to a noneventful conception of trauma (or a kammic conception of trauma). In the films and media she analyzes in this study, the subject isn’t rendered incoherent through trauma but learns to inhabit the traumatic state in ever more canny ways.[3] Agency in this sense is a conglomeration of structural conditions and of individual and collective affect; it’s not just within the domain of the subject.
Our conversation has continued since this recording, a testimony to the generosity of spirit as well as the enduring importance of the ideas we discussed.
Since the recording was made, Nana joined the Departments of Art and African American Studies at Yale University and Gregg was appointed head of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program.
--Lawrence Chua,
Kyoto, September 2, 2023
[ 1] Nana Adusei-Poku, “Black Melancholia,” exhibition brochure (Annandale-on-Hudson: Hessel Museum of Art and Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2022).
[2] Douglas Crimp, Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (Cambrdige: MIT Press, 2002), 268-270.
[3] Arnika Fuhrmann, Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernaculary Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 85.
Nana Adusei-Poku was a resident at Denniston Hill in 2019 and 2022. Click here for Nana’s website.
Arnika Fuhrmann was a resident at Denniston Hill in 2022. Click here for Arnika’s website.
Gregg Bordowitz will be a resident at Denniston Hill...soon! Click here for Gregg’s website.
Click here for Lawrence Chua’s website.