A Workshop with Joan Copjec, co-hosted by the Departments of Philosophy and Art Theory

Joan Copjec is a world-renowned philosopher and Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist. She is professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Her most recent book, Cloud: Between Paris and Tehran explores the work of the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami through the dual lenses of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Islamic philosophy. This insightful book reveals unexpected similarities that run throughout Kiarostami’s films, Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and Corbin’s reading of Islamic philosophy.

Essential to all three is a certain process of creation through subtraction, the idea that making something entails not only adding something but also, and perhaps more importantly, taking something away, introducing a lack. Copjec shows how there is a logic of creation through subtraction that brings these seemingly disparate fields of thought together and that, moreover, reflects each of these fields in a new light. What comes to the fore in this book is a theory of the imaginal world as thought with Kiarostami, Lacan and Corbin.

In the interdisciplinary spirit of this book the departments of Philosophy and Art Theory are proud to present a workshop featuring the author, Joan Copjec, and four commentators from various backgrounds.

Amanda Holmes, Department of Philosophy, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Alexi Kukuljevic, Department of Art Theory, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Christoph Rogers, Research Center “+Religion and Transformation, University of Vienna
Jan Völker, Department of Philosophy, University of Applied Arts Vienna

The workshop will be held in English

*This workshop is related to the event taking place the evening before, on November 9. Joan Copjec will give a lecture entitled Whence Kiarostami, or: the Oneness of God from 5.00 pm to 6.30 pm as part of the ‚Psychoanalyse und Religion‘ lecture series, organized by the Faculty of Philosophy and Education (University of Vienna) and the Sigmund Freud Museum. The event will take place at the Sigmund Freud Museum and is open to the public.