Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger
Selected biographical details & recent work
Current/Future Exhibitions; Writings Forthcoming/In Preparation; Recent major books/catalogues; Recent articles by BLE; Recent secondary texts
For less recent publications, please refer to comprehensive primary and secondary bibliographies.
It was said that Ettinger's painting made visible issue of time. It was said that it was all about memory, in the crystalline form of facets of time directly present to each other. It was further said that since the painting is about time and memory, it is also about oblivion, the evanescence of things: as much about degeneration as about genitivity. Holding degeneration together with genitivity, oblivion with memory, meant trauma. However, the aspect of trauma as a reliving came to the fore. Art, as a practice of trauma, led ultimately (or from the point of view of the ultimate surface of inscription) to an expansive and intensifying, collective, subjective return. In this sense it could be said that Ettinger's painting affirms trauma by the same token as it affirms community.
Brian Massumi, 'Painting: the Voice of the Grain' (2000)
Bracha Ettinger invites us to consider aspects of subjectivity as encounter occurring at shared borderspaces between several partial-subjects, never entirely fused nor totally lost, but sharing and processing, within difference, elements of each unknown other. This is to be stressed: the encounter is between unknown elements. Here we might find ways to think not only subjectivity in this abstracted theoretical form, but aesthetic encounters of viewers and art works, and also ethical and political relations between strange, foreign, irreducible elements of otherness in our encounters with human and even non-human events in the world. Racism, xenophobia, fascism are premised on an extremity of the castration paradigm as Homi Bhabha has argued in his study of the colonial imaginary (1983). Thus this feminist re-theorization of the psychic premise of castrative subjectivity realigns the imaginary fields that underpin our social and political relations.
Griselda Pollock, 'Thinking the Feminine' (2004)
Born in Tel Aviv, Bracha L. Ettinger is an artist, senior clinical psychologist and practising psychoanalyst. She received her PhD in Aesthetics of Visual Arts from the University of Paris VIII, a DEA in Psychoanalysis from the University of Paris VII, and an MA in Clinical Psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Bracha Ettinger was a Visiting Professor (1997–98) and then Research Professor in Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics (January 1999–December 2004) at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. Since 2001 she has also been Visiting Professor in Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics at the AHRC Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (now CentreCATH), University of Leeds, of which she was a founding member. Ettinger was also a lecturer at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem (2003–6) and she is at present the Marcel Duchamp Professor of Psychoanalysis and Art at the Media and Communications Division, European Graduate School (EGS), Saas-Fee
(see: www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bracha+ettinger&search=Search).
Ettinger's paintings have been exhibited extensively in major museums of contemporary art, among them Villa Medici, Rome, (1999), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (In 'Kabinet', 1997), Pompidou Centre (in 'Face à l'Histoire', 1996-97), and in solo exhibitions at The Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels (2000), Museum of Art, Pori (1996), The Israel Museum in Jerusalem (1995), the Museum of Modern Art Oxford (1993), Le Nouveau Musée, Villeurbanne (1992), and Le Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais (1988).
Current/Future Exhibitions
Forthcoming/In Preparation
Propos sans discours. Emmanuel Levinas in conversation with Bracha Ettinger. (In preparation)
L'écoute du désert est mémoire. Edmond Jabès in conversation with Bracha Ettinger. (In preparation)
Recent major books/catalogues
The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Gorge(l). Oppression and relief in Art. Sofie Van Loo (ed.). Antwerp: Royal Museum of Fine Art, 2006.
With texts by Bracha Ettinger and Sofie Van Loo.
Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Eurydice Series. Catherine de Zegher (ed.), The Drawing Papers, no. 24. NY: The Drawing Center, 2001.
With texts by Judith Butler, Brian Massumi, Adrian Rifkin, Catherine de Zegher, Bracha Ettinger, and a conversation between Bracha Ettinger and Craigie Horsfield.
Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Artworking 1985-1999, Ghent-Amsterdam: Ludion & Brussels: Palais des Beaux-Arts, 2000.
With articles by Piet Coessens, Brian Massumi, Griselda Pollock, Rosi Huhn, Christine Buci-Glucksmann and Bracha Ettinger, including Bracha's Notes on Painting.
Doctor and Patient, Marketta Seppala (ed.), Pori Art Museum Publications, Ylojarvi, 1997. (ISBN 951-9355-55-3).
Including articles by Jean-Francois Lyotard, Griselda Pollock, Viktor Mazin & Olessia Tourkina, "Africa", Bracha Ettinger and others.
Inside the Visible, Catherine de Zegher (ed.), MIT Press, Boston, 1996. (ISBN 0-262-54081-9) (Catalogue of a group exhibition).
Including articles by Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Griselda Pollock, Bracha Ettinger and others.
Recent articles by Bracha Ettinger
'Diotima and the Matrixial Transference: Psychoanalytical Encounter-Event as Pregnancy in Beauty'. In: Chris N. van der Merwe and Hein Viljoen (eds), Beyond the Threshold: Explorations of Liminality in Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 105-32.
'Art and Healing Matrixial Transference Between the Aesthetical and the Ethical'. In catalogue: ARS 06 Biennale. Helsinki: Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, 2006, 68-75; 76-81.
For more information please visit: typo.kiasma.fi/index.php?id=495&L=1&FL=0
'Com-passionate Co-response-ability, Initiation in Jointness, and the link x of Matrixial Virtuality'. In Sofie Van Loo (ed.), Gorge(l). Oppression and Relief in Art. Antwerp: Royal Museum of Fine Art, 2006, pp. 11-32.
'Fascinance and the Girl-to-m/Other Matrixial Feminine Difference'. In: Griselda Pollock (ed.), Psychoanalysis and the Image. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
'Gaze-and-touching the Not Enough Mother'. In: Catherine de Zegher (ed.), Eva Hesse Drawing. New York/New Haven: The Drawing Center/Yale University Press, 2006.
'Matrixial Trans-subjectivity'. Theory Culture & Society, (TCS) 2006, Vol. 23 (2-3), pp. 218-22
See: tcs.sagepub.com/content/vol23/issue2-3/
'Art, Memory, Resistance,' a conversation between Bracha L. Ettinger and Akseli Virtanen. In: Framework: The Finnish Art Review, Vol. 4, 2005.
Also in: Ephemera 2005, Vol. 5(x), at: www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/5-X/5-Xettinger-virtanen.pdf [PDF]
'Copoiesis'. In: Ephemera 2005, Vol. 5(x), at: www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/5-X/5-Xettinger.pdf [PDF]
'Matrixial Co-poiesis: Trans-subjective Connecting Strings'. Poiesis, Vol. 7, 2005.
'On the Fascinum — The Freezing and Killing Gaze. And on the Fascinance — The Gaze as Continual Encounter that Evokes a Creative Event' (Hebrew). In: Bezalel, at: bezalel.secured.co.il/zope/home/he/1126095346/1127749237
'The Art-and-Healing Oeuvre' In: Catherine de Zegher and Hendel Teicher (eds.) 3x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing by Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz and Agnes Martin, New Haven: Yale, 2005.
'A Coil Withdraws Inside a Coil. Or: Traces of Trauma of the Other Inside the Autistic Kernel.' In: Poiesis, Vol. 6, 2004, pp. 62-67.
'Weaving a Woman Artist With-in the Matrixial Encounter-Event.' In: Theory, Culture & Society, (TCS) Vol. 21 (1), 2004, pp. 69-94.
See: tcs.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue1/
'Weaving a Trans-subjective Tress or The Matrixial sinthome'. In: Luke Thurston (ed.), Re-inventing the Symptom: Essays on the final Lacan. New York: The Other Press, 2002.
'Plaiting and the primal scene of being-in-Severality'. In: The Almanac of Psychoanalysis, no. 3, GIEP, Tel Aviv, 2002.
'Trans-subjective transferential borderspace', and 'From transference to the aesthetic paradigm: a conversation with Felix Guattari'. In: Brian Massumi (ed.), A Shock to Thought. London & New York: Routeledge, 2002.
'The Weaving of Eros and Death Drive', and 'The Woman-Other Stamped in the Body'. (In Hebrew) In: I. Benyamini & I. Zivoni (eds.) Eved, Hitangout, Adon [Slave, Jouissance, Master]. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2002.
Recent secondary texts on Bracha Ettinger
Lone Bertelsen, 'Matrixial Refrains.' In: Theory, Culture & Society (TCS), Vol. 21, 2004, pp. 121-148.
See: tcs.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue1/
Roy Boyne, 'Uterine Self-Undesrstanding and the Indispensible Other: Editorial reflections on the Work of Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger.' In: TCS, op. cit., 2004, pp. 1-3.
See: tcs.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue1/
Christine Buci-Glucksmann, 'Eurydice and her doubles. Painting after Auschwitz'. In catalogue: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Artworking 1985-1999.
——— 'The Eurydices', in: Parallax Vol. 5(1), 1999, 99-102.
Judith Butler, 'Bracha's Eurydice'. In: TCS, op. cit., 2004, pp. 95-100.
See: tcs.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue1/
Also as a preface in The Matrixial Borderspace.
Craigie Horsfield, 'Conversation September 2004: Craigie Horsfield and Bracha L. Ettinger'. In Catherine de Zegher (ed.), Craigie Horsfield: Relation. Paris: Jeu de Paume, 2006.
——— in conversation with BLE, 'Working Through'. In catalogue: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: The Eurydice Series.
Rosi Huhn, 'Recyclage and Metramorphosis. Borderline case and deviance'. In catalogue: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Artworking 1985-1999.
Jean-François Lyotard, 'Scriptures: Diffracted Traces.' In: TCS, op. cit., 2004, pp. 101-106.
——— 'Anamnesis: Of the Visible,' trans. C. Venn and R. Boyne. In: TCS, op. cit., 2004, pp. 107-120.
See: tcs.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue1/
Brian Massumi, 'Painting: The voice of the grain'. In catalogue: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Artworking 1985-1999.
Also as an afterword in The Matrixial Borderspace.
Griselda Pollock, 'Dying, Seeing, Feeling: Transforming the Ethical Space of Feminist.' In: Diarmuid Costello and Dominic Willsdon (eds), The Life and Death of Images: Ethics and Aesthetics. London: Tate Publishing and Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2008.
——— 'The Graces of catastrophe'. In: Encounters in the Virrtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive. London: Routledge, forthcoming November 2007.
——— 'Sacred Cows.' In Griselda Pollock and Victoria Turvey Sauron (eds), The Sacred and the Feminine: Imagination and Sexual Difference. London: I.B.Tauris, 2007, pp. 9-48.
——— 'Introduction. Femininity: Aporia or Sexual Difference?' In: The Matrixial Borderspace.
——— 'Beyond Oedipus: Feminist Thought, Psychoanalysis, and Mythical Figurations of the Feminine'. In: V. Zajko & M. Leonard (eds.), Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought. Oxford: OUP, 2006, pp. 67-117.
——— 'Thinking the Feminine: Aesthetic Practice as Introduction to Bracha Ettinger and the Concepts of Matrix and Metramorphosis.' In: TCS, op. cit., 2004, pp. 5-64.
See: tcs.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue1/
——— 'Does Art Think?.' In: Dana Arnold and Margaret Iverson (eds.) Art and Thought, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
——— 'The Aesthetics of Difference'. In: A. Holly, Michael (ed.) Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies. The Francine and Sterling Clark Art Institute, 2002.
——— 'Abandoned at the Mouth of Hell', in: G. Pollock & Penny Florence, Looking Back to the Future. Newark, NJ: B&G Press, 2001.
——— 'Nichsapha: Yearning/Languishing. The immaterial tuché of colour in painting after painting after history'. In catalogue: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Artworking 1985-1999.
Adrian Rifkin, '...respicit Orpheus'. In catalogue: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: The Eurydice Series.
Alison Rowley, 'An Introduction to BLE's 'Traumatic Wit(h)ness-Thing and Matrixial Co/in-habituating'', in: Parallax Vol. 5(1), 1999, 83-88.
Sofie Van Loo, 'Trans-scapes of Langs-Schappen.' ThRu2 (Exhibition catalogue). Antwerp: Lokaal 01, 2007. At: www.lokaal01.be/actueel/pdf/thrunr2jr5.pdf [PDF]
——— 'Eros and Erotiek.' ThRu1 (Exhibition catalogue). Antwerp: Lokaal 01, 2007. At: www.lokaal01.nl/actueel/pdf/ [PDF]
Couze Venn, 'Post-Lacanian Affective Economy, Being-in-the-word, and the Critique of the present: Lessons from Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger.' In: TCS, op. cit., 2004, pp. 149-158.
See: tcs.sagepub.com/content/vol21/issue1/
Catherine de Zegher, 'Introduction'. In catalogue: Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: The Eurydice Series.
——— 'The Inside is the Outside: The Relational as the (Feminine) Space of the Radical'. In: Invisible Culture, no. 4, 2002: http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue4-IVC/de_Zegher.html