"For Dr. A, without whom"
For Dr. A, without whom was a conversation with Max Biddulph, Jos Bitelli, Nicola Guy and Rahul Rao that took a series of twenty-three homoerotic drawings from the Adamson Collection as its starting point. The panel looked at the ways in which the state enacts itself through public institutions to govern the personal.
The drawings were made between 1946 and 1981 when Edward Adamson ran an art workshop at Nethrene Asylum. An inpatient who was not a confident draftsperson asked Adamson to sketch out the fantasies that were haunting him. They depict 'homosexual and slightly BDSM erotica, featuring a large Pan-like creature being persecuted by smaller men.' (Wellcome Library) Patient confidentiality and the destruction of medical records contribute to how little is known about the patient, his relationship with the late Edward Adamson and the conditions that these drawings were made under. The panellists addressed these absences and presences through a conversation and a set of readings that value the subjective and the unknowable.
Bitelli’s large-scale Performance Commission at Nottingham Contemporary culminated in June 2018. See more here.
Abour the Speakers:
Dr Max Biddulph is an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham and has worked for more than forty years in Education. He has a long-standing interest in sexualities, narrative and personal growth.
Jos Bitelli is an artist that works across performance, film and installation and has interests in the politics of healthcare.
Nicola Guy is a PhD candidate at University of Hull where she is undertaking research into the possibilities and limits exhibition-making offers in the creation of alternative collective identities in post-reunification Berlin.
Rahul Rao is a Lecturer at SOAS and has research interests in international relations theory, the international relations of South Asia, comparative political thought, and gender and sexuality. He is currently working on a book on queer postcolonial temporality.