The Life of Objects: what objects reveal about our secret selves.

Lead Research Organisation: Royal College of Art
Department Name: Communication Art and Design

Abstract

It was believed in early cultures that inanimate objects had a will of their own and were endowed with characteristics that made them seem mysteriously alive. In the twenty first century objects continue to be endowed with an agency that qualifies them as allies or antagonists in the everyday. Objects in fiction and the animation arts have hidden agendas and motivations, often revealing or concealing complex information. Stories are sometimes told from their point of view. This research project is an interdisciplinary exploration of how writers and artists might use objects as a tool to understanding aspects of human behaviour.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Title An imagined encounter with objects and subjects in Freud's Vienna 
Description Public Performance lecture. Royal College of Art. Contribution to research project investigating Viennese Café and Fin-de-siècle Culture . The aim of the RCA led research project (graphic and interior design) was to cast new light on the history of the Viennese coffeehouse through interdisciplinary scholarship, with particular reference to modernity in central Europe. 
Type Of Art Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) 
Year Produced 2009 
Impact Expanded interdisciplinary narrative and performative strategies to investigate the secret life of objects in Freud's Vienna between 1900-1910. Extracts of this writing have been used by various emerging artists across a number of media. Extracts used in subsequent lecture for the Centre of Freudian Analysis and Research at its annual conference at Regents College 2011. This research further consolidated for substantial BBC adaptation of two of Freud's case histories, broadcast in 2012- exploring dream objects. 
URL http://www.deborahlevy.co.uk
 
Title Hot Milk Madonna - a metamorphosis 
Description Animated film essay (3.33) investigating some of the perplexities of all that is imagined for the maternal body. Referencing the poet Stevie Smith and the visual artist Dorothea Tanning, a disembodied (waving) female hand (wax object) undergoes a metamorphosis. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2009 
Impact Premiered at the RCA for college wide and public Keynote Lecture on The Secret Life of Objects - (international screenings in 2010), impact includes a substantial contribution to debates on the contemporary uncanny and gendered objects across the disciplines of film, visual arts, psychoanalytic theory, creative writing. 
URL http://www.deborahlevy.co.uk/media.html
 
Title LOOSE PROMISE - script for an object based performance on narrative 
Description Performance of script by acclaimed dancer Kate McIntosh. Five writers were given list of objects with which to form an innovative connecting narrative on the themes of memory and time- written to be spoken out loud in a dance performance informed by the presence or absence of key objects. Deborah Levy's text: PLACING A CALL innovates a narrative design that accumulates, disintergrates, returns to coherence. 
Type Of Art Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) 
Year Produced 2007 
Impact Performance toured venues in Europe, premiering in the festival, Telling Time, Sophiensaele Theatre, Berlin(2007), Grand Theatre Netherlands, (2010) Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt (2009) Theatre Garonne, Toulouse, Campo, Ghent (2011). Showcased at The Glasgow Review of Live Art (2009). The impact of the text , PLACING A CALL, was to design narrative in which objects conceptually frame and hold the themes of Time, Loss, Memory, The Uncanny. A public discussion on these interdisciplinary themes was scheduled after performances. This text will be published in a collection of Performance Writing at a date to be confirmed. 
URL http://spinspin.be/proj.php?id=59&cat=14&title=LOOSE%20PROMISE
 
Title Not Completely Gone - a video poem 
Description A one minute video poem for Art and Remembrance public project marking 90th anniversary of World War 1. "Not Completely Gone" involves the reciting of a poem on film, sculpting word images from objects ( a discarded glove, rice grains, coal) to make a trace of things and people lost to us. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2008 
Impact Screened by ArtOffice with a community choir and curated by Isabel Vasseur who pioneered the Public Art Movement in the UK. Impact includes a trans- cultural and intimate exploration of loss screened to a diverse mainstream audience. Indian and Polish performers were cast to read the poem- both amateur and professional. 
URL http://www.deborahlevy.co.uk/media.html
 
Title The Inner Voice/ I AM BIG- theatre script 
Description Script written for ventriloquist and dummy- conceived by Berlin based sculptor, Professor Asta Groeting, who created this project as a tool to explore the Inner Voice of an object. The aim of the writer in this acclaimed conceptual experiment was to animate an object with language; to bring the ancient art of ventriloquism in to the contemporary. The skills evolved for the writing of the script were focused on how to craft sentences that work with the breath of the ventriloquist/dummy. 
Type Of Art Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) 
Year Produced 2006 
Impact Performance (50mins) toured European venues from 2006 - 10. Venues included galleries, museums, theatres, universities, festivals and art foundations. It opened to acclaim at Theatre de Welt, Stuttgard, 2006. The script will be published in a collection of plays at a date to be confirmed. Further writing includes A-Z of The Inner Voice, published by Revolver, Berlin. 2010. Extracts from this writing published in MIRRORCITY 2014, to accompany exhibition of the same title at The Hayward Gallery, London. 
URL http://www.deborahlevy.co.uk
 
Description Findings have been used across the fields of literature, visual arts, broadcasting, psychoanalytic theory, transcultural arts education.
First Year Of Impact 2008
Sector Creative Economy,Education,Healthcare,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural