Braun Johanna

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Austria, United States (residence), Austria (citizenship)
affiliation: Stanford University / University of Vienna
en

Johanna Braun, is an artist, scholar, and Principle Investigator of the postdoctoral research project “The Hysteric as Conceptual Operator” [J 4164-G24], sponsored by the Austrian Science Fund [FWF], and situated at the University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University and the University of Vienna (2018–2020). Her academic and artistic research focuses on (new) hysteria, disability and performance studies. She published the monograph All-American-Gothic Girl: The Justice Seeking Girl in US Narratives (Passagen, 2017); and most recently the volumes Performing Hysteria: Image and Imaginations (Leuven University Press, 2020) and Hysterical Methodologies in the Arts: Rising in Revolt (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2020); in conjunction to numerous contributions to anthologies, art catalogues, and journals. Recently, she organized the self guided online conference #masshysteria. Politics, Affect, and Performance Strategies, hosted by Stanford University’s Department of Theater and Performance Studies (online October, 2020).


For more information please visit:
www.johannabraun.com and www.performing-hysteria.com

research

research expositions

  • Contagiously Wandering Images. Reflecting on Hysteria in and as Artistic Research (last edited: 2020) author(s): Braun Johanna This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
    We seem to be living in hysterical times. Countless reports attest the recent epidemic nature of hysteria, and a simple Google search reveals the sheer bottomless well of media coverage on the infectious virtue of “mass hysteria”, covering almost every aspect of public discussions. The arts—as it is often in such cases—seem conspicuously involved in and engaged with this “hysterical discourse”. Countless exhibitions were curated on the topic, (art) journals established, performances and conferences held, festivals organized, articles and essay written. These artistic efforts were also not bound to a specific area and instead spread globally from Australia, China, Canada, India, South Africa, Europe, or the United States, among many others. Hysteria in these current narratives references conspicuously established representations of the hysteric as (public) performer and “Kunstfigur” that extend well beyond the often-referenced European medical studies of the nineteenth century—both into the past and present—and seems to spread uncontrollably through a myriad of artistic practices and public discussions throughout the centuries.Surprisingly, while the strong academic interest in hysteria throughout the twentieth century and most prominently at the turn of the century is well known and much discussed, the study of how these discourses have continued well into twenty-first-century art practices, and of how those current practices very much continue a century spanning cross-fertilization between hysteria and the arts, is largely pressing on a blind spot.It is the main objective of this exposition to illustrate how the arts seem to bundle the diverse present interests in the contagious nature of hysteria in a multitude of ways, while at the same time bringing to the forefront the century-spanning infectious relationship between hysteria and the (performing) arts, within an artistic and a self-reflexive research practice.
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