Sharon Kivland is an artist and writer. For several years she followed “Dora”, Freud’s young hysteric, also passsing through the arcades and department stores of Paris (where she encountered Marx, Lacan, and Benjamin, while pursuit of a certain look, a certain object). She continues to return to the sites of her former encounters, while adding new haunts to her repertoire. Her work has mutable forms, and has been exhibited and published widely. Like Sigmund Freud and his brother, Sharon Kivland and her sister go on holiday together each year. In Trieste in 1904 Sigmund Freud and his brother determine to go to Corfu but are told by their host it will be too hot and they should go to Athens instead. Any change of plan seems impractical, but they succeed in booking tickets for Athens. When Freud arrives in Athens and stands on the Acropolis he is surprised to find himself thinking: ‘So all this really does exist, just as we learnt at school!’ His surprise is twofold; first, that something unbelievable exists, and secondly, that its existence should have been in doubt In A Disturbance of Memory, Sharon Kivland and her sister, accompanied also by Kivland’s son, follow the Freud brothers to Trieste and Athens, but are frequently diverted by other traces, including those of James Joyce, Jacques Derrida, Italo Svevo, and Ulysses.
Text by Sharon Kivland.
