Geoffrey Garrison: The Cut. Freud’s Doppelgaenger

Geoffrey Garrison showed his new film The Cut and spoke about the work’s project development as an example of his art practice in general.

John Huston’s Freud: the Secret Passion (1961) is a little-known biographical film showing the discovery of psychoanalysis as a kind of detective story. The screenplay was based on a long, complex scenario written by Jean-Paul Sartre and subsequently rewritten by a series of Hollywood filmwriters. Sifting through the layers of material left out, erased, forgotten and repressed, another narrative emerges—one that deals with traces of Freud in popular imagination, with fiction, memory, and history, and with the unavoidable complexities of translation and communication. This narrative forms the starting point for a screenplay Garrison wrote during his time at the Jan van Eyck Academie, along with the condensed video work entitled The Cut. Ultimately, the project attempts to question how it is possible to represent history and historical figures at all.