Celebrating the launch of Kakania – An Anthology at The Hardy Tree Gallery London on 25 June 2015 as part of SJ Fowler’s Mahu exhibition. Edited by SJ Fowler and published by the Austrian Cultural Institute, the anthology combines experimental text, poetry, visual and conceptual art, creating dialogue between key figures of the Habsburg Empire and 21st Century London.
On Julius Wagner-Jauregg (formerly Julius Wagner Ritter von Jauregg)
I chose to create a poem and collage in reaction to Julius Wagner-Jauregg’s groundbreaking research on malarial treatment for patients with neurosyphilis, later overshadowed by his National Socialist affiliation. His theories challenged Freud’s psychoanalytical school of thought at the time: the possibility that there might be a biological cure for general mental illness, and indeed an alternative approach to psychiatry. However, due to controversial fascist sympathies Wagner-Jauregg made no effort to conceal, his work never received the acknowledgement it otherwise would have done – despite winning a Nobel Prize in 1927. The scientific community closed ranks on him and his seismic advances in the field were subsequently shaded from the public.
