I add this, as a nod to the hours I slaved on it. My prayer is may it be useful. Apparently prayers are always answered, though the answer may not be what you hoped for. I believe prayers are necessary for the void. They remind us that we need the void.
In my experience the events of living is an exchange between context, and the players, with known and unknown variables having impact, and our life’s task being to appreciate the landscape of the events, the moments, and our responses that ultimately validate our existence.
My creative research takes place in the lacunae -gaps and deficiencies of what is seen. The body is where knowledge lies, and it becomes known by the responses felt there. The body is in nature, and the mind is not separate from the body. I am interested in visual narratives that provide a structure for lives lived in spaces parallel to rational logic, guided instead by an intuitive and disorganized approach to give way for another kind of understanding that does not show up in language, or the way speaking and thinking is designated. This might be called witchy/supernatural, and be an intelligence generated by subversive knowledge gathering, such as the ancient Buddhist healing rituals re-introduced by Tsultrim Alione, (Feeding Your Demons. Hay House (2009), that uses visualization in the body. Anthropologist Richard Taussig () gathered knowledge from non western societies that showed up as evidence with its own norms. In this way also what I make has a language of its own.
Movement and stillness and everything in between is a response. Alione, Tsultrim (2009) Feeding Your Demons. Hay House, re-introduces an ancient Buddhist process of visualization for healing. McNiff, Shaun (2004) Art Heals, How Creativity Cures the Soul. Shambala.
I want to reclaim nature/body as a place for the imagination, acknowledging that it provides literal refuge, hazard, and a space for imaginative struggle. In relation to this project, the natural/physical environment is (in some senses at least) the overarching (or meta space which contains all other spaces; the domestic, emotional, psychological, architectural, all of which respond to it in some way. Space(s) is/are something to experience, move in and out of, and can be known as imaginary, real, and a combination of the two.
In regards to environment, wilderness is by definition a place inhospitable to humans, yet we find confirmation of our innate vitality there. Humans are part of wilderness, and its essence lives in us as a place of possibilities and transformation for better or worse. Ideas presented by Simon Schama in Landscape and Memory, 1990, have long accompanied me in this interest. In the movie Grizzly Man, 2005, dir. Werner Herzog the protagonist is literally eaten by what he loves most. Our amygdala, also known as reptilian brain is fully in operation at such life threatening events easing the transitions. Unlike animals we do not ‘shake off’ the experience, Peter Levine noted ( tiger ), but become trapped in our amygdala response resulting in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Somatic therapy has parallels with the mindfulness activities and meditations present in world religions, and in particular Hindu (Yoga) and Bhuddist (meditation) traditions, and I believe artmaking is also part of this process.
I am curious about the experience of being frightened into the moment, or in other words, taking refuge in the present. Pema Chodron explores such ideas in her various writings ‘When Things Fall Apart’ Shambhala Press, 1996, being her best known book.
Both landscape and figure participate in a form of unspecified and ambiguous exchange, somewhat akin to a performance on a stage. Proximity and space, and what is shared (and not shared) are relevant. Life events are an exchange between context, and the players, with known and unknown variables having impact, and our life’s task being to appreciate the landscape of the events, the moments, our responses that validate our existence. The viewer/participant understands what takes place between these elements and themselves through anthropocentric lenses, which are shaped by psychological and cultural needs crucial to giving the individual or group meaning and place, as they process life altering events. The unknowns are ‘played’ with as understanding is built. Social worker Clare Britton 'Children who cannot play' (London 1945) observed that displaced children (from WW2) unable to make sense of the losses they experienced, also stopped playing. D. W. Winnicott. Playing and Reality, Tavistock, 1971 states the object of transference in play facilitates creativity. Art objects as objects of transference are a way of playing with our responses. Artist Liliana Maresca 1951-1994, brings some of these concerns to her work.
Movement and stillness and everything in between is a response. Alione, Tsultrim (2009) Feeding Your Demons. Hay House, re-introduces an ancient Buddhist process of visualization for healing. McNiff, Shaun (2004) Art Heals, How Creativity Cures the Soul. Shambala.
Gender suffuses the human experience and attitudes around it have coloured my experiences in perplexing ways. Social norms have required suspension of belief, with repressive purposes.. This is with the understanding that gender is both physical and cultural. Ideas of multi gender are expressions of choice rather than biology, ( Elizabeth Gross and hinge on eroticism as a source of freedom. Legacy Russel Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, Verso Books, 2020, has been bringing issues to the academic circles since her coining of term glitch feminism, recognizing gaps and deficiencies based on gender.
Overlooked areas (lucanae) become noticeable by the side effects the diminishments and biases produce, resulting in societal problems such as poor mental health, poverty, degraded environment, economic inequity, climate change, etc. There have been efforts to bring equity.
In Canada the process of decolonization has been slowly gathering momentum since the closing of the last residential school in 1997, and indigenous ways of learning are being introduced to the regular school system ( bc ministry of ed.) Counter to capitalist approach, Indigenous relations to land consider the environment and the inhabitants (plants and animals) as having important and distinct roles that have spiritual qualities. In regards to this my reading of the novels The Orenda, Joseph Boyden, Penguin Random House Canada, 2024, and that by Alicia Elliott; A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, Penguin Random House, 2020, journal articles by Adele Perry "Fair Ones of a Purer Caste": White Women and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia, Feminist Studies Vol. 23, No. 3 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 501-524 (24 pages)Published By: Feminist Studies, Inc. and How to Think Like a Woman by philosopher Regan Penaluna, Grove Press, NYC, 2023, have been instructive.
Systems of colonization can be toppled by narratives that resist the given vocabulary. I am creating other descriptors other than ‘de-colonization’ that signify the returning of ownership of a (self-identified) woman's body to herself. This is a rearranging that requires a remaining present (or the ‘holding of a space’), as it is a process of identity and actualization. This means self worth, an activity of self compassion, is essential for all participants. Thinkers and makers who I believe will be allies in this process include: philosopher Elizabeth Grosz(Volatile Bodies, Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Indiana University Press, 1994,) novelist Deborah Levy (Real Estate, Penguin Random House Canada, 2021, among others) for the way in which she reclaims space for the feminine in her writing, Azar Nafisi,( Reading Lolita in Tehran, Random House, 2003,) questions the objectification of the feminine and destruction of erotic freedom by ideology, as well as Peter Levine (Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma, North Atlantic Books, Berkley, 1994) who identifies fear responses in the body and the primal brain and provides the scaffold which supports so much of our current understanding of the impact of traumatic experiences. I am also interested in Gail Weiss (Body Images; Embodiment as Intercorporeality, Routledge, 1999), a mother (biologically and emotionally), whose ideas of intersectionality and selfhood feel congruent with my experience of shifting inner and outer physically experienced perspectives, touching on sexual rights and psychological safety. I am interested in the body as a place to be and how we occupy that space, and am curious about Luce Iragary’s identifies of the feminine as place.
I consider the rise of fascism of the 1930’s, and its influence not only as I experienced it in my parents who lived during that time, but its further effects through capitalism, on minorities, and in particular women. When watching the TV series Berlin Alexander Platz, by R. W. Fassbinder, 1980, based on the book of the same name by Alfred Doeblin, 1929, I can clearly see my parents' gestures and language attached to that time period. It seems that fascism hijacked German culture. Did it also do that to consumerism and thus the cultural developments since that time? Fascism’s inherent sexism in consumerism targets women to believe they have choice, when in fact they are only buying into an oppressive system of censorship on their appearance, behaviour and activities. What the purchasers are seeking refuge from is a belief system of self sabotage. I use imagery from films (by R W Fassbinder, Ingmar Bergmann, and Jane Campion), which dramatize the psychological oppression in systems of unequal control in society, and also the participants' rebellion, and appropriation of symbols of power (Taussig).
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