My art practice currently involves multiple media and inter-disciplinary work. As well as developing ideas through photography, collage and drawing, my broader vision is the exploration and activation of pre-existing objects and spaces through installation and sculpture, together with bodily interpretation and investigation. Our physical relationship with space and objects is challenged in tandem with our relationship with our own bodies’ form, mutability and desire to be other. My recent installation work is culturally embedded and indeed challenges inherited assumptions about, for example, threshold, permeability and permanence but seeks also to transcend human constructs and appeal to a ‘reality’ in which we are entities in a cosmos of flux and interconnectivity.
Thus, embodiment, in my practice is not just a matter of heightening sensory experience but also pursues the notion of embodied aesthetic experience as that which provides access to a genuine insight into the ‘real.’
The ‘aesthetic moment’ is described by Christopher Bollas as the ‘unthought known…[that] uncanny quality….of something that has never consciously been recognised but is nonetheless familiar’(quoted in Hutchinson 2008 p.21).
In the terminology of philosopher Graham Harman (2005), aesthetic experience can give us access to allure, that peculiar instance of perception that creates a sense of schism between everyday perceptual relations and the withdrawn reality that lies hidden beneath surface appearances. Since allure, according to Harman, is representative of causation throughout the cosmos, the aesthetic experience of allure is an experience of real, non-quantitive ‘insight.’
In my practice, I propose that aesthetic experience is embodied, insofar as it integrates mind and body; furthermore the creative process involves the body in a form of thinking. Physicist, David Bohm, spoke of a dynamic interconnectedness between all entities whereby the body is understood as a microcosm of the universe. In his own experience, concepts evolved through bodily intuitions, which he later rationalised through formal scientific processes (Peat, 1989). This echoes the experiences of Paul Cezanne, who, Merleau-Ponty says, ‘did not think he had to choose between sensation and thought, as if he were deciding between chaos and order’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p73).
Loss of embodied understanding, arguably, emerges with development from childhood to adulthood or from less-developed to more-developed cultures. Cartesian dualism creates a sense of alienation - we become stranded, disembodied minds, tethered to mechanical bodies - necessary but unreliable means of negotiating our surroundings. Reason becomes the only means by which to make sense of the world. Thus, the unthought known might be seen as a rediscovery of our lost sense of embeddedness in the world.
Jean-Francois Lyotard suggests that we cannot overcome the limits of our perceptual capacities, the awareness of which is brought to us by conscious thought. Indeed, the finiteness of the senses is ‘registered as an irrecoverable, inarticulable feeling which precisely for that reason incites us to think.’ (Vasterling, 2003, p.215). For Bohm and for Cezanne, the process of sensing anew required stripping away learned perceptions and returning to a childlike state. As Cezanne said:
‘I am becoming more lucid before nature, but …. the realization of my sensations is always painful. I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses....’
According to Lyotard, we are not born human, but rather become so in the process of acquiring language, reason and locomotion. This ‘initial inhumanness persists in adulthood, as an unharmonizable remainder, haunting and agitating the soul.’ (Vasterling, 2003, p.214).
Mind and body, inside and outside, rational and intuited are intertwined but not without difficulty. Allure, then, can be characterised as an empathic connection with that of which we are a part, or alternatively, as a sense of separation – a realisation of the incompleteness of that connection.
Contemporary political theorist, Jane Bennett, in her recent publication Vibrant Matter, posits a notion somewhat comparable to allure, which she calls thing power. The term thing power encapsulates Bennett’s refutation of the divisions of animate and inanimate as well as the human notion of sole agency amongst ‘things.’ She proposes a heteronomy in our dealings with the world best summarised in a developing regard for agency of all things, animate and inanimate. Bennett and Harman are most divergent when it comes to Bennett’s interest in interconnectivity and flux as opposed to Harman’s emphasis on the ‘withdrawal’ of all objects from one another.
To conclude, in my practice I am interested in the temporary and contingent nature of our bodily forms and the spaces with which we surround ourselves as well as our inter-connectivity with all things. As Alfonso Lingis says, we are composed largely of multitudes of other creatures upon whom we depend and thus are far from being discrete entities. Taking Jane Bennett’s lead, this multiplicity and heteronomy extends to all things. The essential nature of embodiment in aesthetic experience, then, is that it draws upon our connectivity with that of which we are a part.
References:
Bennett, J (2010) Vibrant Matter – a political ecology of things. Duke
Berleant, A. (2003) Aesthetic Embodiment paper given at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Boston, MA, December 2003 accessed at www.autograff.com
Harman, G. (2005) Guerilla Metaphysics. Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Carus Publishing Company. accessed at Open Court Publishing Company
Hutchinson, J. (2008) The Bridge. The Douglas Hyde Gallery
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945) Cezanne’s Doubt in Toadvine, T., Lawlor, L.,(Ed.)(2007) The Merleau-Ponty Reader. Northwestern University Press accessed at www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Peat, F. D. (1989) David Bohm, Paul Cezanne and Creativity – Talk given at Edinburgh Conference on David Bohm accessed at http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/edinb.htm on 25-9-11
Vasterling, V. (2003) Body and Language: Butler, Merleau-Ponty and Lyotard on the Speaking Embodied Subject. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 1st June 2003. Routledge
Thus, embodiment, in my practice is not just a matter of heightening sensory experience but also pursues the notion of embodied aesthetic experience as that which provides access to a genuine insight into the ‘real.’
The ‘aesthetic moment’ is described by Christopher Bollas as the ‘unthought known…[that] uncanny quality….of something that has never consciously been recognised but is nonetheless familiar’(quoted in Hutchinson 2008 p.21).
In the terminology of philosopher Graham Harman (2005), aesthetic experience can give us access to allure, that peculiar instance of perception that creates a sense of schism between everyday perceptual relations and the withdrawn reality that lies hidden beneath surface appearances. Since allure, according to Harman, is representative of causation throughout the cosmos, the aesthetic experience of allure is an experience of real, non-quantitive ‘insight.’
In my practice, I propose that aesthetic experience is embodied, insofar as it integrates mind and body; furthermore the creative process involves the body in a form of thinking. Physicist, David Bohm, spoke of a dynamic interconnectedness between all entities whereby the body is understood as a microcosm of the universe. In his own experience, concepts evolved through bodily intuitions, which he later rationalised through formal scientific processes (Peat, 1989). This echoes the experiences of Paul Cezanne, who, Merleau-Ponty says, ‘did not think he had to choose between sensation and thought, as if he were deciding between chaos and order’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p73).
Loss of embodied understanding, arguably, emerges with development from childhood to adulthood or from less-developed to more-developed cultures. Cartesian dualism creates a sense of alienation - we become stranded, disembodied minds, tethered to mechanical bodies - necessary but unreliable means of negotiating our surroundings. Reason becomes the only means by which to make sense of the world. Thus, the unthought known might be seen as a rediscovery of our lost sense of embeddedness in the world.
Jean-Francois Lyotard suggests that we cannot overcome the limits of our perceptual capacities, the awareness of which is brought to us by conscious thought. Indeed, the finiteness of the senses is ‘registered as an irrecoverable, inarticulable feeling which precisely for that reason incites us to think.’ (Vasterling, 2003, p.215). For Bohm and for Cezanne, the process of sensing anew required stripping away learned perceptions and returning to a childlike state. As Cezanne said:
‘I am becoming more lucid before nature, but …. the realization of my sensations is always painful. I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses....’
According to Lyotard, we are not born human, but rather become so in the process of acquiring language, reason and locomotion. This ‘initial inhumanness persists in adulthood, as an unharmonizable remainder, haunting and agitating the soul.’ (Vasterling, 2003, p.214).
Mind and body, inside and outside, rational and intuited are intertwined but not without difficulty. Allure, then, can be characterised as an empathic connection with that of which we are a part, or alternatively, as a sense of separation – a realisation of the incompleteness of that connection.
Contemporary political theorist, Jane Bennett, in her recent publication Vibrant Matter, posits a notion somewhat comparable to allure, which she calls thing power. The term thing power encapsulates Bennett’s refutation of the divisions of animate and inanimate as well as the human notion of sole agency amongst ‘things.’ She proposes a heteronomy in our dealings with the world best summarised in a developing regard for agency of all things, animate and inanimate. Bennett and Harman are most divergent when it comes to Bennett’s interest in interconnectivity and flux as opposed to Harman’s emphasis on the ‘withdrawal’ of all objects from one another.
To conclude, in my practice I am interested in the temporary and contingent nature of our bodily forms and the spaces with which we surround ourselves as well as our inter-connectivity with all things. As Alfonso Lingis says, we are composed largely of multitudes of other creatures upon whom we depend and thus are far from being discrete entities. Taking Jane Bennett’s lead, this multiplicity and heteronomy extends to all things. The essential nature of embodiment in aesthetic experience, then, is that it draws upon our connectivity with that of which we are a part.
References:
Bennett, J (2010) Vibrant Matter – a political ecology of things. Duke
Berleant, A. (2003) Aesthetic Embodiment paper given at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Boston, MA, December 2003 accessed at www.autograff.com
Harman, G. (2005) Guerilla Metaphysics. Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Carus Publishing Company. accessed at Open Court Publishing Company
Hutchinson, J. (2008) The Bridge. The Douglas Hyde Gallery
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945) Cezanne’s Doubt in Toadvine, T., Lawlor, L.,(Ed.)(2007) The Merleau-Ponty Reader. Northwestern University Press accessed at www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Peat, F. D. (1989) David Bohm, Paul Cezanne and Creativity – Talk given at Edinburgh Conference on David Bohm accessed at http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/edinb.htm on 25-9-11
Vasterling, V. (2003) Body and Language: Butler, Merleau-Ponty and Lyotard on the Speaking Embodied Subject. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 1st June 2003. Routledge
