Notes by the leading Author:
The following text The Origin, Objectives And Action Frames Of Art In The Psychosocial Place represents a field of concern, that has been utilized in different lectures and projects by ArtSourceLab since 2003 (See Editorial for credits and resume). The 48 included illustrations are screenshots of the lecture animation. The live-narration does not operate with section titles, but for this web presentation we wrote some to give you anchors within the text. I do recommend a reading from the beginning since key-arguments depend on perspectives developed earlier in the text. While a straignt read thru takes about 30 minutes you might spend another 30 minutes or more on carefully studying the images illustrating the model The Dynamic Of The Mind Inside And Outside The Now. Comments are wellcome at my Email: pt AT artsourcelab.net
Per Traasdahl, Berlin 2005
Sections:
Art Versus The Origin Of Mankind...
The Safe Place
The Scale Of Psychosocial Places
Between Association And Dissociation
The Art-Medium As A Tool
The Dynamic Of The Mind...
Objectives of Art..
Art Versus The Origin Of Mankind And His Culture
We have an excessive longing for knowledge about the origin of mankind and his culture. The Lascaux cave paintings, discovered Harry Potter-like by four boys and a dog on adventure trip in the deep woods of central France in 1940, have become a cliché of that longing. The cave was already closed in the early ‘60ies, due to deterioration caused by thousands of visitors changing the cave climate, but the myth of primitive tribes running around grunting, leads to conceptions of art, where the admiration of the "almost figurative capability at such an early point in history" reveals exactly the way we misunderstand what we see. And when we have no other clue how to perceive art, we can always call it beautiful or interesting.
Impressionist paintings, for example, are now mainstream considered beautiful. In their own time, they were considered insensitively bold and unmannered.
Art influences us way beyond conscious thinking. The utilization and integration of this resource, however, is conditioned by our conscious assignments of what we perceive.
Even earlier or around the same time as the Lascaux paintings - which means plus minus 5 or 10 thousand years - we find useful evidence: The coupling bison’s formed in mud correspond to the most skillful knowledge of figurative art. Consequently the origin of art is neither a question of knowledge nor the accumulation of skills.
We see a sheet of scribbles; could be by a modern artist combining the fancy correctness of handwriting with free emotional gestures? ...What we see is in fact a 400 years old calligraphy by the Chinese master Tung Chi Chang.
In regards of the formal structure of the signs, Tung Chi-Chang is giving an astounding performance. The upper right sign, translated as ‘try’ and formally constructed in 13 actions, is wrapped up and realized in only 2 movements; the lower sign, standing for ‘tiger’ accounts for 8 components in only 1 complex movement.
We cannot say this is just a matter of simplification ! Rather is it the artist’s need and wish to find and govern an action frame, where social meaning - here the formal meaning of the signs: Try and Tiger - correspond to intra-psychic and physical presence in the Now. The Now in its constant flux is surrounded by past and future. We can call this the Then. The Now constantly produces new or altered past and future. The Now itself really doesn’t exist, at least it is constantly already gone. So, the only chance to actually be in the Now is to wrap-up consecutive Now’s and form ‘Time-Pockets’ where the meaning of the Now can manifest safely.
The Safe Place
Considering the complicated task of being in the Now and governing the frame of action implied in any situation, it is really a constant miracle comparable to the beating of the heart, how well most of us manage this task!
A departure from a Now-feeling can, after just a few minutes or even seconds, overrule our sanity and produce doubts about who we are, setting the complete identity at stake. The Now-feeling alone, however, doesn’t offer any stability. We need to shift in and out of the Now. So how is this shifting organized?
The dynamic governing the shifting itself is obliged to produce instability in order for the shifting to proceed spontaneously according to our needs and not just according to our wishes.
The expression "Safe Place" is such a nice metaphor, emphasizing our needs for confidence and boundaries. I think it is too nice to reserve for the field of trauma (where it was developed), and I sincerely hope, that it will find it’s way into mainstream language. It can deepen the general discussion about psychosocial needs. That is, to the degree we understand, how the talk about safety for the mind only makes sense, when implying dynamics enhancing an optimal instability, capable of governing a spontaneous mental shifting in and out of the Now, between the frame of action and memory and imagination.
The Scale Of Psychosocial Places
A brushstroke is at home in the continual flux of the Now. Conscious and unconscious domains in the painter are more or less in charge of the action. For the viewer, the brushstroke is like petrified, as if an instant monument of the Now, monitoring every little sequence that actually took place. The first viewer is usually the painter himself while painting. He is automatically enrolled in a dialogue between his position in the continual flux of the Now and his perception of the already past before him: the painting.
Already at this point, you can regard this system as a psychosocial place. Furthermore, if the painter wants to, he can go into that past and change whatever he wants. That’s the strange and powerful fundamental condition to painting.
The painter is on a mission, led by - or searching for - something not yet realized. He tries to merge this something in a representation. We call such representations images or symbols but they can also be just forms and combinations of such. Brushstrokes do in their own right also qualify as images, symbols and forms. And they again, consist of images, symbols and forms and so on. The smallest scale of an action frame in painting is finally only guided by the body-feeling culminating in the movements of the hand holding the brush, while the scenario is too intricate and small to be guided by the eye.
Between Association And Dissociation
While the painter and his acting Now is long gone - like in this case with Driton, who’s- I hope - is now living well in Kosovo as a teenager - we can wonder how his Nows and his Thens cooperated or collided in the year of 1999.
What erupted, as he painted over some disliked imagery on the 30. of June, transforming the act into the launch of an orgiastic escape, seemingly grinding any formative cooperation heading for imagery and association? Remembering that symbolization begins already in the brush stroke, we here see a compression of the imaginative. It virtually pops out of the pictorial space while actualizing the act of painting seen as action in real space.
Taking a close look at this mass-collision work, we find extremely well-coordinated juxtapositions of grinding brushstrokes: No drips, no hesitation and a pictorial depth opening up similar to the fine overtone sound-nuances in extreme noisy situations, where you don’t know if this is really made or just happening.
In this painting, Driton is riding on a thin line between association and dissociation. In a key-moment at the entrance to his exploit, he threw me a questioning glance out of the corner of his eye, as if to ask whether a wild over-painting would be forbidden behavior. Since this had not yet occurred in the program, an unsettled action frame would most likely have linked his eruption to defeat and dissociation. My intervention was to be ready, anticipating his dilemma without expressing any doubt whether this was the right way to go. The unbroken confidence allowed him - for the first time - to experience his own full-blown physical presence while painting.
The Art-Medium As A Tool
The key issue when employing an art-medium as a tool sustaining and releasing healing powers from clients own resources, is to look at and understand, what is happening to the whole frame of action, and then to be able to recognize the different aspects of the medium at play in a particular process. So you assess the interaction, just as if we were talking about establishing a set of stakeholders in a social setting. The core of this work is the Now/Then relationship.
Although my favorite way to talk about this is the realm of practice, in the middle of the action frame itself, a systematic recollection of the most important relations conditioning the dynamic of the mind Inside and Outside the Now, can help us to understand our need of stability and instability in respect to association and dissociation.
The Dynamic Of The Mind Inside And Outside The Now
Starting with a Now associating in so-to-speak a normal way, the typical feature in the constant flux of the Now is continuity (lower left image). The mind or the body-feeling make jumps, but within a certain tolerance, new Now-feelings will wrap-up wildered or hanging moments and you are generally convinced, that you are in the Now. We can symbolize this ability to wrap up Now’s and build Time-Pockets as a uniform body.
In contrast, fragmentation is the typical Now-feature of dissociation, like in post-traumatic stress disorder but also in a number of other disorders with mental or physical symptoms. The fragmentation will appear as spontaneous or even tactical Nows, but will not be able to sustain the Now. (upper left frame)
How do we relate to the Then in the state of association? ...to past and future, from the perspective of the Now? (lower right frame)
Memory and imagination - whether short or long term - manifest as larger or smaller pockets of information. Try to recall anything anytime outside the Now. Remember a moment this morning, a stretch of just five minutes, and you realize, that your mind wouldn’t recall these five minutes as continual time.
Memory jumps between various constellations of time-pockets.
Then, when we try to recall memory, do we go into the Then and pick it up? Whether we consciously search our memory or let it come into mind, we cannot command the Then.
At the best, we can establish a readiness to obtain certain memory, concentrate like listening while presenting a kind of negative-shape of the positive-shape we’re looking for.
Once found, the memory will appear as if projecting itself on our Now. From our position in the Now, we don’t have memory, we receive it.
The surprise is, that the Then dynamic, the memory and imagination of a well-functioning associating state resembles the Now dynamic of a dissociated state.
The attempt to complete the picture with the Then-structure in a state of dissociation (upper right frame) is unlike more complicated.
Does it have a continual nature or is it fragmented?
Since a dissociated state has no continual Now capable of confirming the one or the other, it’s hard to get an answer! Nevertheless, when seen from the perspective of the dissociated Now, the mere fact, that this Now is fragmented excludes the possibility of the Then being fragmented, because in order to register a fragmentation, you need to have a reliable continuity going for you.
Consequently, as a result of more or less conscious projections from the conceptually or physically anchored fragmentation in the dissociated Now onto the corresponding Then, craving a continuum, the Then will manifest as a forced continuum, which in return is perceived by the Now as an unchanging and unchangeable permanence, a domination unable or unwilling to feed the Now with a flexible variety of memory and imagination.
However opposite the feeling, this continuum will resemble the Now of the associating state and we can also describe it as a uniform body.
In order to understand these different forms of fragmentation and continuation, let’s examine the organization inside and outside the Now with respect to individual perspectives, the interfaces and action frames.
Within the scope of this model, the Now is - as we saw in Dritons brushstrokes and the calligraphy by Tung Chi Chang - the domain where individual governance is or isn’t realized. Assigning empathy outside and not inside the Now might surprise, but it will make sense, when we consider how feelings of empathy are typically permeating the Now from outside the Now, whereas the Now itself, the interface of utilization, is where skill and sustainability has to be rationalized and implemented.
We will split the individual perspective of a Now in three positions, of which the two are concerned with the individual himself: The one is the position where you are merged in the Now, like the Now of painting a brushstroke, here we call it the "I", and the position where you think about yourself, the you as if another person. This equals the brushstrokes you have already done and then relate to through perception, or the ones you might plan to do. We call this the "Me" since it is like addressing or encountering yourself. This is a primary field for dialogue, and beyond this, we have the social domain, the "World".
In the associating state, any Now will provide you with an ongoing shift in and out of the three positions. While you are more or less safely centered in the "I"-position, you can allow ideas about yourself as well as ideas about the world to be flexible and fragmented.
In the "World" perspective the primary fragmentation will be backed up by contributions of "Me"-ideas filtered through "I"-feelings. Likewise, the "Me"-perspectives will be juxtaposed by World-aspects filtered through the "I". Those back-up’s in the "Me"- and "World"-positions will convert the initially fragmented dynamics to flexibility and dialogue.
In the perspective of the World, we call this quality social competence and in the perspective of the Me, we call it self-reflection.
In the past and future, the domain of the Then, we will find corresponding perspectives of the "I", the "Me" and the "world".
Anywhere outside the Now - as we realized when trying to recall five minutes from this morning - you are bound to loose hold of a continual "I"-feeling. When traveling outside the Now, the mind will make jumps, shift perspectives and thus leave the "I" of the Then in fragmentation.
The "World"- and the "Me"-feelings, however, will have the chance to form as conceptions. Those conceptions will grow and change for good and worse, but they will have a continual quality, a dynamic similar to the "I" in the Now of association.
The "world" considered outside the Now, wrapped up in a body of permanence equals Social Conception, the realm of politics, justice and fairness. The "Me" considered outside the Now equals Self Conception, the realm of dignity, pride, goals, career and sense of biography.
The blockage you feel and perceive, consciously or unconsciously, in a dissociated state of being, is dominated by a stalking permanence invading the strained fragmented Now from the past and the future. Nevertheless, an information exchange will occur in the interfaces between "World", "I" and "Me", outside as well as inside the Now, regardless of your condition. And as we know from clients or from ourselves, a fragmented "I" will cause the individual to seek a context offering sustainable safe confidence.
In a dissociated state, however, unable in your "I"-fragmentation to filter and appropriate perspectives of the "Me" and the "World" according to inherent needs, the focus will reverse, and you will feed whatever is at hand in the "I" into the "Me" and the "World". Your will impersonalise your Now, sell it out so-to-speak, in the desperate conscious or unconscious attempt to gain some continuity somewhere. Consequently your social competence and your self-reflection will freeze, counterproductive to the needs of the "I".
In the not-Now - the Then of dissociation, the exchange in the interfaces will be dominated by the stigmatized "I". You will have no resources to form or sustain a self-conception and not enough faith and Will to gain social awareness. You will either leave those areas ambiguously fragmented or let them become subject to forced ideologies, role models or other topics imitating confidence.
This systematic model makes it clear, how complicated it is to change a negative trend of dissociation. However, as all the six perspectives inside and outside the Now of a dissociated state are complementary, amplifying each other- like the highs and depressions of weather-systems -, a positive trend initiated anywhere can have decisive effect on the whole system.
The growth of continuity in the "I" of the dissociated Now (middle position of the upper left frame) is the position, where healing must finally arrive and show, but - as we know - a very delicate matter, which often will actualize the suffering when addressed directly. So the intervention of help must primarilly focus in any of the five other positions.
While doing so, the point is not to consider individual and mental healing as primary to a social integration but to understand the way healthy dynamics are instable - like seen here in the associating state, where the "I" outside the Now as well as the "Me" and the "World" inside the Now are naturally fragmented. Actions of political or otherwise social or economical kind are consequently equally valid as vehicles to progress health as individual therapeutic work.
Objectives And Action Frames Of Art
As we have seen, we need a very strange mixture of order and disorder, stability and instability, fragmentation and continuity, in order to function well. When we try to realize, how not only individuals but also social groups fall into the blocking trap of dissociation, and when we try to create concepts enabling them to reach a self-governance, art can help us getting more courageous and allowing paradoxes in our thinking and perception.
So we are in the museum, up front a figure is on its knees. While you walk all the way up to check out, who or what it is, tell me what your thoughts are! Step by step, are you just curious or does empathy emerge?
The moment of recognition: Do you have second thoughts on the feelings you just had?
500 years ago, in the midst of religious inquisition, Hieronymus Bosch created his few known paintings. Bosch is generally considered a protagonist of the surreal and grotesque. A close look into his incredibly free-spirited satire will reveal something else: A super-reality in the sense of a psychosocial “Gesamtkunstwerk” staged as religious allegory.
His ‘Christ Crowned With Thorns’ discloses the intrigues and double-mindedness operating in any social context. The needs for power and the games on power, entangling us from most intra-psychic domain’s to the realm of business and politics.
Jeff Wall builds up the complete scenery in a big studio, hires stand-ins, makeup artists and costumes in order to do just one oversize photograph.
The super-real image aims to set-up domains of reflection and interpretation in the forefront of perception. Instead of using reality merely as a source of information, the image of reality is frozen in a seemingly snapshot, which, at a second glance, unveils endless associating ambiguity.
Strategies of make-believe discuss diverse origin of social action. The Iranian artist Shirin Neshat stages herself as an intellectual, mobilized for heroic terrorism with a facial imprint of Arabic poetry. The frozen contradiction challenges our sense of empathy. We - the spectators - are to evaluate, how this combination can or cannot make sense.
Dejan Antonijevic pushes this question, and features the gab between political correctness and social heritage.
Once realizing 20a that the four Serbian names are fake, and that the photos are of Swedish men; can you help feeling different about the profile images upon this information?
A Now evoked by implementing future visions into past conditions are the powerful images of Martin Kippenberger’s Metro-Net project. The surfacing subway entrances merge perfectly with their individual context, thus not propagating any state of the arts. The one set in the gold rush settlement Dawson City, once the biggest American city north of San Francisco, the other on the Greek island of Syros. We are invited to make the worldwide trip between the two ruins of culture, underground, mentally.
We distribute our power with architecture and outfit. We need ridged frames of action in order to focus learning processes and social networks. As an irritating fact we remain human animals with basic needs, balancing in the Now and its continual monitoring of more or less confidence.
Institutions do their best to overrule the temporary. In Björn Säthre’s Lustlux the serene incognito ambience he has set up is undermined by the title ‘Worldwide/ Masturbating with the gods’. This sinister exclamation discloses the seductive setup for what could be, an executive conference room, a television studio, a therapy room or the meeting room of a secret sect.
Or you take a vehicle of reality and impale it in the Now. The joint vehicle of tree and car dramatically expands to include its global stakeholders network: The producers, the insurance companies, the administration of natural preservation, the owners and their lawyers, the public image and the general safety rules.
Association itself is boundlessly enhancing the evil as well as the good. When association is a play, it is in fact playing. Dissociation is the stalking play. Isn’t then Jeff Koon’s monumental toys world scheduled to hang from two cranes above the infamous Hamburg red light district a healing social intervention raining down on this venue of prostitution and crime. The artwork will demonstrate, that joy can be as powerful as any business plan if you give it the right scale.
©2003-2005 ArtSourceLab ¦ Editorial