My practice investigates societal structures, with emphasis in psychoanalytic theory. I work mainly with collage, paint, and drawing, though I have explored installation. I hope to expand on this medium and incorporate digital mediums into my existing gestures. In my exploration of the self in society, this term I want to gain confidence and clarity in the signifiers, perspectives, and themes used to explain and express my point of view, and actively engage and connect my ideas to existing and ongoing discourse in contemporary art.
The part in THE BRAIN with David Eagleman that I was most fascinated by was definitely the account of Sarah Shourd’s experience in solitary confinement. Her brain’s coping mechanism was inherently about her connection with others – to find, to symbolize other living beings in illuminated dust is profoundly resilient. I was immediately reminded of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, a chronicle of survival and human strength in Auschwitz. Frankl mentions the significance of a beautiful sunrise during camp life, but moreover, the guiding force in one’s will to live was love:
“…my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was even more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: /The salvation of man is through love and in love/. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.” (Page 58 – 59, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl, 1959.
The beloved as a singular, specific person, or as all of humanity maintains one’s will to live; the beloved, other human beings as a whole, are a tool, a symbolic action. I feel this thread being pulled on whenever an astronaut reminisces about missing Earth, missing other human beings. They express an incredibly deep sentimentality when looking at the planet and the unity they feel with human civilization and other living beings. This connection, as we learned from Eagleman’s work, is crucial to functioning as a human being, individually or grouped.
Re: Definition of Man, it’s interesting to me to consider solitary confinement as an example of the Third Clause, “Separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making.” Given what we know about the brain in solitary confinement, the frequency of its often laissez-faire use in modern prisons is incredibly disturbing, although unsurprising. These constructed isolations are a tool to punish and reprimand, as well as a way to deal with those we are not interested in helping or rehabilitating properly. The problem of crime and punishment in post-hunter-gathering societies is one with essentially no answer, no ideal solution for the myriad of deviances and chaos needed to control. The tools we’ve come up with to manage each other constantly backfire in complex, dialectical ways. As we ditched hunter-gathering and technology increased, we created incomprehensibly complex social, political, and economic structures, and as Stiegler describes in Man & Technics, human behaviour has lagged behind in development. Our relationship with nature and our will to progress, dominate, expand, and develop, are highlighted by Burke:
“This clause is designed to take care of those who would define man as the “tool-using animal”…the development of tools requires a kind of attention not possible without symbolic conceptualization. The connection between tools and language is also observable in what we might call the “second level” aspect of both. I refer to the fact that, whereas one might think of other animals as using certain rudiments of symbolism and rudimentary tools…in both cases the “reflexive” dimension is missing. Animals do not use words about words (as with the definitions of a dictionary) – and though an ape may even learn to put two sticks together as a way of extending his reach in case the sticks are so made that one can be fitted into the other, he would not take a knife and deliberately hollow out the end of one stick to make possible the insertion of the other stick. This is what we mean by the reflexive or second-level aspect of human symbolism.” (13-14, Definition of Man, Burke).
Like the hunter-gatherer, the ape will act in accordance with what nature is offering. The agriculturist, however, will manipulate and (seek to) control nature via tools. I want to further my understanding of the agricultural revolution and the changes in social structure (changes similar to, for example, the increase in clocks and watches into public life and as personal items, as hours of work became more significant with increases in labour and therefore so did time-keeping).
My practice investigates societal structures, with emphasis in psychoanalytic theory. I work mainly with collage, paint, and drawing, though I have explored installation. I hope to expand on this medium and incorporate digital mediums into my existing gestures. In my exploration of the self in society, this term I want to gain confidence and clarity in the signifiers, perspectives, and themes used to explain and express my point of view, and actively engage and connect my ideas to existing and ongoing discourse in contemporary art.
The part in THE BRAIN with David Eagleman that I was most fascinated by was definitely the account of Sarah Shourd’s experience in solitary confinement. Her brain’s coping mechanism was inherently about her connection with others – to find, to symbolize other living beings in illuminated dust is profoundly resilient. I was immediately reminded of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, a chronicle of survival and human strength in Auschwitz. Frankl mentions the significance of a beautiful sunrise during camp life, but moreover, the guiding force in one’s will to live was love:
“…my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was even more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: /The salvation of man is through love and in love/. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.” (Page 58 – 59, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl, 1959.
The beloved as a singular, specific person, or as all of humanity maintains one’s will to live; the beloved, other human beings as a whole, are a tool, a symbolic action. I feel this thread being pulled on whenever an astronaut reminisces about missing Earth, missing other human beings. They express an incredibly deep sentimentality when looking at the planet and the unity they feel with human civilization and other living beings. This connection, as we learned from Eagleman’s work, is crucial to functioning as a human being, individually or grouped.
Re: Definition of Man, it’s interesting to me to consider solitary confinement as an example of the Third Clause, “Separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making.” Given what we know about the brain in solitary confinement, the frequency of its often laissez-faire use in modern prisons is incredibly disturbing, although unsurprising. These constructed isolations are a tool to punish and reprimand, as well as a way to deal with those we are not interested in helping or rehabilitating properly. The problem of crime and punishment in post-hunter-gathering societies is one with essentially no answer, no ideal solution for the myriad of deviances and chaos needed to control. The tools we’ve come up with to manage each other constantly backfire in complex, dialectical ways. As we ditched hunter-gathering and technology increased, we created incomprehensibly complex social, political, and economic structures, and as Stiegler describes in Man & Technics, human behaviour has lagged behind in development. Our relationship with nature and our will to progress, dominate, expand, and develop, are highlighted by Burke:
“This clause is designed to take care of those who would define man as the “tool-using animal”…the development of tools requires a kind of attention not possible without symbolic conceptualization. The connection between tools and language is also observable in what we might call the “second level” aspect of both. I refer to the fact that, whereas one might think of other animals as using certain rudiments of symbolism and rudimentary tools…in both cases the “reflexive” dimension is missing. Animals do not use words about words (as with the definitions of a dictionary) – and though an ape may even learn to put two sticks together as a way of extending his reach in case the sticks are so made that one can be fitted into the other, he would not take a knife and deliberately hollow out the end of one stick to make possible the insertion of the other stick. This is what we mean by the reflexive or second-level aspect of human symbolism.” (13-14, Definition of Man, Burke).
Like the hunter-gatherer, the ape will act in accordance with what nature is offering. The agriculturist, however, will manipulate and (seek to) control nature via tools. I want to further my understanding of the agricultural revolution and the changes in social structure (changes similar to, for example, the increase in clocks and watches into public life and as personal items, as hours of work became more significant with increases in labour and therefore so did time-keeping).
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/i-thought-i-was-clear-i-dont-like-the-brown-triangles.jpg
My visual essay!! ~*~*~ https://vimeo.com/253953034
technopoetry~ https://newhive.com/sarahanderson/whole
…all of my gifs and images were erased, thx newhive, luckily i took screenshots – http://481images.tumblr.com/