Response to Meg’s Presentation and Liz’s Pictorial Response.

YES.  The art object is dead in that it is inanimate but was it ever alive?  The process of creation is live, and moment of reception and interpretation is alive too, the inanimate object lies dead in between.   (Strange thought)

Creation = dead = experience.

Literature students endlessly ponder Roland Barthes essay The Death of the Author which states that the moment the word has left the pen of the author the minute the book has been printed and bound and lies in the hands of the reader the author dies: Sudden Death.  In the hands of the reader / interpreter the work takes on a new life, that the author has no claim over.

But Liz’s marks look full of life.  The patterns bob and bounce off the page below a donkey – they remind me of Japanese characters that have been predetermined and repeated again and again.

I can see the strokes where the brush went down I can’t help but think there is evidence of life there the impression of it – where there was white space nothing before now there are witnesses.

I can see that galleries are like morgues,

that we are expected to wonder silently through

and in a joyful way, identify those we can claim

as our own in some way.

Even in the hushed dark of the theatre we are waiting

passively for moments of resonance we understand

performance is “live” and it is the experience

that is the product we wish to export.

The experience you can’t get in the shops

yet a product that can’t quite be recreated ever again.

The experience is a negotiation ½ by the spectator and ½ by the creator.  A shared transaction.  Or, to move away from fiscal terms, where two people meet face to face in the middle of a bridge.  Or, go and stand on completely different bridges, and see the other, a lonely figure, further down on another bridge.  And are angry or, at least, regretting that they aren’t on the same bridge as the other person staring out into another pair of eyes.

If performance is (only?) representation then experience is equally repeated and we have as Nietzsche suggests lived our lives ad infinitum, repeating each moment infinitesimally: 

The greatest weight – What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you:  ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself.  The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

            Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?  Or have you experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”  If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you.  The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight.  Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate confirmation and seal?

“I know you are but what am I? I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I?  I know you are but what am I? Etc ”

I WANT THE EXPERIENCE (At this stage in life, long may it continue!)

We are, according to Jung, made up of archetypes.

Archetypes are an original model of a person, ideal example, or prototype, upon which others are copied, patterned or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all.

Archetypes are present in mythology often transcending cultures, times and place present in folklore, and pre-historic artwork, in recurring archetypal images taking priority over language.

Jung suggests the existence of universal forms that channel experiences and emotions, resulting in recognizable and typical patterns of behaviour with certain probable outcomes.
“We come into the world bearing with us an archetypal endowment which enables us to adapt to reality in the same way as our remote ancestors.”

We experience this inheritance of collected consciousness or humanity in ways that unique only to ourselves, but nevertheless they perform the same functions in human beings everywhere.

If we are all archetypes then isn’t resonance in art or performance a moment of us identifying or remembering something similar we see in something foreign. 

It is not just on Face book and the virtual world where we frame ourselves.   According to Jung there are 5 archetypes:

The Self: the regulating centre of the psyche.

The Shadow: our unacceptable traits that are hidden and repressed, traits that are not even recognizable by our ego but possibly present in our deepest nemesis or enemy.

The Persona: the “face” we present to the world; how we codify ourselves in a form we hope will prove acceptable to others.

The Anima: whom you love: the feminine image in a man’s psyche *

The Animus: the masculine image in a woman’s psyche. *

*Although this is slightly different when applied to homosexual desire.