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martaban-rajanluthra · 5 years ago

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Durga - The Women of Bengal

The conversation on sensuality drifted to a decade old Wild Stone deodorant ad. A steamy portrayal of a saree clad woman, in traditional finery, prepping for pujo bumps into a young man. Her imagination paints a sensational, passionate and visibly satiating encounter. While the later cuts were censored on our TV screens, the sex appeal lingered on.

With plenty such characterisations and beyond, what’s with women of Bengal that they often come across as free spirited, free-willed and liberated? Even if marginally more than women from other parts of the country. At the outset is a disclaimer: this may be a generalisation. Also, lopsided gender roles exist here as well.

One lens to decode culture is beliefs and mythology. Histories, languages and rituals intertwine around and shape our collective cultures. Massive Durga bhakti is evident, but what more can she tell us to make sense of our understanding?

Stemming from the reverence of Earth, fertility and the womb – the feminine divine/Nature has had a fickle equation across societies. Later sidelined in many of them, she’s largely relegated as the ‘mother’ in others. Shakti in Indian mythology, though has had fascinating stories, circumventing the trinity of Bhrama-Vishnu-Mahesh.

Associated with the three of them in her several forms and roops, the primal Goddess is most closely tied with Shiva. Sati, an avatar of Adi Parashakti (original supreme feminine divine) despite her father Daksha’s wishes married Shiva. The father-king not very fond of his naked hermit son-in-law, skipped Sati and Shiva’s name from an invitation list for a yagna at his place. Obstinate Sati had her way and reached the yanga. Following an altercation with her father upon her husband’s dishonour, Sati immolates herself. A furious Shiva is on a destruction spree as he carries his wife’s corpse and performs the tandav. In order to stop him from the pillage Vishnu shoots his Sudarshan Chakra and Sati’s body scatters in 51 pieces. Wherever they fell, the places became potent with energy. These are the 51 Shakti Peeths – the supreme seats of the Devi.

While most states of India may have two, three or four Shakti Peeths, Bengal has an astounding eleven and Bangladesh, six. The sheer density of these along with those of the neighbouring Assam and Orissa makes for a compelling reason to dig deeper – that could have moulded belief systems of Bengali women and men.

In contrast to the Shakti story of the headstrong Sati setting herself ablaze, is Ramayana’s docile Sita; who was decreed to agnipareeksha to prove her chastity. Popular deity in northern India, she models an ideal wife along with her maryada-purushottam husband.

As the prime Goddess, Shakti is the wife of Shiva in her many forms. After Sati (from the Vedic age), Shakti takes birth as Parvati (in the post Buddhist Puranic literature) who resolves to marry Shiva (the persistence quite a contrast to the day’s popular media love-chase). The idea is to transform the hermit to a householder. Vedic importance of yagna and fire gives way to Puranic puja and water – Parvati makes Shiva to break the flow of Ganga – she rejuvenates Shiva and the world. Her nudging transforms Shiva into Nataraj, their conversations are the source of all wisdom – stories, sensory pleasures and esoteric Tantras. [1]

Hence, the ritualistic form of worship, that cares not much for abstinence traces Shaivism and Shaktism. Several Shiv and Shakti temples have liquor as prashad, meat is prepared as an offering, animal sacrifice isn’t unknown. Tantra texts also hold the view of the world blooming from the union of Shakti and Shiva thereby celebrating Kama (love-making and the God of love). Marking the passion of Shakti and Shiva as the creation source of all life and death, several temples adorn explicit sculptures and art – a belief that all that is, is before the eyes of the divine. Therefore, perhaps the underlying essence of these rituals find stronger relevance to the believers of Shakti and Shiva – acknowledging all aspects of nature valid, contrary to Bhrama’s sense of ‘purity’.

Tracking tales from the temples

In Guwahati – the Kamakhya temple is where Sati’s yoni and garbh (vagina and the womb) fell. Understandably, one of the mightiest Shakti Peeths. The goddess of desire and fertility, Kamakhya literally means the conscious awareness of love (Kama ~ love/lust + aakhya ~ consciousness/wisdom). Lore has it, this was an amorous hideout for Sati and Shiva. Childless couples throng the temple offering the goddess animal sacrifices and red hibiscus flowers. In the month of June, the mighty Bhramaputra turns red for three days which as believers have it is when the Goddess menstruates. The actual reason could be the cinnabar deposits on the hill where the temple stands. The powerful goddess has been worshipped since time immemorial as a gramdevi (village goddess) before being included in the Hindu pantheon as Shaivism expanded in the region that is today Assam.

Shakti’s stronghold is Bengal. While Amba, Rukmani, Meenakshi and other roops of the Goddess are worshipped in other regions, she’s often worshipped there along with more popular Gods – Vishnu or Shiva or their forms. Punjab and Jammu have Shakti following in the form of Sherawali Maa or Vaishno Devi, though her manifestation is starkly benign, a smiling mother – possibly a gramdevi adapted to the imagery of Durga. One of the reasons could be the perpetual invasions, interaction and intermingling of cultures in the region of Punjab that the earlier versions of the goddess may have waned.

Durga is all encompassing, an amalgamation of the powers of Bhrama Vishnu Mahesh – the prime Shakti, risen to end evil. Mahishasura – a buffalo-human devil had a boon that no man or animal could kill him and hence the fearless Durga manifested, Durg translates to a fort or invincible.

Resounding stories of her valour are celebrated throughout pujo, the biggest festival for Bengalis. Durga here is a daughter, visiting her maiden home on Earth and hence celebrations must know no bounds. There is no sanction on alcohol or meat or fish – which otherwise are impure during prayers to other deities.

Iconography of Durga distincts itself from the mother-goddess worshipped elsewhere. Her autonomy with her ferocious lion/tiger vaahan is more dynamic here and she’s not simply seated. Strikingly away from other goddesses, her hair is loose and free-flowing – unrestrained. Remember Draupadi – who’s veritable woe was her being dragged into the court with her hair untied – a great dishonour. The inherent belief that women’s hair should be tied in place – which is traditionally desirable, Durga demonstrates women to be, untied, unrestrained and untamed.

Sringaar, dear to the goddess explains the deep kohled eyes, bigger bindis, and sindoor. Sindoor khela during pujo celebrations is where women smear it on each others’ faces is distinct to the region. Chemically, sindoor is made of turmeric, lime and cinnabar (mercury). Physiologically it is believed to keep one’s blood pressure in check and enhance one’s sexual appetite. While this attempts to explain its fertile importance to married women across India, the festivity of it in Bengal perhaps sets the tone apart to the celebration of female energy of Durga.

The untied hair and the bridal finery keep Durga at the cusp of free-willed Nature (essence of Shakti) and rule-led culture. [2]

While Durga is worshipped in pandaals through the nine day festival, it is really Kali who is worhsipped in temples across Bengal. One of the other more proiminent Shakti Peeths is Kalighat in Kolkata. Kali is one of the das mahavidyaas (ten great wisdoms) of the goddess. Her story is about a demon called Raktabij who cloned himself with every drop of his blood that fell down. Kali was summoned to tackle him and she does, she drinks his blood till the last drop as he drops dead.

Kali is the feminine of Kaal (Shiva) which means time and death. She is Nature, which existed before culture took birth, and will be beyond culture. Her depiction as dark coloured goddess grew along with the idea of the infinite being mysterious. She consumes all life and is fierce. Her imagery conveys the decapitation of ego in the form of Raktabij’s head that she holds. The human hands that adorn her waist is the killing of rage, while her voluptuous breats are sexual and nurturance. The nosering is conspicuously absent – a traditional marker of domesticity. Her hair is matted and unfettered. Her nakedness connotes carnality, purity and nature in its raw form. The tongue sticking out is the distinct iconography of Kali.

Certain Shakta literature narrate how Kali not only steps on her husband Shiva, but nudges him to make love to her. Nature nudging man to acknowledge, care and pay attention to the other, including nature. Shiva and Shankti stories have how sages bump into them making love which is why the sages decreed Shiva to be worshipped only as a ling. One version says how Shakti is embarassed and she covers her face with a lotus flower. The version gave rise to Lajja-Gauri; the other is where Shakti sticks her tongue out daring the sages’ disapproval, or deriding them for they are judging nature. Kali’s tongue that mocks the finiteness of human gaze changed meaning through centuries and during the colonial era become more ‘sanitised’ as per Victorian moralities. [3]

The now popular story (evolving through 18th-19th century) is about shame of having stepped upon her husband Shiva who lies beneath her so as to stop her from her devastating frenzy. The other is really lust for more to destroy – blood from the animal sacrifice is at some temples, smeared on her tongue.

Contrast the Devi with her more motherly roles being worshipped in other regions. Her other raudra roops that depict her sovereignty and true to nature forms such as the blood drinking Chinnamasta upon a copulating Ratti and Kama have largely been sidelined in their native regions such as the Himachal. Between Vishnu, Shiva and his sons, and their popular avatars or forms, the feminine is mostly rolled into the dutiful Sita, gentle Gauri, her avatar as the royal warrior Meenakshi marrying Shiva, or the chanchal Lakshmi who is either by the side of Ganesh or that of Narayana. Saraswati has her set of niche worshippers. Radha emerged only in 13th century Bengal and Orissa and eventually becoming popular in the Hindi speaking northern states. Yet her more emancipated, Nature/Kali-alluding, clandestine, night-time forest fantasies have somehow been veiled just as her head-covered portrayals through the medieval ages.

If our stories and mythologies shape our cultures, the immense popularity of, and devotion to Kali and Durga forms the belief system of Bengali men and women. We do idolise our idols.

[Another lens to look at why perhaps the women of Bengal are relatively more free-willed, is the region’s captivating modern history, the rise of reformers and early Indian feminist thinkers/writers through Bengali renaissance. Does their genesis too lie in Durga? Stay tuned for part 2.]

First published in Oct, 2019 at DY Works

[1], [2], [3]: Devdutt Pattnaik’s texts including 7 Secrets of the Goddess

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needsmoresarcasm · 6 years ago

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Favorite Books of 2018

I read a lot of books in 2018. Here are my favorites (not counting books I re-read), in basically no order. (But actually kind of an order.)

22. Going Rogue, Drew Hayes

Going Rogue is the third book in Drew Hayes’s Spells, Swords, and Stealth series. The series is told in two parts: it follows a group of people playing a Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing game and a group of non-playable characters in the world of said game. The thrust of the story is on the group of NPCs, which unfolds as a typical fantasy adventure. It’s got a straightforward quest narrative, an adventuring party (turned found family), and impossible odds. As the stories progress, the players begin to sense that the game has its own agency and the characters begin to sense that there may be someone controlling their world. But mostly it’s a fun, self-aware take on a typical fantasy adventure that toys with fantasy tropes.

21. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I steeled myself for dense literary fiction when I cracked open Americanah, the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian girl who moves to America and wrestles with race and identity. But that was all for naught because Americanah was one of the easiest reads of the year. The writing is breezy, and the story is funny and brisk. It dissects race and culture in America both by showing (Ifemelu’s struggles to define herself in a new country) and telling (Ifemelu’s hilarious blog posts). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie seems to have perfected the art of delivering dense observations in delightful, consumer-friendly prose. Old white dude authors should probably take note.

20. What If It’s Us, Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera

If I’m going to read a romance, I want it to be light, fluffy, gay, and conflict-free. And that’s exactly what What If It’s Us delivers. The book begins with a meet cute: while mailing a box of his ex-boyfriend’s stuff, Ben bumps into Arthur at the post office. Arthur and Ben are both appropriately awkward and endearing, bumbling and pawing their way through a relationship as only teenagers can. Every character is essentially kind and caring. There are no villains or bullies, no one gets ostracized or beaten, no one dies. The tension mostly stems from the fact that Arthur is only in the city for the summer, which only barely counts as a conflict. And while the universe of the story may be unrealistically polished, their relationship is refreshingly imperfect. Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli are telling a story of young love, not necessarily true love.

19. The Collapsing Empire / The Consuming Fire, John Scalzi

John Scalzi built an astoundingly engrossing world in The Collapsing Empire. The human race has colonized far flung planets with the help of the Flow system, naturally occurring pathways between various planets across the universe that allows otherwise impossible interstellar travel. The Collapsing Empire follows the sharp, sarcastic Cardenia Wu, the newly crowned empress, and sweet, in-over-his-head Marce Claremont, a Flow physicist in far-flung End who has discovered something off with the Flow. It’s got a roiling pace, packed with space battles, political jockeying, and a whole host of delightful characters. It’s one of those audiobooks (narrated by Wil Wheaton) that was so compulsively listenable that I ended up taking long, meandering walks just to hear what happened next.

18. The Shell Collector, Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr’s writing is incredible. His sentences all feel divined from the ether. And the short story is the perfect vehicle for that writing, lasting just long enough to build an atmospheric world. Most of the stories are tinged with a little magical realism, used mostly to underscore the unique, grounded humanity of his characters. The collection dives into the histories of people who are in various degrees removed from society and intertwined with nature. But the ultimate thesis, refreshingly, is not about the corruption of society, but rather the inherent value of people.

17. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

I don’t know that I have anything new or interesting to say about James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. A story about desire, and maybe love, between David and Giovanni, every word of that book is filled with intense, crushing emotion desperately crashing onto the pages. It’s about love and sexuality, told in an intimate-verging-on-claustrophobic manner. It’s powerful and interminably depressing and beautiful and devastating. But it’s not devastating because it’s gay, it’s just both devastating and gay.

16. Goodbye, Vitamin, Rachel Khong

Goodbye, Vitamin opens with the main character, Ruth, going through a breakup and dealing with early signs of her father’s Alzheimer’s disease. And somehow, Goodbye, Vitamin is also fun, funny, and heart-warming. The book is sunny and endearing, even as Ruth herself struggles with caring for her father and finding her own identity. Most things described as quirky may be better described as annoying, but there truly is no better word for this book’s sensibility than quirky. The specificity of the descriptions and the cleverness of the wordplay make for a delightful, sometimes deeply poignant, read.

15. Less, Andrew Sean Greer

In many ways, Less shares beats with the incredibly overdone, deeply uninteresting novel about a middle-aged white guy who goes through a midlife crisis and suffers the pain of his own brilliance. Indeed, Less follows Arthur Less as he hits fifty, gets invited to his ex’s wedding, and then travels around the world to avoid confronting any of his problems. But Less is decidedly different: it’s gay. Which means it’s funnier, sharper, and drastically more self-aware. Arthur Less - and Andrew Sean Greer - recognizes the absurdity of his disproportionate reaction to relatively minor problems. He has no delusions of grandeur. He’s not on a journey to unlock his inner genius, just a journey to maybe buy a new jacket and have a fling or two. It’s delightful and funny and warm even as it pretends not to be.

14. More Happy Than Not, Adam Silvera

The devastation of More Happy Than Not cuts in sharp pains and deep gashes. The tragic turns - and in a book about a teenage kid who considers a science fiction equivalent of gay conversion therapy there are many - come as punches to the face, not as lingering aches. And yet, the book doesn’t feel punishing to read. Adam Silvera derives no pleasure from Aaron’s, the aforementioned teen, suffering and carefully builds the foundation of Aaron’s character on his triumphs and joys. Aaron’s life is vibrant and bristling with possibility, streaked, but not consumed, by pain. More Happy Than Not is meticulously plotted and paced, with a few moments of genuine surprise. As always, Adam Silvera writes about tragedy in an entirely uncynical way, with a deep well of generosity for his characters.

13. Witchmark, C.L. Polk

In many ways, Witchmark feels like the book I spent this entire year trying to find. Witchmark takes place in a pseudo-historical early 20th century England-style setting, in the throes of some capital-W War. Most of the book is styled as a mystery: Miles, a former army doctor, and Tristan, a mysterious outsider, track down clues and chase leads to find a murderer. And, of course, maybe they fall in love along the way. And, oh yeah, Miles is a witch. Oh and also, maybe there’s some royal family drama happening as well. And maybe also some government conspiracies. And also maybe a much larger mystery that involves all of the above. There’s magic and romance and mystery and intrigue and action, and every part of it is completely satisfying. Especially if you’re the type of person who would like to read a scene in which said army doctor needs help undressing because he broke his wrist, and luckily there’s (literally magically) handsome mystery man there to help him!!! (Listen, I never said this was particularly profound literature.) But like, five stars.

12. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore / Sourdough, Robin Sloan

If you want a cozy, feel-good novel that has just the slightest dash of magic, then pick up a Robin Sloan book. Both Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough read as relaxing balms to help soothe aches brought on by the disaster fire of reality. In both books, a young twenty-something attempting to figure out their life discovers a niche world (book collecting and bread baking) and gets swept up in a fantastical mystery. They’re breezy, warm, and brimming with genuine affection and curiosity for the subjects at their centers. Sloan’s writing is incredibly sensory; you can taste the bread and smell the books. They have that Great British Bake Off quality to them: impossibly compelling despite low stakes and uniform pleasantness.

11. Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng’s second novel is a careful study of privilege of all sorts, and an especially incisive look into whiteness. Little Fires Everywhere takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a progressive slice of white suburbia. At the book’s center are the Richardsons, a well-off white family who are the types of people that may tell you that they don’t see race--in part because everyone they see is also white. Things get shaken up when Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl arrive in town, marked as strange by their relative lack of wealth, and marked as even stranger by their lack of shame about it. Each sentence is beautifully written, and each paragraph immaculately constructed. But honestly, the book is best summed up as: this is some white people nonsense.

10. The Lymond Chronicles (#1-6), Dorothy Dunnett

The Lymond Chronicles books are both the most high brow and most low brow books I read this year. They are densely written and plotted, with an inexhaustible supply of names for characters and teeming with minute details that almost all portend some future event or revelation. But they’re also chock-full of soap opera-style twists and tropes, aimed to quench your id’s every desire. All this makes for books that demand a lot, but then pay off with hilarious jokes, action sequences that convey more physicality and movement than most movies, and ridiculous third act reveals that are so incredibly satisfying. And like, on a selfish level, it’s also real satisfying to read about people falling in love with and then aggressively berating Francis Crawford for three thousand pages. (He deserves it.)

9. My Life as a Goddess, Guy Branum

I read, or rather listen to, tons of memoirs - by comedians, actors, politicians, and writers. And Guy Branum’s My Life as a Goddess is easily my favorite of the year. Branum incisively writes about growing up as a gay kid in truly the-middle-of-nowhere California, touching on issues of masculinity, sexuality, class, body image, and education. Unsurprisingly, My Life as a Goddess is hilarious, chock-full of jokes and witty observations. More surprisingly, My Life as a Goddess is also deeply emotional, especially as Branum writes about his relationship as his father. Even more surprisingly, My Life as a Goddess is weirdly informative about a very specific slice of Canadian history. I cannot recommend the audiobook of this enough, as Guy Branum’s narration is smart, funny, and winning.

8. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

Does anyone really want to read a Pulitzer Prize winning literary fiction novel written by some white dude about World War II half from the point of view of a goddamn Nazi? No. No one wants to read that. Except, maybe I do. Because that’s exactly what All the Light We Cannot See is, and man is it a true revelation. The sheer humanity that Doerr imparts in his story creates a profoundly moving story, about goodness and cruelty and the indiscriminate destruction of war. The events of the story are uniformly bleak, as expected in a World War II novel, and yet the book’s tone feels decidedly hopeful, hungry to extract optimism from human persistence. It’s a stunningly written book that lays bare the complexities of people and the horrors of war.

7. Bad Blood, John Carreyrou

Bad Blood was truly the most unbelievable story I read this year. Wizards? Aliens? Time travel? All relatively believable compared to the intense, densely plotted, thrilling tale that unravels in Bad Blood, made all the more incredible by its truth. Bad Blood tells the story of Theranos, a Silicon Valley startup that claimed to be revolutionizing blood testing, and its founder Elizabeth Holmes, once described on magazine covers as “the next Steve Jobs.” John Carreyrou, the author, was the journalist who first broke the story of Theranos’s rampant fraud, and he stitches together a coherent, mesmerizing narrative from first-hand accounts of Theranos employees. Elizabeth Holmes is a fascinating antagonist, an ambitious, callous, maybe sociopath. The story is exciting and frustrating and will make you have even less faith in rich, powerful white people. But because this is non-fiction, the entire time you know that Elizabeth Holmes is eventually going to end up being charged with numerous federal crimes. A truly satisfying ending.

6. Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh

Allie Brosh didn’t invent the internet, but she at least has as much claim to modern internet culture as any other individual. Hyperbole and a Half is a collection of her best blog posts, with some additional, equally hilarious, stories thrown in. I hadn’t revisited her blog in years, and so it was striking just how little her style has aged. In a time where internet memes have life spans measured in hours, Hyperbole and a Half feels fresh nearly a decade later. The influence of her style and perspective on the internet is far-reaching. From the hilarious (her distinctively drawn self-rendering triumphantly declaring “CLEAN ALL THE THINGS” while holding a broom) to the insightful (her two-part essay on the amorphous gray muck of depression), her stories all feel as though they could be the origin story for any piece of internet ephemera. Hyperbole and a Half is at times farcical, at times poignant, and always raucously funny.

5. Shades of Magic (#1-3), V.E. Schwab

The Shades of Magic series (A Darker Shade of Magic, A Gathering of Shadows, and A Conjuring of Light) is the perfect fantasy adventure: the characters are imminently rootable, the world is seeped in magic, and the plot is intoxicating. The books are set in London, or Londons, rather. There are four parallel Londons, which have embraced, rejected, or surrendered to magic to varying degrees. Our protagonist, Kell, is one of the few with the ability to travel between the different Londons. And, well, hijinks ensue. Dark, sprawling, brutal, violent, life-consuming hijinks.

The Shades of Magic series is unburdened by its worldbuilding; V.E. Schwab could probably teach a semester’s worth of history lessons on her world, but does not feel the need show that off in the books themselves. They’re books to be devoured, not dissected. But it’s the characters that make the series so engrossing. Everyone is an archetype-a street-worn thief, a charming prince-but so well-drawn and understood that every character moment sparkles. And the central relationship of the book, between Kell and his brother Rhy, felt as though it was perhaps extracted directly from my brain. Kell is stoic, burdened by responsibility but determined to protect. Rhy, the aforementioned charming prince, injects Kell’s life with mischief and levity, and they’re so fundamentally dedicated to each other that it hurts. If a bunch of well-meaning idiots trying to save the world with magic is your thing, A Darker Shade of Magic may be the series for you.

4. Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng

If you thought a quiet, contained rumination on race, gender, nationality, and culture couldn’t also be a compelling, tense page-turner, let me introduce you to Everything I Never Told You. Everything I Never Told You is nothing short of literary alchemy. It begins with the death of Lydia, the model daughter of the Lee family--and, really, the model daughter of 1970s America. The book unravels the mystery of Lydia’s death, told through the vignettes from the lives of the Lee family members.

Celeste Ng is a master at using a paragraph to describe years of a character’s history and decades of American society all at once. Her characters are specific and sharply drawn, rooted deeply in their time and environment. Lydia, with a Chinese father and a white mother, is mixed race (a term not added to the U.S. Census until 2000)--“one of only two Orientals” at her school. The other, her brother Nathan, has learned to live in Lydia’s shadow in their parents’ mind’s eye. Marilyn, Lydia’s mother, had her own ambitions sidelined by family. With a deft, heartfelt touch, Everything I Never Told You viscerally conveys their regrets for the words left unsaid and lives left unlived.

3. History Is All You Left Me, Adam Silvera

As this list makes clear, I loved a lot of Adam Silvera this year, and History Is All You Left Me stands out as my favorite. In dual timelines, History Is All You Left Me tells the story of Griffin after and up to the accident in which his ex-boyfriend Theo dies unexpectedly. And so, yes, the book is soaked in grief and loss. And, yes, it’s devastating and aching. But it’s also incredibly kind and empathetic. The characters are teenagers and make the choices of teenagers. Their actions are messy and rash and stupid, and Silvera leans into that, landing more than one self-inflicted heart-wrenching blow. But Silvera is also unfailingly patient with teenagers and understands their resilience; he lets his characters make mistakes and has faith that they will survive. And so the book is heavy, but optimistic. A refreshing reprieve from the gratuitous suffering and bleakness that tortures so much LGBT-themed fiction. History Is All You Left Me is the most affecting book I read all year, and it still lingers in my bones. But the impression it has left is of life, not loss.

2. An American Sickness, Elisabeth Rosenthal

I bristle when someone describes a book as “important.” It always seems patronizing and self-serving, and my natural contrarian kicks in. I get it, you want to tell everyone how well-read or socially conscious you are because you read an “important” book. So it is with eyes wide open, and more than a twinge of self-loathing, that I say An American Sickness is an important book. It feels like essential reading, certainly for anyone trying to affect American healthcare policy, and at the very least useful for anyone who ever has to deal with the American healthcare system. It will make you angry and frustrated, but hopefully it will also arm you with information.

An American Sickness is broken up into two distinct parts: the first half lays out the issues with the current healthcare system, including how it came to be, and the second half presents solutions. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal writes accessibly about potentially dry, dense subject matter. The book’s purpose is not to exhaustively detail the history of healthcare, but to better equip the average person to navigate the system. Dr. Rosenthal provides anecdotes to anchor the matter in tangible issues and gives just enough context to sketch the motivations of the various actors - doctors, hospitals, insurers, pharma companies, etc. She presents solutions from two perspectives: (1) changing healthcare policy as a whole, and (2) navigating the system as an individual. In a methodical, step-by-step manner, the book explains concrete things a regular person can look out for, questions they can ask, and actions they can take to avoid--or challenge--exorbitant medical bills. There’s literally an appendix with fill-in-the-blank form letters to use to request billing information and challenge bills. You don’t have to read this book, but I want you to.

1. Chemistry, Weike Wang

Sometimes a book is so intimately catered to you it’s as if the author waded through your subconscious, fished out the tangled threads of your thoughts, and then wove them into a tapestry that displayed every single one of your hopes, dreams, and aspirations. For me, that book is Chemistry. Chemistry follows an unnamed Asian American protagonist who is discontented with her current situation: her long-term boyfriend, her Chemistry PhD program, and her relationship with her parents. And the novel unfolds as she comes to terms with that discontentment.

The economy of Weike Wang’s writing is spellbinding. She uses words so efficiently and so cleverly to craft sentences that seem fundamental. On seemingly every page, there was a new observation that felt so obviously true that I was surprised I had never read those exact words before. The book is filled with jokes, driven by the protagonist’s wry sarcasm and gentle disdain for things and people generally. The whole thing is somehow both simple and complex, an easily digestible read with a deceptively complex flavor. There are no splashy revelations or sudden tragedies, only hard-earned emotional truths and the realities of getting by. Chemistry nails the general spirit of just attempting to function as a normal human person in 2018.

#books #weike wang #adam silvera #celeste ng #ve schwab

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theatredirectors · 6 years ago

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Sammy Zeisel

Hometown?

Bethesda, MD.

Where are you now?

Chicago, IL.

What's your current project?

I just opened and closed The Late Wedding by Christopher Chen (one of my favorite contemporary playwrights) with a company called The Neighborhood. It was a strange, beautiful, and difficult play about Italo Calvino, heartbreak, and the transmigration of souls performed in the "Rummage Room" of a church. We sourced all of our props from the boxes of shit that were left in the space after the church rummage sale and got some great use out of the organ that happened to be there, too. The whole thing was kind of magical.

I also am in post production on a short film about a girl getting her period for the first time at her friend's birthday party titled The Care and Keeping of You.

Why and how did you get into theatre?

Well, my mom is the Associate Artistic Director of Imagination Stage, a children's theatre in Washington DC. I grew up in rehearsal rooms. As I'd imagine is the case for most of us, I started out acting at summer camps and in school plays. While I was playing Renfield in my high school production of Dracula, it occurred me that I might actually I want to do this for the rest of my life.

What is your directing dream project?

I always find this question difficult because I see myself as highly responsive to the people and places at my disposal. A piece of theatre does not make sense to me out of context.

THAT SAID I love me some Chekhov. Specifically, I've been on a bit of a Cherry Orchard kick recently. There are secrets contained in that play about the potential for (or futility of) human change that speak directly to this moment. The political and the personal are so beautifully intertwined. Plus, it’s goofy as hell. Chekhov plays embrace the entire contradictory mess of being a human. How to not, as a director, deny those contradictions by providing easy answers? I see that as an ultimate directing challenge.

What kind of theatre excites you?

I like theatre that takes on the responsibility of its liveness. This can happen in so many different ways: virtuosic physicality (a tap dance?), engagement with the audience's imagination (a person becomes a bird?), direct engagement with the audience (playful meta-theatricality?), or--maybe my favorite--some sort of more subtle, silent communion (Annie Baker). A piece of theatre is not just a story, it is an event; a director is not just a storyteller, she is a coordinator of moments in real-time.

I like to see truthful characters interacting within strange theatrical forms. I think that is what we are: deeply human creatures inside of forms that we do not understand. I like theatre that embraces uncertainty and, in that way, coaxes us to into a more comfortable relationship with our own uncertainty. Violence (outward and inward) stems from a need for control within life, and so, theatre that makes us to sit in an uncomfortable state of unknowing has the capacity to make us gentler.

Finally, I seek out any art that contains a little hint of the inarticulable. A piece of art should contain secrets.

Also probably all theatre should be funny.

What do you want to change about theatre today?

We have a lot of conversations about the need for riskier choices when it comes to content. And we do need that. We should be constantly pushing the boundaries of content and honoring stories that have been neglected. But those stories should also be paired with riskier forms. From what I can tell, theatre companies are more frightened by experiments in theatrical form than almost anything else--probably because a challenging form has perhaps the highest potential of turning an audience off (audience members didn't walk out of The Flick because it is about three people who work at a movie theatre). In the age of Netflix, however, if we do not find forms that are inherently theatrical we will become obsolete. But if we find inherently theatrical forms that contain the electricity of live communion, we will be providing something that the world is desperately hungry for.

And obviously we have to figure out some way to make theatre more accessible. Theatre is basically a hobby for rich people. It's just true, and we all know it and are deeply embarrassed by it. But what can we do to combat this? I certainly don't know. But it might have something to do with returning to bare essentials. We need to be paying artists and we need to be lowering ticket prices, so what gives? What if we made our productions with fewer resources? What if we placed the storytelling weight firmly on the back of the actors and the imagination of the audience? After all--engagement, intimacy, communion--this is REALLY what we offer. Within greater constraints, we might cut costs and revive our medium in the meantime.

What is your opinion on getting a directing MFA?

Not sure. Probably right for some and not for others. I am personally intrigued. I would love some time to discover myself outside of the crucible of the "real world."

Who are your theatrical heroes?

Oof ok here are a couple that come to mind right now:

Anne Bogart (her discipline, her articulation, her curiosity),

Will Eno (his verbal playfulness, his sadness, the intimate communion of his plays),

Andre Gregory (his spiritual/minimalistic approach, Vanya on 42nd St.),

Mary Zimmerman (her theatrical imagination, her physicalization, her childlike wonder)

Annie Baker (her lessons in patience, restraint, yearning character),

Edward Albee (his social critique, his plea for honesty, his courage in the face of the void)

Sarah Ruhl (magic, poetry)

Charlie Kaufman (film director, a storytelling North Star)

My mom

Any advice for directors just starting out?

I am a director who is just starting out, so anything I say is also advice to myself. So here are a couple of things I have to tell myself over and over:

You are you. The more directors you watch, the more you see that no two directors do ANYTHING the same way. In fact, equally incredible directors do things in precisely opposite ways. What does that mean? What makes those directors good? They are good because they know themselves. They are working from a place of personal authenticity that no one could have possibly taught them. And so you cannot emulate them. Emulating a good director will make you a bad director. You can only work at getting closer and closer to the director that you were meant to be from the beginning.

Direct stuff. You can only discover who you are as a director by directing. Find cheap-as-shit spaces. Hold rehearsals in your apartment. Produce your own ten-minute play festivals. Do stuff that leads nowhere because it all leads somewhere.

Direct the kind of stuff you say you want to direct. I've had a tough time with this one. It can be scary to actually DO the work that you say you love. Because it's super vulnerable, I guess. But until you present the work that actually feels like your jam, no one will have any idea what your jam is. You probably won't even know. Be brave enough to do the work that turns you on.

Craft is generosity. It's not all about discovering who you are. Directing is a craft. And by that I mean, there are concrete skills involved: how do you create varied stage pictures? How do you make sure an audience hears important information? How do you stage compelling transitions? Maybe think of getting better at these things as acts of generosity. When you put work into these elements, you show an audience that you care about every second of their experience.

You will disappoint yourself. Making stuff comes at a price. You will feel inadequate, and you will make work that doesn't feel like you. Lean in. Hold on to faint glimmers of hope. Do better every time. Inch closer and closer.

Interrogate your privilege. If you are doing this, you are probably the beneficiary of a certain amount of privilege. I am the beneficiary of a massive amount. If this is true for you, acknowledge it. Interrogate the narratives you are drawn to. Think twice before putting yourself on stage. Doubt yourself and listen to the wisdom of the less privileged. Use the love and care you've enjoyed in your life to create loving, caring spaces for others.

Be kind. Be critical of the work you see, but be curious about where your criticism comes from. How would you like your own work to be seen? How can you approach other artist’s work with that same generosity? Separate intention from execution and acknowledge how terrifying it is just to be out here trying. Strive to be an enthusiast: you will learn more, people will want to work with you, and the inside of your own head will be a nicer place to live. (You will also be a better director if you are not driven by ego, insecurity, and a need to prove.)

Don't listen that hard to people's advice. Most people who are giving you advice are telling you what they need to hear, not what you need to hear. Nobody knows what they're doing, and no-one moves forward in the same way.

Read more books, listen to more music, watch more movies, think about things a lot

Plugs!

Rumple: Last year, I developed a children's musical adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin with Chicago folk band, Friends of the Bog. It's a feminist re-telling of the strange old tale, filled with stellar folk jams and tap dancing puppets. It's weird, theatrical, and full of heart (think Pig Pen Theatre Co. meets Spongebob). And we are looking for a home for it. Hit me up if this tickles you and you have a lead.

Beth Hyland: One of the best young playwrights in Chicago or probably the country. She's also my pal. If you don't know her, you should get on that.

Chicago: The reputation that Chicago has for community and authenticity is grounded firmly in reality. Artists are struggling in Chicago as much as they are anywhere else but they are surrounded by their friends. There is vital, community-building theatre happening out here in church rummage rooms and abandoned storefronts. Just saying.

My website. My email: [email protected]

#Sammy Zeisel #askadirector #theatre directors

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visualcultureconference2019-blog · 6 years ago

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Day 2: March 20

Conservation and surveillance: the protection through images (Laura Löbl López)

Since the 20th century, the interest in wildlife conservation started to arise. Overexploitation and destruction of the environment became noticeable for the masses. To protect those landcapes for the following generations, surveillance systems were installed to control both nature and humans.

This paper explores the eco-aesthetics brought to us after the established net of surveillance systems, brought together to shield endangered species. The problem of this field begins when the conservationism movement is seen throughout animals’ visuality. It will further be argued that the division of humans and animals becomes blurry, as animals turn anthropomorphic as they are watched. It also shows the switch of intent of this technology, watching only animals to humans again in protected spaces such as national parks or reservoirs.

Recordings of movement, digitalization and propaganda are of special interest as they are captured for the sole purpose of protecting and informing globally. The focus will be on images from protected parks and environmentally-aware institutions in Europe.

The wide range of photographs will be reduced to a smaller fraction of images, accessible digitally and publically. To summarize, the argument will involve how culture, society and mass media interacts with the visuality of natural sciences.

Reclaiming the Autonomy: A Contemporary shift of Gazing at Animals in the Eastern Asian Urban Context (Yuying Zhao)

While the ecological aesthetics of the East Asian landscape have been constructed for hundreds of years through literature and paintings, how human gaze at animals in the same cultural context remains blurred and controversial. This paper will examine a contemporary reflection of the visual arts regarding animals emerging from this region, which rebels against the powerful zoomorphic and colonial perspectives of the past. I begin with a short review of traditional ideologies regarding the human-animal relationship, and how these ideas are intertwined with the capitalism since the 18th century. Then I introduce several artworks which depict animals in today’s urban environment and conduct a detailed analysis of the interdisciplinary art project Institute of Critical Zoologists (since 2007) from Singapore and the independent film An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) from China. Through combining environmental aesthetics with Judith Butler's theory of precarious life, I will claim that this deliberation of animal’s autonomy rooted in the urban everyday life is not only crucial to start a conversation between our own time’s conditions with ancient local ecologic aesthetics as Taoism, but also to shape a more nutritious human-animal, and even human-human relationship.

The question of the dog - Neither human nor animal (Roxana Kaboli)

What lies in between the animal and the human? By using visual examples from the film The Lobster (2015) by Yorgos Lanthimos and the monument statue of Balto the dog in New York City, this paper will examine the grey zone of the animal/human dichotomy with focus on the domesticated pet, more specifically, the dog and what we can learn about our being in this process. The pet dog in modern societies has been removed from their natural habitats and being integrated into to human society not only as pets but as movie stars, heroes, working in various jobs like police dogs, therapy dogs, and service dogs but also having various humans working for them like dog groomers and dog sitters. When altering toward human ideals both aesthetically and in behavior, has the dog been altered away from nature and other animals?

Theories discussing the human/animal relations from Martin Heidegger to Jacques Derrida with the comments and criticism from Matthew Calarco will be used as points of departures to understand the philosophical discourses on the nature of humanity and animality. Writings from Gilles Deleuze will also be used in this paper to lead a discussion on what we as humans can learn and take from the discussion about a creature that is not yet human but no longer animal.

“Everyone in me is a bird. I am beating all my wings” Grieving, remembering, and visualizing extinct species. (Christina Tente)

The writer of this paper is interested in the story of Martha, a passenger pigeon, the last of her species, who passed away in 1914. Martha died in a zoo, her body was dissected and studied by scientists. Martha lived on through the stories, the poems, the artworks that were created for her. Martha is visible in Cincinnati, on her memorial statue, but Martha is invisible to the rest of the world. Martha’s death was ritualized during the Memorial Day of the Lost Species in 2014, but the impact of her death is long forgotten. We remember and “see” and mourn Martha, because Martha has a name and a face and a back-story. But what about all the other species that have become extinct or are becoming extinct every year? How do we, humans, decide which animals are grievable, which animals are worth remembering, whose death has an impact and whose life is simply bare? Focusing on Martha, this paper attempts to explore these questions, with the help of Judith Butler’s writings on grievability and precarity, as well as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of becoming-animal. The writer will problematize the anthropomorphization of endangered and extinct species, and she will explore various ways of creative and ritualistic demonstrations that facilitate grief and catharsis.

Temple of no walls: Outdoor churches and experience of divine nature (Karolina Curova)

“When I am seeking you, I seek whole-heartedly,

When I am encountering you, I encounter whole-bodily.

So I walk into the wild, I breath and walk, breath and walk,

And then in the middle of it, a shrine, peace, the creation of yours, and there

I find you, in the silence,

In the whispers of the green trees, through the crack of the branches, the sunrays caress my skin…”

(KMC, 2019)

This presentation aims to intertwine the feeling one gets when encountering the nature in the whole essence and feeling one gets when encountering spiritual place. My case study will be the outdoor churches - churches without walls inside of the forests and nature reservoirs. Churches that are not limited by walls, but by trees.

Looking at history, early Christians did not attempt to build churches, they solely gathered and praised - first church building was built approximately around year 233 - 256. This case study aims to come back to the early traditions and rituals.

Theories used in this presentation will problematize and discuss this topic with texts by Weinryb’s

“Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages” and Kavaler’ s “Nature and the Chapel Vaults at Ingolstadt: Structuralist and Other Perspectives.” together with the theories on ‘sublime’ (Burke, Kant, Schopenhauer,..) and ‘divine’.

Additional aspects such as communication and art will be added.

In this creative/academic presentation, one is encouraged to step inside and find inner peace, while encountering these places, as hypothesis is made in the field of community and improvement of the society that stems from the initial idea of reconnecting with ourselves in these spaces.

Cruising Musings: A Queer Ecology and the re/deterritorialisation of Nature and Environments (Lee Mann)

Eco-feminists and environmental justice advocates have long argued no environment, natural or urban, exists outside of socio-political systems including, gender, class and race. Historically, gender has informed our experience of and interaction with nature and environments and continues to do so today. A very clear example of this is the formation of American National Parks in the twentieth century, which served as a domain for men to act out hyper-masculine activity in response to the increasing presence of women in the labour market.

A queer ecology is another lens through which natural environments can be read; we can conceptualise nature through queer eyes. Cruising is a practice whereby primarily but not exclusively homosexual men seek out sex in public spaces--toilets, parks, and parking lots. I intend frame cruising as a socio-political act that re-territorialisatises public spaces traditionally reserved for heteronormative recreation. Gay men and queers, with the night as their disguise, lend public parks to live out desires and liberate sexualities. In doing so, a territory is mapped out through both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ pollution: the excretion of sexual bodily fluids and the trampling of ‘desire paths’. Seeping through natural and urban infrastructures, these sexual acts intercept heteronormative spaces, planting seeds for the flourishing of a queer ecology. Cruising is a gesticulation that quietly dismantles a space formed without the consideration of the other.

Can’t We Just Get Oolong? Tasseography and Biocentrism in the Western World (Wibecka Oliver)

Despite being one of the oldest practices in the world, divination is widely ignored by many scholars and theologians, dismissed as ‘mumbo jumbo’ or overlooked due to a perceived lack of scientific value (Silver, 2018). Tasseography in particular remains a practice that has persisted from Ancient Greece into the modern world, though is largely neglected by academics. Better understood today as tea-leaf reading, prognostication through tasseography focuses on interpreting patterns in residual organic materials such as tea, coffee or wine.

Rather than rejecting tasseography as a nonsensical practice, this presentation reexamines this form of divination through an environmental lens. Acknowledging the mythic nature of tasseography while still appreciating its value as a complex ecologically rooted process is essential. Removing inherent skepticism surrounding the possibility of divination and focusing instead on the larger symbolic relationships presented between the natural and divine, humanity and nature, new insight can be formed regarding this type of communication.

In particular this presentation explores how the ethical concept of biocentrism, in which value and significance extend to all living things, is represented through tasseographical predictions. Furthermore, it will be argued that tasseography can be understood as an involved visual (and bodily) experience grounded in biocentric values.

At War with Ourselves: Of Man and Nature in a Film (Karen Kristjansdottir)

There is no doubt that environmental issues have surfaced with increased force in the last years, months and even weeks. People seem to be waking up to, what some refer to as, the biggest challenges of our times. Today we can see flocks of children fighting for nature and climate causes all around the world, insisting on end to human’s bad treatment of the earth and climate. Theorists have for a long time contemplated on the relationship of man and nature and pop culture has been no exception in that. Last year, the Icelandic film Woman at War was premiered and it deals with this discourse, in a story of one woman’s warfare for the conservation of the environment. This study aims to briefly explore the relationship between man and nature, in the light of the film Woman at War (2018) by Benedikt Erlingsson and identify the reasons that drive the main character to onset a war and become an environmental activist, - or terrorist. It looks into the ways in which the visual representation and narrative can be connected to theories of appropriation and mourning. A couple of visual examples, frames from the film, are shown and analysed to support how these influences surface.

Appropriating Asterisms: Reexamining the Natural Contract Through Detritus (Austin LaGrone)

The use of trash as an artistic medium has a long and celebrated history going at least all the way back to the so-called degenerate artist Kurt Schwitters. Not surprisingly, contemporary artists continue to work with these found materials and in ways that often speak to biotic issues that arise in, and are explored through, Eco-Philosophy. This presentation will investigate Michel Serres’ demand for a “Natural Contract” and suggest that Gabriel Orozco’s art installation “Asterisms” at the Guggenheim can be read as isomorphic to the key ideas developed in Serres’ essay. Furthermore, this presentation will examine humanity’s appropriation of the world through lost or abandoned objects and argue that steering a course into the future must take into account and directly address the dynamics of both hard and soft pollution.

Perceiving the earth as a dynamic actor (Hanna Urich)

In this speech I discuss embodied perception through ‘attention economics’, approaching human attention as a resource. With the development of screen technology and social media, human attention is becoming more valuable and consequently more exploited. Michel Serres calls semiotic methods, such as adverts, of exploiting human attention ‘soft pollution’. When being exposed to clear advertising messages we are more likely to filter out the bodily impressions of the sensory world. Using eco-phenomenological theory I will argue how embodied perception can help us to reach an understanding for the earth as a dynamic actor as opposed to a silent and static backdrop. Our senses alone teach us that the earth is neither still nor mute; birdsong, thunderstorms and the smell of rain has the agency of affecting the human mind. By speaking about human attention as a limited resource I hope to highlight how adverts and algorithms can cause us to budget our attention and therefore limit our understanding of the sensory surroundings.

#day2 #abstracts

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rosejardine-blog · 6 years ago

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Research in Practice Dissertation: Traces (photos referred to appear elsewhere in this blog)

Section One] Introduction to Practice. Discussion & Context.

This practice led dissertation explores interaction between art, psychological and philosophical theories with personal arts practice. Relevancies to practice are selected which articulate critical and developmental thinking. The key focus of the work is emotion. The vastness of area, in conjunction with length regulations, places some restriction on outcomes. It is out with the scope to address this whole complex topic. However it will address aspects relating to practice. The work seeks out that which is within, and that which is beyond understanding and reaction. It embeds and synthesises emotional explorations and personal visual arts practice within theoretical contexts. In pursuit of wider realisation and transformative understanding, the task draws on communication between experiential, theoretical, perceptual, and tacit knowledge. To facilitate fluid discussion, detail of the methodologies involved are listed in Appendix One.

Different forms of knowing are explored and intertwined in the work. It takes principle stance that demarcations in awareness’s from e.g. phenomenology, poetry and painting are artificially imposed. This is discussed throughout the literature in various guises. Fortnum (1) has advocated that we resist automatic ideas of knowledge and that we attempt to understand more about the space we need for 'not knowing'.Further, According to Bourdieu (2) theory without empirical data is ‘empty’, and empirical research without theoretical insights is equally blind. He refers to the necessary ongoing interaction of these components as ‘Praxis’.It means that theory and artistic practice mesh with each other and interpenetrate each other organically. Marx (3) views praxis as a relation of continuous interpenetration of theory and practice which leads to a form of ‘embodied knowledge.’ This is explored further from in Sections two and three. The work draws on personal reflections and wider theoretical perspectives, therefore aspires to address both the personal and collective. Collingwood (4) has stated that:

The artist’s business is to express emotions; and the only emotions he can express are those which he feels, namely his own. If he attaches any importance to the judgement of his audience, it can only be because he thinks that the emotions he has tried to express are . . . shared by his audience. . . . In other words he undertakes his artistic labour not as a personal effort on his own private behalf, but as a public labour on behalf of the community to which he belongs.

Collingwood’s statement adds support to Kant’s (5) original theory of census com-munis. This refers to a ‘sense held to unite the sensations, of all senses’, in sensation or perception. This is vital to arts practice which incorporates comprehension of theory and context beyond self-knowledge towards a social consciousness.

Practice considerations include deliberate bypass of mimicry (6) co-opted image, and word (7). Disparate, medium and materials are used to transcend these constraints. There is an ongoing quest for malleability complexity and depth. These practice pursuits can be witnessed in earlier work around abstract expressive works of the sea and landscape which appear below. Further thinking around these pieces is discussed in Appendix 2.

When painting, I have no real vision of how the final piece is going to appear before I begin. Frequently I scrape down the whole surface of the canvas before I make another attempt it. I continue to do this until I find acceptable resolution in the work. Sometimes I may have later preferred earlier versions of the work. These had been initially rejected and have now disappeared below the surface. Experimentation continued throughout the module in ethereal blobs, ghostly faded mountains and direct screen printing. Layered impasto, plaster and resins worked to pursue resonance.

Prior practice has focussed on aspects of form and gesture in relation to emotion. Over the course period work became increasingly expressive and abstract at times. It also expanded to incorporate related aspects of the environment. Much of the work visually and metaphorically references land. I also used stone, rust, slate and cement in later pieces. I became interested in how my sea paintings were similar to the natural qualities of rock.

The work immediately above was inspired by the painting below. However it also lacked the colourful jewelled relief of fireworks and spectator.

James Abbot McNeill Whistler. 1872-77. Nocturne in Black and gold. The Falling Rocket

A simple observation I made when reviewing these earlier paintings, and in considering the subject matter of this dissertation, is that they do not appear to be particularly ‘happy’. I can see lightness within them, but a sense of gravity and foreboding frequently dominates. Bourgeois’s (8) has claimed that her work on metaphoric abstraction was an attempt to access to the unconscious, as well as function as psychological release. However, it is incoherence, and the impossibility of ‘knowing,’ most cogently expressed in her work. Bourgeois considered art as her parallel ‘form of psychoanalysis’ offering her privileged and unique access to the unconscious, as well as a form of psychological release. On a piece of pink paper she scratched the slogan, "Art is a guarantee of sanity." Her artwork was intended as reparative, a form of mental mending .

Louise Bourgeois, Art is a Guaranty of Sanity, 2000, Pencil on pink paper, 27.9 x 21.5 cm. Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photo: Christopher Burke.

While aspects of resolution may be attained in the work, the content may be that of something unresolved. This analysis concerned me as I want my work to be about psychological freedom. Nevertheless traces of this continued to pervade practice. Reviewing the literature led me to doubt if there could be such a thing as psychological freedom, when we ourselves are drawn from experiences. For example in reviewing a recent piece, I questioned if the haunting, dancing, perhaps writhing, forms, and oddly shaded opaque egg whites on black card. This may have been influenced by recent reading and analysis of Paul Celan’s ‘(9) Black Milk’ in Death Fugue

Work involving the use of cement and the encasing of objects within resins stemmed from a play on Picasso’s (10) ‘Still Life’ constructions. The thinking behind these practice experimentations is discussed in Appendix 2. Key to the thinking is the recognition that it is not only physical senses which perceive and interpret experience, but a vast range of other influences. These contribute to, and generate our emotion, meaning and knowledge. Such influencers include our cultures, genders, experiences, families, education and religions. It would take countless dissertations to even begin to address these multi-facetted areas. However we must acknowledge this range of disparate relevancies and influencers. This awareness is crucial to developing visual arts theory and practice and indeed to feeling, seeing and knowing (11). Many artists attempt to create meaning free from these obstacles and attempt to find a new language to express untranslatable things.

My practice utilises a range of materials. These include experiments in the stark ‘blocking out’ of qualities of Tippex correction fluid, or cement, resin, eggs, tar, rust, old tools, slate, bitumen, oil, talcum powder, straw, hair latex, fading photographs and thick layers of paint and plaster. Such explorations are a core mechanism of inquiry. Process and application are also significant. There is variously quest for malleability, translucency, surface superficiality, complexity and depth. The process of mark making and sensitive or harsh application are attempted evocatively and purposely. There is an ongoing, possibly pointless, quest for liberated individual ‘uninfluenced meaning. Equally, to fully consider the material world in addition to that of the ‘human’ one.

In summary therefore, reflective practice and choices of materials have attempted to consider risks inherent in the exposure to a range of influencers, including our own subconscious defences. Because of e.g. the recognized power of words in meaning creation, among many influences, it feels important for work to be visual or experienced differently from words. Visual construction is less subject to the polluting factors of language (7) and bombarded image. This area is expanded in the next section. Interestingly nonverbal seems also less subject to dilution by ones owns denial and fears.For Freud (12) the unconscious was seen as the true psychical reality. He argued that its innermost nature is as unknown to us as the reality of the external world. It is as incompletely presented by the data of the consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our sense organs. Lacan’s (13) observations of our reality further contextualise and develop this argument. He delineates how our realities are radically subjective, that our reality is in fact structured by fantasy which serves to protect us from ‘the raw’. He concludes therefore that reality itself can function as an escape from countering real. The ‘actual real’ filters through in our dreams and in our art.

These findings emphasise that despite our influencers and oppressors, at a subconscious level, the real language of desire emotion and feeling continues. However to reach wider realisation it is imperative to set arts practice within contextual awareness. It is this which makes it a quest for undigested reality rather than that of simply imagination. Iconclude this section with a powerful and pertinent quote from the controversial Scottish psychiatrist R D Laing (14)

We are so desensitized to being pressured that we are unaware when someone makes a bid to control or dominate us. We have been trained that the polite response is to overlook the violence of persuasion. We have been domesticated into obedience and submission.

Pressure, when applied by one person onto another, inevitably forces the recipient to react. All authentic action from one’s creative centre is suspended, until after the pressure has been dealt with……Some of us are still waiting

Section Two] Emotion

Emotion and meaning are closely related in research literature. Relevant movements and influences are well documented and themes include cultural, political and philosophical movements. It includes e.g., work on phenomenology (15) existentialism (16) post structuralism and post modernism (17). Background developments in this area draw from aspects of literature, linguistics (particularly semiotics), politics, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, epidemiology and the arts. The subcategorization even within the visual arts incorporates as wide-ranging issues iconography iconology language philosophy philology phenomenology socio cultural politics materials aesthetics and class. Furthermore within these multifarious areas includes subsets such as language biotope lexicon biotopes and habitats!

Panofsky (18) was perhaps the first to attempt categorisation of such mechanisms in the visual arts. He developed the understanding and interpretation of meaning in visual representations, breaking these into three increasing levels of depth. These include the interpretation of meaning through factual descriptions and what we derive and interpret from with our own experiences.His theory progresses toa deeper understanding the motifs and messages within an image and recognition of events taking place within it. His final level communicates things that the artist may not have been consciously thinking about. This level allows us to reveal what he describes as the underlying:

Basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion unconsciously qualified by one personality and condensed into one work”

The word emotion is used in many different ways. As described from above I am unable to separate it entirely from language. However I do not consider it necessary to extricate it entirely, as long as the limitation and power of language is recognised and considered. It is for this reason that work has been set among selected poetry in this dissertation.Painting and Poetry are closely correlated. Leonardo da Vinci has been cited as saying that says, "Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen and that ‘Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.’

..Our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost

Gaston Bachelard

Both of these endeavours explore the essential qualities of what it means to be human. According to Hepworth (19) ‘Painting not what you see but what you feel in your body.’ It concerns the psychological subtext to our lives, what makes us tick. Randell (20) has also talked about the emotional subtexts of time and space speaking directly across time and space. His sculptures are about direct physical experience and creating rather than illustrating.

Otto Dix The War

However, while it may be colloquial to state here, in reference to Emotion, that ‘you will know it when you see it’ I believe this to be true. Viewing the work of Otto Dix affirms this for me. This painter, who fought in the trenches, used etching and aquatint mediums to heighten the emotional and realistic effects of his images of terror. His use of multiple acid baths ate away at the images, and mimicked decaying flesh. The emotions of fear horror and empathy are cogently conveyed.

For Rothko (21), there were no visible prototypes for that which he aspired to depict, so he had to create them. His conveys a huge emotional range. He surrounded viewers both with massive, imposing visions of darkness, and with blissful luminosity. His work utilises movement texture translucency and plasticity to achieve these ends.

If you are only moved by colour relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom."

Mark Rothko

It has been observed that Rothko’s (21) work could represent the opposition between a rational or abstract element and an emotional, primal, or tragic one. By softening the contours of his figures, and enveloping them in a nebulous haze, he let his viewers know that these allusive images asked metaphysical questions about meaning, emotion and the purpose of existence. Hisworkhighlights that certain qualities such as radiance or the duality of light and dark have symbolic meanings to us. His impression of vast space was said to represent the historical artistic concept of ‘the sublime,’ a quasi-religious experience of limitless immensity. The installation of Rothko’s canvases also produces their own sacrosanct environment. An image of his ‘Dark Palette’ is shown below:

Keifer’s (22) work is also noted for its symbolic potency. The use of materials such as straw, earth, and tree roots reference both time and patterns of life, death, and decay. They provoke strong emotional and psychological effects on viewers.Brisley (23) also pursues deep questioning in relation to those who are forgotten, alienated and dispossessed. His uses of materials include sand, bitumen, and sacking. Brisley’s works are a useful vehicle in which to observe materials in both physical and psychological form. His website (24) highlights:

Concern for the everyday and for things that have fallen down (detritus on the streets, human excrement) and the marginalised (miners, bin men, homeless).

He selects his materials to explore emotion and humanness. His critical motivations remain unchanged, the production of a political art that in its richness of metaphor and range of expressive resources is capable of capturing the 'morbid symptoms' of capitalist culture.

The practice of these artists has been a catalyst in my artistic development. Much of the subconscious subtext of my work is that emerging through and complex multi layered aspects of emotion. It consists of tapping into subconscious feelings and images through an unself conscious dialogue in the process itself. However as we have seen, emotion while perhaps not fully understood, is not blind. It too is contextualised in experience.Practice requires the development of Integrity and of knowing why you are selecting things and doing things, but not in a paralysing or inhibiting way. Ongoing studio experimentation forcefully accentuates the dichotomies between mind and body. Studio practice magnifies the unsettled relationship between what we see, and what we know. Handling and listening to materials become a catalyst in the recognition and liberation of emergent ideas. This works to nurture and reveal nascent and embryonic inklings that can produce new and unexpected knowledge.Research in Practice has required time and space to allow the materials to fulfil their capabilities. I did not want to rush in and narrow the vision. Handling materials allowed me to feel and inhabit them as they imparted physical, tacit embodied knowledge. Moments which invigorate the interiority of the imagination? This examination of their potentiality is crucial to my desire to create and unveil, rather than produce or and fabricate. The work attempts to capture and harness aspects of fragility, subtlety complexity, connection and changing memory. This involves a creative persistence in new combinations. Key to this is a pursuit of thatbeyond the subconscious, the raw, unspoken, embodied knowledge,

Most recent work has involved a series of drawings in charcoal, ink and water. Originally I carried out these experiments with coloured chalks, paints and melted crayons. Observation of Riley’s (25) work encouraged my experimentation in black and white. From 1961 to 1964 Riley worked with black and white, sometimes adding tones of grey. I enjoyed her combinations of relaxed gentle curves the increasing rapid compressions within her work. I was particularly intrigued by her compositions at their verges, on the edge of disintegration without collapse.Some of the recent charcoal works appear below. They seem to take on aspects of motion and organic, wing like, formations.

Section Three] Traces

3.1 Traces

This paper has worked towards deconstruction of aspects of emotion and meaning in visual arts practice. To develop this further it is necessary to think about the nature of knowledge itself. Hume (26) has stated that reports of factual knowledge e.g. "triangles have three sides" are not knowledge at all. Rather they are definitions. They provide us with no knowledge other than what specific terms mean. In his discussion on relations of ideashe states:

All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas; and when we have often employed any term, though without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a determinate idea annexed to it. On the contrary, all impressions…are strong and vivid: the limits between them are more exactly determined: nor is it easy to fall into any error or mistake with regard to them. When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed with any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived?

Here he equates impressions roughly to feeling, and ideas to thinking. According to Hume ideas are ‘faint copies’ of impressions. They are ‘less forcible and lively’ and weaker fainter. However each faint impression/mark is crucial to wider conceptualisation and thinking.

I have been intrigued by these notions when analysing historical and ongoing practice. Thinking and feeling work together in personal practice, and I consider that this theory can be applied to it in a novel way. For example, the metaphor might be applied that each faint mark/impression is working towards a wider body of work/idea, or working backwards and becoming detangled from that concrete mass of emotion and cognition. Despite my work changing and developing, edit has often resulted in the revisiting of earlier stages. It may involve the uncovering of an earlier mark and bringing faintness to the surface once more, for example in paintings below chalky and oily translucencies were built up, covered and then recovered in parts. In these way aspects of fragility, connection and depth is uncovered.

Fool’s Gold Rose Jardine 2018

Hamilton (27) has highlighted how it is these moments which invigorate the interiority of the imagination. This post examination of their potentiality was crucial to my increasing desire to create and unveil, rather than produce or fabricate. Kaur (28) and other theoreticians have highlighted that a difficulty we currently face in the west, is the lack of direct sensory experience. We have become increasingly reliant on processed second hand information in our everyday lives. He concludes that this experience gap has led to erosion of natural mental resources. As commented by my previous supervisor, it may because of the many exploratory aspects of disparate work and experimentation that my more recent pieces have not been forced into over-determined ‘final pieces’. He considered that this allowed them to retain a suggestiveness, an open-ended ambiguity, which made them more intriguing as images or objects. The softness and roundness of their shapes inevitably calling to mind the female form without over-prescribing this as a way of seeing it. A useful outcome of this is that it may assist in the work containing multiple meanings, open to several interpretations. I quickly became aware that I needed to be alert to how my work could escape from my intentions to take on a life of its own and become different things to different people. This is detailed in Appendix 2. I did not consider this a negative thing. It often meant that the work had richer content than I had assumed. This led me to working directly with materials, inventing new forms, creating new objects.Often these can involve many iterations of the same idea, investigating different combinations of materials, being as ‘unprescriptive’ as possible, leaving room for emergence, and trying to get a sense of what to keep and what to leave out. Some of this work appears below. A fuller account is given in previously submitted critical evaluations, exploratory publications and presentations.

This overall body of this subsequent work has been entitled Traces. Practice and this paper, have built towards this reflection. The original meaning of the term ‘traces’ refers not only to the trace marks and residual evidence of what has taken place, but also to a path followed. Paths are equally about meandering journeys as destinations. Sometimes they lead nowhere. It is possible that enduring remnants or ‘Traces’ in my visual arts practice to be analysed from differing perspectives. For example to consider them as that which is known and distant, that shrouded and not fully known and underpinnings unearthed or built upon. In some ways it attempts to explore what are both there and not there. However the work also addresses the spaces in between. It attempts to reach that which is renounced, disavowed and denied. This search beneath the surface appearance of physical reality draws upon sources of theoretical and practice knowledge. The work seems to sit comfortably within Merleau Ponty’s (29) notions of embodiment. This relates to the visible and the invisible, the space in-between the different bodies of experience and the intertwining of those different bodies. In my practice this involves strong and contrasting emotions. I conducted experiment in automatic writing which can be seen at the front of this paper. Words such as vestigial, veiled, memory, and persistence emerged. It bears testament to latent time and, intracorporeally, to the experience being embodied but mediated by continual interactions of perception and practice. There seems to be relationality between temporal dimensions in the work. It touches on aspects of temporality and phenomenology. Bachelard’s (30) landmark work, The Poetics of Space, evokes metaphysical elements which incorporate identify how knowledge of the world is based ultimately on experience. In his analysis he tried to consider images without personal interpretation. He concludes that the Trans subjectivity of the image could not be understood through subjective reference alone. The theme of traces is continued in altering guises. I have entitled the final two subsections Reverberation and Engram

3.2 Reverberation

Reverberation is defined as a resonance, an echolikeforceor effect or repercussion.It refers to something which persists after its source has stopped. This links past and future. It incorporates that beyond a current physical presence into the traces, echoes and repercussions of prior that knowledge and experience. Repetition seriality and pattern is well documented in the research literature (31). Breaking up a surface into increments (pattern) makes one more aware of the forms innaccessible interior. Earlier work and exhibition has explored this area in further depth (see Appendix Two). It relates to areas such as domesticity, repetition, communication, connection and trauma. It is about working out how things make us feel as well as thinking about the interconnectivity of factors

The artist I would like discuss under this section is Shozo Shimamoto (32). He and his fellow artists, such as Kazuo Shiraga, turned the energy of war into that of a new art accessible to all. It was their intent to renew the tradition of Japanese art (particularly the Zen culture) through performance, experimentation, and play; they strove to rip apart the demarcations between art and life. The Guatai Manfesto (33) describes how this was done in an effort to break free from the past. It searched for different energies and forms. The artists ripped, tore, smashed, cut, burned, or affixed objects to canvas. It is testimony to process and relationship between gesture and matter. Below is part of Shozo Shimamoto’s Holes series.

3.3 Engram.

The concluding section of his work is Engram, not endgame. ‘There are miles to go before I sleep’. The existence of Engrams is posited by scientific theory (34) as the means by which memoriesare stored. The hypothesis postulates a change in neural account for persistence of memory.It seems appropriate to conclude our analysis of Tracesin this focus on that which eventually engrained. Interesting researchers are studying not only how individual memories form, but how memories interact with each other and change over time. Work has started to look that related memories can merge into a single representation, especially if the memories are acquired in close succession. These findings gain potency, when we consider aspects of emotion and meaning in visual arts practice, and wider research theory which we have attempted to unpick and also synthesise in this work. They relate to inherent non-translatable things.

It is interesting to apply these neuroscientific theories more generally to the world, and to visual arts practice. The authors (34) conclude that:

Our memory is not just pockets and islands of information, we actually build concepts, and we link things together that have common threads between them.

Perhaps these threads are also Traces.

Ends

Word count 4330.

This is to the prescribed limit of 4000, plus the additional 10 % allowance, which brings the allowance to 4400. Decorative Cover/Sectioning Format Pages & Images not included in word count.

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