Since establishing this idea, I have thought of a number of examples that apply and hope to outline a few to continue this dialectic. I think in one sense, there is a link between individualism and American ideology that is actually fairly common, but I don't think that is the full extent of the historical basis (particularly because the United States is relatively young when it comes to art history, and certainly not the first to use the idea of art as expression). I think this is more historically entrenched in the history of visual art (and other disciplines, perhaps) and will be harder to question and more difficult for people to accept, but these ideas are worthwhile.
I should also restate some of the texts that I have been reading that is certainly contributing to this thinking, primarily Dylan Trigg's book The Thing, Ben Davis's 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, and Eugene Thacker's In the Dust of this Planet.
So...
The ongoing assumption has been that art is a matter of individual expression, and has been critiqued, theorized, looked at, and thought about as such. At the very least this is a gross over simplification, if not a terrible mistake, because it does not acknowledge the complexity of an individual identity. I must be careful of my verbiage here, because a lot of these words have philosophical baggage (identity, for one) but what I am referring to is the individual that produces/creates art. I think this can also be the same for a group of artists functioning as a unit to produce a single art work (such as the Guerrilla Girls) that can be assessed. What does not fall under this delineation is a group like Bruce High Quality Foundation that organizes classes, exhibitions, etc, which gets into the downward slope of "social practice as art", and I don't want to go into that here. Mainly, I'm talking about an individual artist working on their artistic product.
Looking at artworks as individual expression assumes that one can know the individual and know, by looking at a body of their work, what they are expressing. The inherent fault in this is that an individual may have some similar traits from one creation to the next, other traits of the individual have changed. The individual is not a collection of their work, nor is individual a constant during production of a single work. Individuality manifests itself in a number of ways and includes moments of disconnect (not fully understanding one's actions, being at odds with ones self) as well as moments where one individual overlaps and mirrors another individual. These manifestations of individuality are so complex that it is questionable whether one can effectively evaluate "individual expression" as the motive and origin of the art work.
In watching Chris Marker's film La Jetee, the character of 'the man' is the subject of an experiment made necessary by the nuclear destruction of Paris (and, presumably, most of the rest of the world) after World War III. The men organizing the experiment inject the man with drugs that aid him in to travel back in time, and along with electrodes that cover his eyes, he is able to place himself as an individual as an adult in a time before the war, where he eventually interacts with a woman that he remembers from a day on the pier. The organizers of the experiment also learn how to send him in to the future, where he meets humans and is made aware that the race survives. The man knows that his time is limited and is no longer useful to the experiment or its organizers, and chooses to return to the past to meet the woman on a pier.
One analogy that Marker's film provides is an evaluation of the individual in a way that is not often thought about, even though we know and accept (since Einstein) that time is relative. Certainly the film is speculative fiction in form and genre, but I see La Jetee as a parallel to the complexity of individuality; the concept of the individual should not be restricted by time, nor determined by time. I am completely able to return to thoughts, moods, and mind-frame of different times in a way that makes my own individuality parallel to itself as opposed to linear recurrences. If I get angry every time I'm driving a car, it is not time that determines my anger but the context of driving. Other individuals also get angry while driving a car, and all of these occurrences of anger in driving are called road rage--not linked to time (other than, one could argue, since the invention of the automobile) but linked to the context of the individual.
Both of these words, too, are problematic in a phenomenological sense; if one doesn't take into account the complexity of the individual, phenomenology can be relegated to the realm of outdated and modernistic (if phenomenology is only the philosophy of an individual in a restricted sense it can not necessarily account of a multiplicity of realities, or at least there is some contradiction in this). Expression, too, then is an issue in terms of its origins in the individual, a sort of paradox (an individual studying and thinking about something created by the individual, which probably can't be fully evaluated).
***
Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
input systems
I'm going to write a bit today about a concept that has to do with larger cultural concerns but plays into the art world, particularly with art fairs, commodification, and other issues that many people are discussing within and outside of the art world.
I honestly don't know if I can justify this beyond being a hunch, but I feel strongly that individuals in many historical and current cultures have relied on other individuals to form their identity and morals. Different cultures have different levels of individuality--some have had a much higher need for communal function than others; the United States seems to be one that is frequently pegged as an individualistic society that favors the individual over any community. I don't know if this is exactly true, but I do feel that this is the case, and I often think about self-sufficiency as "good", though self-sufficiency does not preclude community-based thinking. Regardless, an individual gets input somehow--older cultures, I believe, received input from story telling, advice, conversation, discussion, with other individuals to form a network of thinking that, in part, creates the individual's identity (and helps them tend towards certain decisions, encourages individuals to pass along information for others' input, etc). If I had a bad experience planting a certain vegetable or learned of a new pest, I could pass it along to a neighbor or friend who was trying to grow the same crop. If I knew that there was a predator near a fishing spot, I could pass that information along so that others didn't run the risk of being pursued by a predator. If I ate at a restaurant and got food poisoning, I would tell others (and probably alert the Health Department) that I was sick so they would not have the same experience. All of these inputs have a tremendous affect on others.
One important note today, particularly in the United States but in other cultures as well, is the overwhelming influence of media and the vastness of its affect on us. It takes up such a large portion of our input that it is, in my thinking, forming the majority of our identity. There are so many facets of media that it is hard to address them all here, but living in a smaller Midwestern city, many of our friends have smart phones that profoundly influence people's identity. Where I grew up there are far fewer smart phones, but many of those people are influenced by television or newspapers. I might even go so far as to speculate that input of a sensory nature (that is non-media based) makes up less of our input than media-based input, that is to say that the looking that I do with my eyes to determine my path of travel, to avoid obstacles, to learn something new is less than the input that I get from media. One example of this is, of course, from food--I had never cooked rabbit before, and have tried to expand the types of meat that we eat, particularly for more sustainable animals, and when it came time to butcher the rabbit I watched a video on butchering instead of trusting instincts (gained from butchering other animals) and looking at the animal for obvious butchering points. I will not say that I should have just looked--I appreciate the resources available to me--but it is interesting to think about other options. If I had not watched the video, what is worst case scenario?
That is a relatively inconsequential example, but I use it to illustrate my ideas to think about the broader implications in this. What is determined to be valuable in our culture is undeniable influenced (and I might even argue totally and solely influenced) by media because we are using the media as our input in a manner that prevents us from relying on our own, non-media input.
There has been a tremendous amount written about art fairs--I feel like it bubbles up every December during Basel and during other art fairs around the U.S. Many of these articles are against art fairs and some are supportive of them, but I think it is good to think about your own input systems while reading these articles and honestly contemplate what the fair means to you as an artist and as an artist connected to the art community of the United States or the greater art world. Will you refuse to participate in an art fair? If so, why? How are you being influenced in this? Who are fairs for, and what purpose do they serve? I don't think there are easy answers to this question--but I can say, for sure, that if I lived near Basel I would attend to see things. I've attended Expo Chicago (or whatever it has been called over the years) multiple times, and have never purchased a thing nor gone with the intention of participating in the money side of these fairs. I honestly find it an amazing place to see what a large number of galleries are presenting--even if its shit--and love to attend them. Without fairs, the art market doesn't magically become un-commodified, so I don't know if my time is best spent trying to eradicate art fairs or criticize the attendees or artists that participate.
I do know for sure that art is, even if it is influenced by the media, a pristine input that offers solace from the overwhelming amount of media that we encounter. This is probably one reason that I think of, over and over again, for me being invested in painting and abstract painting: media has very little influence on the images that I create, or, probably the more truthful statement would be that my images would still exist even if media did not.
What remains after media might be the kernel of this that I am thinking about in a broader sense. After the end of media, what survives, and how do we go on? I doubt it will ever end in my lifetime, but I'd much rather continue to seek out non-media inputs and experiences because I feel that they contribute to my life in a richer way than media inputs.
I honestly don't know if I can justify this beyond being a hunch, but I feel strongly that individuals in many historical and current cultures have relied on other individuals to form their identity and morals. Different cultures have different levels of individuality--some have had a much higher need for communal function than others; the United States seems to be one that is frequently pegged as an individualistic society that favors the individual over any community. I don't know if this is exactly true, but I do feel that this is the case, and I often think about self-sufficiency as "good", though self-sufficiency does not preclude community-based thinking. Regardless, an individual gets input somehow--older cultures, I believe, received input from story telling, advice, conversation, discussion, with other individuals to form a network of thinking that, in part, creates the individual's identity (and helps them tend towards certain decisions, encourages individuals to pass along information for others' input, etc). If I had a bad experience planting a certain vegetable or learned of a new pest, I could pass it along to a neighbor or friend who was trying to grow the same crop. If I knew that there was a predator near a fishing spot, I could pass that information along so that others didn't run the risk of being pursued by a predator. If I ate at a restaurant and got food poisoning, I would tell others (and probably alert the Health Department) that I was sick so they would not have the same experience. All of these inputs have a tremendous affect on others.
One important note today, particularly in the United States but in other cultures as well, is the overwhelming influence of media and the vastness of its affect on us. It takes up such a large portion of our input that it is, in my thinking, forming the majority of our identity. There are so many facets of media that it is hard to address them all here, but living in a smaller Midwestern city, many of our friends have smart phones that profoundly influence people's identity. Where I grew up there are far fewer smart phones, but many of those people are influenced by television or newspapers. I might even go so far as to speculate that input of a sensory nature (that is non-media based) makes up less of our input than media-based input, that is to say that the looking that I do with my eyes to determine my path of travel, to avoid obstacles, to learn something new is less than the input that I get from media. One example of this is, of course, from food--I had never cooked rabbit before, and have tried to expand the types of meat that we eat, particularly for more sustainable animals, and when it came time to butcher the rabbit I watched a video on butchering instead of trusting instincts (gained from butchering other animals) and looking at the animal for obvious butchering points. I will not say that I should have just looked--I appreciate the resources available to me--but it is interesting to think about other options. If I had not watched the video, what is worst case scenario?
That is a relatively inconsequential example, but I use it to illustrate my ideas to think about the broader implications in this. What is determined to be valuable in our culture is undeniable influenced (and I might even argue totally and solely influenced) by media because we are using the media as our input in a manner that prevents us from relying on our own, non-media input.
There has been a tremendous amount written about art fairs--I feel like it bubbles up every December during Basel and during other art fairs around the U.S. Many of these articles are against art fairs and some are supportive of them, but I think it is good to think about your own input systems while reading these articles and honestly contemplate what the fair means to you as an artist and as an artist connected to the art community of the United States or the greater art world. Will you refuse to participate in an art fair? If so, why? How are you being influenced in this? Who are fairs for, and what purpose do they serve? I don't think there are easy answers to this question--but I can say, for sure, that if I lived near Basel I would attend to see things. I've attended Expo Chicago (or whatever it has been called over the years) multiple times, and have never purchased a thing nor gone with the intention of participating in the money side of these fairs. I honestly find it an amazing place to see what a large number of galleries are presenting--even if its shit--and love to attend them. Without fairs, the art market doesn't magically become un-commodified, so I don't know if my time is best spent trying to eradicate art fairs or criticize the attendees or artists that participate.
I do know for sure that art is, even if it is influenced by the media, a pristine input that offers solace from the overwhelming amount of media that we encounter. This is probably one reason that I think of, over and over again, for me being invested in painting and abstract painting: media has very little influence on the images that I create, or, probably the more truthful statement would be that my images would still exist even if media did not.
What remains after media might be the kernel of this that I am thinking about in a broader sense. After the end of media, what survives, and how do we go on? I doubt it will ever end in my lifetime, but I'd much rather continue to seek out non-media inputs and experiences because I feel that they contribute to my life in a richer way than media inputs.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
The Sleeping Ghosts
Though I've wanted to keep school out of the content of this blog as much as possible, undoubtedly things are going to sneak in; I've forgotten how much teaching permeates one's ideas and thinking during the semester (that is, until one has to rebel against it for the sake of sanity). Most of these ideas will be cloaked in studio practice but they undoubtedly have origins or links to the classroom.
I've revisited Locke's Memory Theory of personal identity and it has some interesting implications on studio practice. I actually am reading it anew, I think, as I was introduced to it by a philosopher named John Perry. Locke's theory can be written out as the following:
A is the same person as B if and only if A can remember having an experience of B's.
As simple as that sounds, and as most of us would agree with it in the sense that personal identity is difficult to define and claim having without the aid of memory, it still offers complex insight into being an artist and making work over time. We often consider that artists work with the concept of identity; but I'd like to call attention to the fact that it is a crutch of poorly expressed ideas in art. Philosophy has puzzled over how to define the A/B of Locke's theory, and as far as contemporary art is concerned, I would assert that we can take it as a representation of the artist.
Now, I am in no way thinking that this solves the conundrum of personal identity in a philosophical sense, but artists as makers have the benefit of physical remnants of their memories; not in totality, but in the sense that I do not remember making work in undergraduate studies but that artwork still exists and poses my identity in some form. Surely non-artists have physical remnants--an individual purchases a car, for example, and wakes up the next morning remembering that he purchased the car and thereby establishing his identity in a philosophical sense--but as artists most of us have work built up from years of work. I have a room in my basement that is full of this identity establishing objects that have built up over the last 10 years of making things and paintings. All in one place it is quite profound--even to me, alone, with no one else looking.
I remember reading an article by Morton Feldman talking about a studio visit with Philip Guston, and describing the paintings, as they walked out of the room, as sleeping giants. I think I understand what I Feldman was getting at, but when I go into the basement to add more work to the room of past acts I think of them as sleeping ghosts; they exist in my mind, phenomenally, and establish my past and my identity without being on view or exhibited. Stacked, they have a collective power that demands that I continue to feed it with more and more work!
Identity is the totality of the art world; even artists that work to remove evidence of the hand are still exerting their identity into their work. Different artists may use parts of the concept of identity in their work which is different from others, and maybe certain artists emphasize a specific part of identity in a way that they should talk about the work as involving identity, but in truthfulness, identity is the structure for everything that an artist does. Using it is also as nefarious as stating that your work is about nature; but identity should be the given that we all rely on.
I think I may switch paths to more creative writing for the next post...more to come.
Current reading, listening, and watching has involved:
From A to X by John Berger
Dark Holler, Smithsonian Folkways
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
etc...
new studio work also posted on the website. More always on its way.
I've revisited Locke's Memory Theory of personal identity and it has some interesting implications on studio practice. I actually am reading it anew, I think, as I was introduced to it by a philosopher named John Perry. Locke's theory can be written out as the following:
A is the same person as B if and only if A can remember having an experience of B's.
As simple as that sounds, and as most of us would agree with it in the sense that personal identity is difficult to define and claim having without the aid of memory, it still offers complex insight into being an artist and making work over time. We often consider that artists work with the concept of identity; but I'd like to call attention to the fact that it is a crutch of poorly expressed ideas in art. Philosophy has puzzled over how to define the A/B of Locke's theory, and as far as contemporary art is concerned, I would assert that we can take it as a representation of the artist.
Now, I am in no way thinking that this solves the conundrum of personal identity in a philosophical sense, but artists as makers have the benefit of physical remnants of their memories; not in totality, but in the sense that I do not remember making work in undergraduate studies but that artwork still exists and poses my identity in some form. Surely non-artists have physical remnants--an individual purchases a car, for example, and wakes up the next morning remembering that he purchased the car and thereby establishing his identity in a philosophical sense--but as artists most of us have work built up from years of work. I have a room in my basement that is full of this identity establishing objects that have built up over the last 10 years of making things and paintings. All in one place it is quite profound--even to me, alone, with no one else looking.
I remember reading an article by Morton Feldman talking about a studio visit with Philip Guston, and describing the paintings, as they walked out of the room, as sleeping giants. I think I understand what I Feldman was getting at, but when I go into the basement to add more work to the room of past acts I think of them as sleeping ghosts; they exist in my mind, phenomenally, and establish my past and my identity without being on view or exhibited. Stacked, they have a collective power that demands that I continue to feed it with more and more work!
Identity is the totality of the art world; even artists that work to remove evidence of the hand are still exerting their identity into their work. Different artists may use parts of the concept of identity in their work which is different from others, and maybe certain artists emphasize a specific part of identity in a way that they should talk about the work as involving identity, but in truthfulness, identity is the structure for everything that an artist does. Using it is also as nefarious as stating that your work is about nature; but identity should be the given that we all rely on.
I think I may switch paths to more creative writing for the next post...more to come.
Current reading, listening, and watching has involved:
From A to X by John Berger
Dark Holler, Smithsonian Folkways
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
etc...
new studio work also posted on the website. More always on its way.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
purposes for doing and making
One thing that I have been thinking about for the last couple months is the idea of my work, studio practice, and motivation for doing things being in line with folk music. I don't mean the folk music of the 60's and 70's, rather music that is produced by a culture for its aesthetic and entertainment purposes (but an entertainment that is without an economic value). In some ways this might be hard to make completely clear, and it is certainly something that I am still working through as an underpinning to my studio practices. The best example I can think of are the types of music that Alan Lomax, a musician, ethnomusicologist, and anthropologist collected. My understanding of Lomax's aim was to collect, preserve, and record music as cultural expressions. Music, today, is a different sort of beast, at least to the majority of the United States and other 1st world countries, though I imagine it is different for everyone around the world--music is dominated by commodification.
Another way of approaching what it is that I am trying to get at is by thinking about the end goals of production. A recording I remember learning
about in college--postal workers in Ghana canceling stamps--sticks out as a
good example. The recording is a
multi-part song composed of a number of workers whistling to the rhythm of the
percussion of their canceling stamps, which is a loud, dull, thud at amazing
tempos. This music was created, I imagine, for the purpose of doing something creative during work, not for commercial purposes. The track comes from an ethnomusicology textbook called Worlds of Music, so I'm fairly certain the postal workers didn't get paid for the recording, nor did they want or need to: it would have happened regardless.
Another way this comes up in my daily existence is with food, believe it or not. There have been a number of times when I have made something for someone and they have said "you should sell this!". I am confident in my cooking and baking skills, for sure, and it is always a nice comment to hear, in that it means that my food is commercially viable--i.e. it is at least as good as what you can buy in the store. I think this is thought about more now with the recent boom in local eating and shopping--the market is much more receptive to locally produced goods that it was five years ago. The importance of this, however, is that I have no interest in selling food products that I make. I have a passion for learning cooking and baking techniques and wish to reproduce foods that I've had in restaurants or abroad and my motivation is not for the sake of the consumer, it is for the sake of me understanding how something works, knowing how to make it again, and making it for friends and family to enjoy as a part of an aesthetically-inclined food lifestyle. Any sort of production for commercial gain is against my reasons and purposes for making the food. It would change the purpose and production, and it is not something that is motivating to me at all.
How this fits into studio production and making artwork is tricky; the art market and how we as artists fit into it is never a clean relationship. As I work more and further my career I expect that I'll have more information and honest interpretations of this relationship. I do not make my work for commercial purposes, as I suspect anyone reading this blog also does not, but I am interested in having a gallery that represents my work and me as an artist. Printmaking pals always give me a bit of hell for wanting this, saying that it is a painter's dilemma, and I would tend to agree with them. I do know, for sure, that I will need to have a healthy personal relationship with any gallery that I work with. I also know that I am not reliant on selling art work to pay my bills, which also puts me in a good place--I could leave any negative relationships with galleries as I need to. I won't go any further in this line of thinking, as it is all completely hypothetical at the moment--I have had incredible opportunities with galleries that are right-minded, independent, and progressive in the art world (meaning they exist with razor thin budgets and support from an art community and its creative capital), and all of these galleries (Heavy Brow Gallery in Bloomington, Illinois; FLUXX Gallery in Des Moines, Iowa; and others) have been incredibly supportive to me and other artists associated with them. I imagine, though, as we all make more work, get older and wiser, and get more established in our respective art communities that we will all have tougher decisions to make in regards to how we fit into the art market.
These thoughts will undoubtedly continue...stay tuned.
I've got new work up on the website, including new drawings in the Letters of the Weather series, including the piece below:
the last of things, 2012
acrylic, ink, ammonia, graphite on paper
20" x 30"
Monday, November 19, 2012
song for the white owl 2 // UNC Charlotte
Part two of the ungiven lecture during my recent visit to UNC Charlotte.
II. Concept of
Being
For the last few years I have been consciously working to
find ways in which I could more directly live the life that I was thinking
about living. The rural aesthetic
felt more like it could be brushed aside as a schtick, as something that was a
motif in my work, and I wanted to expand in ways that made being in the studio
more meaningful.
I remember getting a book from the library in undergrad
called Rauschenberg: Art and Life and
being particularly taken by the title; I found the book at a time when I was
struggling a bit in school, not sure how much I wanted to be a part of the art
world and not sure how I fit into it--I grew up lower middle class, worked
multiple jobs through undergraduate and graduate school, and wasn't attracted
to the culture of the art market and the fat cat collectors that I saw when I
went to art fairs in Chicago. The
Rauschenberg book, though, helped me to realize that this way of life was
possible; that Rauschenberg was clearly (as one of the most prolific artists
I've ever seen) able to just make things even though he had a lot of monetary
success in his lifetime. Artists
like Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, and Richard Tuttle also were good to hear about
as they chose to live outside of NYC and make work away from those constraints. Now, in our contemporary society, it is
great to meet new artists who find themselves outside of metropolitan
areas--starting great projects, creating small galleries, and building
communities of creative individuals that provide far more than what money
does.
I have always wanted to be self-sufficient and leaned
towards homesteading. the Foxfire
books were profoundly impactful to me as I started in college and I've always
been interested in finding ways to make something as opposed to buying
something. In the last three years
my wife and I have had a successful 500 SF garden in our backyard where we grow
a number of vegetables, fruits, herbs and weeds. As this part of my identity has developed, I have noticed my
physical and mental body being more in tune with the progression and cycle of
the year; I also started paying attention quite a bit more to what was
happening in the night sky. I
started using constellations that where visible in the Northern Hemisphere
while I was making the painting and/or drawing as the compositional basis. I then developed the compositions with
gestural marks, push and pull, and spatial geometric abstraction as an
acknowledgement to the constellation that helped create this new image. As I have always been partial to folk
traditions and superstitions, the constellations helped me to make work that
was connected to the experience of being on earth, living within a complex
system of planet and space, and knowing my place and movement as the
constellations changed and time moved forward to cycle back.
I additionally started using the forms of plants, trees, and
other forms of being (in that they have life, in some capacity) as the
compositional basis for paintings as well. This is a sort of overarching idea that I still consider and
think about in my work, as most artists should--why is it that I am using the
elements or symbols that I am using?
What do they mean, and what won't
I use in my work? This last
question is particularly interesting to me because though it is worded in a
negative way, it helps me establish boundaries and get a better sense of why I
use the elements that I do choose to use.
The plants, trees, and leaves have continued to be a major part of my
work; even in more recent wall-based installations. In part these elements are not only interesting in terms of
formal qualities--how a tomato vine can be a line, or a leaf can act like paper
or an awkward brush mark. It is
also rewarding to me to use materials that I have--a lot of the organic
elements in this work are dead plants that would just be composted if I didn't
use them; I like using found wood or materials that are easily accessible not
only because of my attempts at self-sufficiency but also because I think
transcendence becomes all the more important with materials that I see and/or
use every day, as a part of my existence.
Drawing for the Backspace Collective fundraiser, which is still accepting drawings that will be sold to benefit the space in Peoria, Illinois. Please consider donating a piece, drawings are due by Nov. 30, 2012. All works will be sold for $25.
http://wearebackspace.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/drawback-2012.pdf
Monday, October 29, 2012
After the harvest
As I rewatch and consider horror films apropos to this time of year, I have been considering how these films are linked to Halloween and what the conditions of the archetype of the holiday are that relate not only our sense of the macabre but also our strained relationship with death or dying as well as our thoughts towards our ancestors--specifically, why this time of year and this change of seasons has such a strong relationship to these ideas of mortality, fear, and things we cannot control.
My own impression of the archetype of the seasonal change (from a Northern Hemisphere standpoint, from late summer to fall to winter) is that it is, in part, a transition to less daylight and more dark night time. There is legitimately less sunshine, not only in terms of the feeling of the weather but also due to the arc of the sun and its path that is lower in the sky.
Additionally, the days are shorter. Despite modern attempts for us to extend our work periods with light, there is a pull for less activity in the winter, the hunkering-down and waiting out the winter. Samhain, Halloween, and Day of the Dead are all at the beginning of the downhill race towards not leaving the shelter of a warm home until the snow melts and spring starts to warm the days.
How does this connect to the macabre and to fear? In part, longer nights might be responsible for this. There is also the connection that this time of year has to giving thanks and reflecting on our ancestors; though at times it is hard to determine what of this is cultural (i.e. the holiday of Thanksgiving) and what, truly, is an archetype of the history of humankind--the type of history that is engrained in our bones from the very dawn of being.
I think that I am creating more questions than answering anything in particular, so I'll try to state my case plainly: this time of year is a confluence of the past and preparation; and that transition certainly creates an unsteady period of change. The unsteadiness might create a sort of moving reality that opens itself up to questioning. This moving reality is harder for us to control and harder even to understand, though we know what is about to happen; in the end, it is our own uneasiness that allows our imagination to create more ghosts than actually exist.
I have been interested in the ineffable feelings, ominousness, and reflection of the fall for quite some time. Obviously, if you've read this far, I have few answers to offer; and here in lies part of my interest in this time of year. Here is a great image of a gaelic carving, in some ways thought to ward off evil spirits. This Samhain "jack-o-lantern" is carved out of a turnip.
Also, check out Studiobreak for my interview with its creator, Dave Linneweh, and Bill Conger, concerning Kubrik's The Shining and other horror films that might come up. I imagine it will be posted sometime this week to correspond to Halloween.
My own impression of the archetype of the seasonal change (from a Northern Hemisphere standpoint, from late summer to fall to winter) is that it is, in part, a transition to less daylight and more dark night time. There is legitimately less sunshine, not only in terms of the feeling of the weather but also due to the arc of the sun and its path that is lower in the sky.
Additionally, the days are shorter. Despite modern attempts for us to extend our work periods with light, there is a pull for less activity in the winter, the hunkering-down and waiting out the winter. Samhain, Halloween, and Day of the Dead are all at the beginning of the downhill race towards not leaving the shelter of a warm home until the snow melts and spring starts to warm the days.
How does this connect to the macabre and to fear? In part, longer nights might be responsible for this. There is also the connection that this time of year has to giving thanks and reflecting on our ancestors; though at times it is hard to determine what of this is cultural (i.e. the holiday of Thanksgiving) and what, truly, is an archetype of the history of humankind--the type of history that is engrained in our bones from the very dawn of being.
I think that I am creating more questions than answering anything in particular, so I'll try to state my case plainly: this time of year is a confluence of the past and preparation; and that transition certainly creates an unsteady period of change. The unsteadiness might create a sort of moving reality that opens itself up to questioning. This moving reality is harder for us to control and harder even to understand, though we know what is about to happen; in the end, it is our own uneasiness that allows our imagination to create more ghosts than actually exist.
I have been interested in the ineffable feelings, ominousness, and reflection of the fall for quite some time. Obviously, if you've read this far, I have few answers to offer; and here in lies part of my interest in this time of year. Here is a great image of a gaelic carving, in some ways thought to ward off evil spirits. This Samhain "jack-o-lantern" is carved out of a turnip.
Also, check out Studiobreak for my interview with its creator, Dave Linneweh, and Bill Conger, concerning Kubrik's The Shining and other horror films that might come up. I imagine it will be posted sometime this week to correspond to Halloween.
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