Second meeting, gallery visit and a talk from Victor Burgin (long day)
It's our small presentation day, all of us need to talk about our own work today. During the presentation, we bring up some interesting issue like public unconcious, it is proposed to be an unconsious mind not only yourself. I do some research later on, found that it could call Collective unconscious,a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed inhumanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience. Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, in that the personal unconscious is a personal reservoir of experience unique to each individual, while the collective unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species. This is so interesting and could be a nice starting point to develop another serious of studio practise.
Next, someone introduce Norman O Brown's book: Life against Death, it's about the fear of death, the book was written in the height of cold war during the first nuclear build up, the author believes that we must found a new way thinking of politics and society, or else human race will destroy itself. He turns to Freudto freud as the most radical philosopher of cilvilization. Freud's thought is not empirically verifiable. It violates our common sense in many ways. But it opens up new 'mad' possibilities for a radical reorientation of society. This is new for me as well, hope I could have a chance to read through it in coming days, death issue is one of a interesting topic to work on, I am exciting with it. In the following small presentaion among our work, I like Polly work very much. She put a mp3 under a pillow on the bed, playing with a voice whispering a same setense like,'i dunno what to do, I dunno what to do....', when I lie down, this experience is like a deep voice in my mind shouting out from my body inside and connect with the mp3, it create a resonance between the work and the audience itself. And I am really appreciate this work is because it is one of the issue I would like to work on as a periphery of dreams, what I have been think for a long time and haven't sort out the method to showing that. Another work by Caroline in group is about the issue of repitation. the outcome of the work is really similar to the idea in my foundation studio practice as well. I was counting the repetition and feel like artist is having the ability to make simply thing or boring daily object/ movement become interesting, by expending it, showing to audience. I feel surprise that this group of people's way of thinking are sharing such a similar thought and creating our own art. Like I am quite looks forward to what work wlll we develop after this TOP project, what kind of chemistry reaction will come out over this group pf people.
Soon, it becomes my turn. through out the sharing, it bring up the discussion with Samuel Beckett's " I, Not I" again, the point of orality, how body part stand for the whole body and infantile sexuality.
It reminds me that what I used to be interest, from lips, tongue, teeth to sense od smelling, facial features and human body, is still under the issue of part object, it will definitly become my further develop direction in short. At last, it's Miju's sharing time,her topic is relly interesting, she is questioning why can't she masturbate? Because sex is a taboo? She mentioned that when she talk about it with others, she feels she can speak about sex openly with others but feel shame when experience sexual acts by herself. The discussion then goes to talk about sexual pressure, projection of human and how animal feel when having sex, does they feel shame? etc. Miju topic is quite down to human needs, for me, I don't really like those art work work out with sex topic, I got a question is where is the necessity of putting sex symbol in art piece, is it just for shock out? well, after an year self study on psychoanalytic thinking (just reading related books), I found out this action actually is a natural needs for human to express a lots of thought, overcoming the anxiety and recovering. For example, I start to have some thought after visiting the current exhibition- Sarah Lucas:SITUATION Absolute Beach Man Rubble in White Chapel gallery, other than feeling empty in my brain.
Finally, this morming session have been end, and we will go gallery visit in th e afternoon section...(to be continued in next entry, really a long day.....)