SOCIAL SCULPTURE

SOCIAL SCULPTURE

“ Art as an instrument for consciousness rather than just for attention” Shelley Sacks.

A philosophy of freedom and transformation, and allowing things to unfold and giving direction work together. 

A thinking that could revive social life through an artistic impulse.  Abolishing the separation between intellect and psyche, art and life – paradox that everyone confront when approaching their work in this way.

Seeing difficulties as resources

Social sculpture: creative strategies to come into dialogue with oneself, as we engage we gain new experiences. Is about developing our insights. It is about building new capacities to deal with challenges, can activate, call and plead with us, they don’t have to be a duty or a responsibility. How do we develop our ability to have the capacity to challenge? “ We need to find a way to see our ideas” Beuys.

Working with the ‘entrails’ of ‘internal space’, how do we interprate feelings and emotions, ‘internity’, how do we express ourselves in codes? How do we show human intimacy? How can we mobilise and externalise internal intimacy? Experiential freedom?

It is A perspective of seeing relationships between positive and negative, self and others as a realistic whole.

Socrates: Creative midwifery

Where art and dialogue brings new things to birth.

Rebirthing of new ideas, new organs of perception. Inner technologies Inner and outer connections.

The wound.

Poetic continents – psyche and consciousnessare most important to nurture and unfold.

Poetics of internal and external.Nourishing all those sharing the same path through different disciplines and fields.  Emphasising the difference between an enlivened experience of being rather than a dulled one.

Aesthetic is not defined by style but as  a means for developing a fuller understanding or ourselves.

TERMINOLOGY

Meaningfully share

Art action

Artist as agents for change

Transformative thought

Transformative process

Collective process

Mindfulness

Activate ones inner field

Develop capacities

Social ‘processworks’
collaborative actions

Anti capitalist practice

Invisible materials

Different forms of knowing

Expanding awareness of the senses.

Active listening.

Directional forces

Reassurance rather than persuasion.

Inspiration and imagination/ intuition as forms of thought.

The land of encountering the other. ( Atlas p78) 

Eco-citizenship

The relationship between individual and collective

Freedom and responsibility

Renewable energies

Rethinking progress

Plastic processes

Materials v immaterials

Autonomous Zones

Difficulties as resources

Non material forces

Anti extreme capitalism

Capacity building

Internal mobilisation

Methods of enlivenment

 

GLOSSERY:

DEATH THAT KEEPS ME AWAKE

Joseph Beuys and Rudolf Steiner. Foundations of their thoughts.

By Wolfgang Zumdick

AADR

SEELISCH: Soul, spirit, psyche part of us that is not physically visible.

RICHTKRAFTE: The restoring force’. Direct creativity and freedom to unfold things, give direction to our thinking and shape our world. ‘

GEIST: a consciousness that encompasses mind, culture consciousness and spirit.

GOETHEAN METHODOLOGY:

JOSEPH BEUYS: explored the ‘third road’ between capitalism and socialism, a free democratic socialism.

WOLFGANG ZUMDICK: poetic continents.

RUDOLF STEINER: phenomenology of the mind.

SHELLEY SACKS AESTHETIC: developing a fuller understanding of ourselves in the world. Aesthetic and anaesthetic –

MEISTER ECKHART:

WALDORF SCHOOLS

JACOB BOHME:

SCHILLERS philosophical writings that bridge ‘feeling and thought’, ‘body & mind’. Sensuous knowledge.

FREDRICH HOLDERLIN poems and reflections.

SCHELLING & NOVALIS romantic ideas.

SYMBIOTIC WORLD: diverse organisms that live together.

Hidden forces & invisible forces that govern the physical realm.

Three different capacities of the psyche: Thought | Feeling | Volition

Anthroposophy: Spiritual science. (Geisteswissen shaff) the opposite of Natural science. Needing to find ways to balance and work with these dualities, these two opposites.

Artistic process: as an inner force, comes from an angelic realm.

An esotericism: steiner’s philosophy of freedom.

Conscious transformer: someone who uses the astral, etheric and physical body to increase powers of the mind and reason and to help develop self-reflection.

The substance of perception: dreams, imagination, concepts, ideas, and hallucinations are objects of perception. An esotericism

Euryhmy: where vitality of soul is enhanced.

Hidden forces: of a spiritual nature, macroscopic components of the physical body.

Homologous worlds: between the worlds of above and below.

I: ones will. The world of the will and intuition.Imagination: an analogy to the process of creation.

Mana’s connection: the union of these three bodies that enables us to connect with original transcendental essence of our existence and enhances our human capacity for empathy….also could be described as Sanskrit atma.

Macroanthropes: to understand the world through self reflection, self knowledge? If I can understand myself myself then I can understand the world. Understanding the world through self knowledge.

Mench: human being

Metaphysics as a science: to see the spiritual dimension, the spiritual dimensions  or angelic realms.

Monism: a denial of duality between spirit and the world, matter and mind. Only one supreme being exists, only believing in science (Julian)

Noetic: mystical experience, cosmic, invisible phenomena, a sense of revelation.

Noumenon: knowable by the senses Kantien word.

Organs of perception: imagination| inspiration | intuition

Res Extensa: latin for extended substance of a thing. From Rene Descortes.

Res Cogitans: Corporeal substance both cogitan and extensa become a radical dualism both manifestations of divine thought p36.

Natural sience:

Etheric body:

Astrol body:

Physical body:

Volition: the power of using ones own will, the act of willing, resolving and choosing.

Sensory and extra sensory perceptions:

Forces of the Cosmos

Seraphim: closest to god. Spirit of love.

Cherubin: also closest to god. Spirit of love who creates order, beauty and harmony.

Thrones: spirits of Will, impulse of volition.

Spiritual powers of wisdom, spirits of love

Kyriotetes: closesct to humans, bottom of the Angel pyramid.

Dynamies and Exusiai: spirits of personality

Archais: All the spirits of personality

Angels: are the forces behind and within humans. Can be the force that brings light/life into our being.

Hyreaches : Angels that are the universes I, who are responsible for creation, they make up heaven and the celestial sphere of god. These are active in shaping the world.

JOB :

When other people impose/set work out for you to do. When tasks are set by other people for you to adhere to and having to do what you are told in order to pay your bills, a paid position of regular employment that is usually bland and unfulfilling.

It attends to fundamental basic human needs to exist – bills paid, a basic roof over my head, basic food and clothes to survive in this modern world. Loss of creativity to oneself.

Pain, stagnant, solitary, meaningless, disconnection, dislocation to ones self.

CAREER: A specialist professional lifework that gives a sense of wellbeing, fulfilment, contentment, excitement and purpose. A career makes one thrive everyday. A career  enables a more deeper and meaningful connection to ourselves and the world around us. I see my creativity and innovation as a by-product of my happiness. Pleasure, sense of flow, growth, endless possibilities, meaningful, flourish. Enlivenment.

INTER-RELATING JOB and CAREER:

Inter-disciplinary practice:

Being imaginative with your own career path to sustain your future is essential to contemporary life now. Being adaptable is a survival strategy for transformation, growth and wellbeing.

Inter-relating a career and job can be a contemporary living solution to sustain a main income and sanity in an imaginative way. By being able to sustain this kind of work to pay my basic bills is essential to wellbeing. With out this approach I would hate my job and find it difficult to stay with it and stay emotionally and psychologically healthy.  This approach can opened up other doors and avenues that are really exciting and can expanded into new creative opportunities, avenues and specialisms.

Discovering a way to connect the reality of a job together with a Career is very rewarding and can develop into a niche and a way of being in the world.  It practices the ability to respond and grow to a rapidly changing world. It opens up new awareness and respect for things that need to be done. It offers an effective alternative way to rethink life through art (cross disciplinary practice). It makes one more conscious of what we can do and how it can benefit others. This method of working can develop new forms of engaging us and shaping our lives and other peoples lives.

It helps us to think in an unfixed, mobile and fluid way.
This method of working gives people new opportunities to work in unusual ways, different realms of prefesssionalism and bring together people who would not normally meet.

Re-evaluating meanings like ‘capital assets’, ‘Progress’, ‘profit’, ‘success’.

If I look at ‘capital assets’ and ‘progress’ outside the fixed definitions of their meanings, can i shift what is important to be human, more psychi-social based.

CAPITAL ASSETS:

Assets owned by a person, for investment.

Invisible assets: adaptability for investment in the future, experiential assets and the way we think, our values and attitudes, decisions we make, our sense of freedom rather than financial that do not thoughtlessly exploit and damage all life forms. The things I own inside myself that makes me. It is that defines me. What can I give back? What can I give back to the world in return?For me, Capital assets are also that are heart based, brings harmony to a state of mind, something that brings a state of flow to ones life. Something that breaks me free from conventional thinking, reawakens desires to expand the imagination, something that allows us to accept and celebrate our human limitations. When an inner harmony is reached. Have i moved out of restrictions, have i blurred lines, been spontanious, appreciated and achnowledged the flawed and irregular and incomplete.  This could be a lens for me to look at artworks too..

PROGRESS:

A practice of freedom not just in the individual human being but exploring the relationship of the individual to the collective. Shaping new forms of communities that depends on responsible individuals, to develop new understandings of ‘progress’ and shape non-exploitative relationships to other forms of life.  Embracing insecurities and activating my curiosity.  Cherishing new challenges and seeking the value in the challenges.  Developing own capacity’s for exchanging and sharing. Expanding relationships to place, being connected in the moment and the surroundings.

 HOW SOCIAL SCULPTURE QUESTIONS THINGS:

1.    What can our work offer us for inspiration?

2.    Can we use difficulties and resources for this inspiration?

3.    How can this connection between work and career develop ?

4.    In what ways could this connection advance social and economic understandings of the subject?

5.    In what ways does this connection maker you mobile, free standing, self sufficient and local?

6.    How does this overcome and illuminate numbness, alienation, isolation, displacement, the overlooked, and the imperfect?

7.    What is the outcome of playing into imaginative ideas and spontaneous actions.

8.    How can this move away from systems based on wages for labour and over production?

9.    How does this develop internal relationships with oneself and others.

10. How can this inter-disciplinary work  have an impact socially and ecologically?

11. In what ways can this method of working shape other peoples lives?

12. Why am I doing this, not just asking what is the cause and effect?

13. How does this develop our senses of touch|seeing|smelling|sense of movement|subconscious|speech|listening|state of being|exchange between two people|attitudes|values|

14. How does this link to connections between freedom and responsibility?

 

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