Drawing on Experience

John Dewey wrote ‘Art as Experience’ in the 1930s and set out the centrality of the communication of experience to the practice of art. I have been involved for a while with a research group associated with the university of Porto entitled 'The Observation of Perception, considered through Drawing' and my own research in relation to this has been to explore how we might visualise experiences of interoception. I have posted fairly regularly on the different aspects that I have confronted as the work around this has developed, from a consideration of 'qualia' as the phenomenal quality of experiences, how we now think about inner body perception in an age of CGI, the relative benefits of hand drawn and computer refined imagery when making representations of inner body experiences, how the body and its nervous system construct inner maps of experience, how we might use this process of visualisation for the development of a contemporary type of votive and other issues that are all related to why interoception is an important aspect of perception, especially if we want to reflect the full complexity of perceived information, that comes from both outside and inside of our bodies at the same time. However I'm also very aware that as well as making images about this, which I regard as my primary research, I'm also writing about the process and sometimes forgetting that I'm writing in English and the English language is itself a somewhat limited communication medium. This post is therefore a reminder to check out how other languages deal with issues that are similar, but in their very difference, open out conceptual alternatives. 

The word 'experience' in German can be translated as either 'erfahrung' or 'erlebnis'. 'Erfahrung' represents deep, full blooded experiences that lead to knowledge, whilst 'erlebnis' is a word that stands for more superficial experiences that are perhaps enjoyable but not necessarily profound. In English 'experience' is a thing, but in German it is a quality of perceiving. There is a diagram that might help illustrate this difference. 

In the diagram we have two very different German words for something that is another single one in English. Körper refers to the body as an object, something to which physical qualities can be attributed. Leib, by contrast, implies the body as a subject. 'Körper' represents the physical/material, objective body and 'Leib' the lived/animated, subjective body. In English of course we have the word 'corpse' to define a 'dead' body, but this is not what the German word implies. These distinctions are vital to our reading of phenomenology because the main early thinkers are German. According to Husserl and, then later, Merleau-Ponty who takes his reading from Husserl, 'Körper' is the body-object, while 'Leib' is the lived-living body. In German what it is to be a body (Leibsein) can be contrasted with what it is to have a body (Körperhaben).  Körper stems from the Latin corpus and refers to bodies as physical entities, including celestial bodies, geometrical entities, and dead bodies or corpses. Leib, by contrast, is related to the verbs leben (to live) and erleben (to experience, to go through) and the adjectives lebendig (animated, lively) and leibhaft (in person, in the flesh). As such, Leib refers to the body as it is experienced or lived, instead of the body as it can be measured or quantified. Therefore for my purposes I'm dealing with subjective experiences of the lived body, (Leib) not a set of measured physical bits of objective information that are records of the physical nature of the body, (Körper). 

A representation of stomach cramps (A subjective experience of the lived body)

If we go back to 'erfahrung' or 'erlebnis' we can then open out the two differences in meaning even further. In this October issue of Art Monthly, Matthew Bowman looks to Walter Benjamin and his understanding of the distinctions between 'erfahrung' or 'erlebnis' to open out a reflection on why we are no longer able to sustain 'erfahrung' or deeply felt experiences, and how we use 'erlebnis' as a way to protect ourselves from the constant bombardment of information that is our contemporary state of being. We in effect can only deal with shallow or superficial responses to experience because if we tried to deeply experience the constant flow of stimulus that we are now subjected to, we would seize up and be crippled by information overload. My reading of this is to keep making slow things by hand, things that you can take your time with, rather than trying to make another incursion into the world of mass media. Instead of trying to avoid confronting profound, deep feelings; to cultivate them. To use a sense of 'erfahrung' as something to strive for in your work. Colour, surface texture, tonal variation and other basic elements of image making can be deeply emotional, and we can have profound relationships with both objects and other people. Events still move us. Yes we are subjected to a constant bombardment of information, but we can still recognise the qualitative emotional differences between life changing events, such as experiences of birth, death, and of those special times of unexpected spiritual awareness that can become moments of epiphany. If not, we will become empty, emotionless husks, incapable of deep feelings. In slowing things down, we help ourselves and others to feel more, to attune ourselves to the wider cosmic wonder that we live within. 

A chest pain visualised

A meditation on the body

Sometimes thoughts can be carried in materials in ways that you don't expect. In the image above, I found myself talking in a language of pigment diluted in water. As the image emerged out of swirling liquids, it seemed to develop some sort of harmonic with my own body. This is something that can happen both within and without; can be both portrait and landscape. Finding the right material to work with can be vital, for instance, Sue Bryan's drawings of trees, mainly using charcoal, sometimes achieve a close harmony between the dry crumble of the charcoal, the texture of 'treeness' and the atmospheric emergence of the tree; the 'crumble' and soft smudge of the chosen material representing both object and the space it grows into. 

Sue Bryan

Just looking at a tree or listening to your own body can be antidotes to the constant flow of digital information. So perhaps leave off reading this blog and go outside and look at stuff. With a pencil in your hand, examine a tree and when you are ready, begin to draw it or if you are stuck inside think about what it feels like to hold a pencil, and draw that. 

See also: 

The magazine PSIAX issue 7  This link is to a PDF download of the magazine which includes my recent article on visualising interoceptual experience

Qualia

Surface and inner body perception in an age of CGI

John Dewey

Considering analogue and digital drawing processes in relation to the visualisation of inner body experience

Maps made by our nervous systems 

Drawing and healing traditions

Why interoception