The ecstatic journey

As I go back to thinking about magic, I have also been trying to work with what I'm thinking of as the poetics of healing. This is another sort of shamanistic idea, but one informed by Bachelard's 'The Poetics of Space'. At the centre of the idea is the votive, whereby an internal concern, be this a way of thinking, an emotion, a desire or a pain, is externalised and located within an object that has been specifically made to hold the idea in a material form.
The process of coming to terms with these more transformative approaches to art making can be thought of as an ecstatic journey. One where you need to have some sort of belief that what can be achieved goes beyond the aesthetics of art and begins to impinge on the psychic transformations normally associated with religious practices.
A belief that all is connected lies at the root of this approach, which can also mean that life gets very convoluted unless some sort of overall view is maintained. For instance, I am thinking about how important small things in the natural world are to the overall forming of reality, so one thing I'm doing is to try to spend more time in the garden, and as I do so I get involved with a story. I have become very aware that without earthworms we would have no soil. If soils consisted entirely of clay and silt particles, they would be too dense and airless for plants to grow in. The roots of plants could neither penetrate the soil nor breathe in it. It is crucial for plant growth that the individual mineral particles in the soil clump together into aggregates, which, because they are more irregular in size and shape than the individual mineral particles, have more spaces between them; spaces through which air, water and plant roots can pass. The aggregate structure of soil also stabilises it and makes it resistant to erosion. If the soil has no structure, it can very easily be washed away by rain or wind. It is organic matter that sticks the mineral particles together to make the aggregates and the actions of worms facilitates this. This story told by the agricultural science community is a powerful one and it helps us to see how worms glue the soil together. Slugs are also doing good stuff. They feed on and process garden debris, including fungi and rotting vegetation. They are a key player in the decomposition process and help to recycle and circulate nutrients into and through the soil, through burrowing, dropping their faeces, and eventually as their own dead bodies decompose, they operate as organic fertiliser pellets. So yes these stories are very important, so how can I make use of them? First of all I attempted to make drawings of worms. This was an attempt to raise their profile, my thought being that on seeing a drawing of a worm, a person would think that if someone was bothered to make images of the humble worm, there must be a reason behind their decision.

I found it hard to make images from drawing worms and slugs and realised why in the past I had drawn snails. Snails carry with them a powerful formal device in the form of their shells and give you an entry into a visual language straight away. The spiral is a very clear form and I've used it several times in the past. The segmented worm is a particularly difficult creature to make into a poetically convincing image but the attempt was made and someone may have taken an interest.

Homage to Beatrix Potter

Slugs belong to the mollusk family which also includes squid, octopi, snails, clams, and oysters; they sit in my mind alongside the arthropods, which include insects, spiders, mites, crabs and scorpions. Arthropods are bilaterally symmetrical, triploblastic, metamerically segmented animals that have a coelom (the fluid-filled body cavity of an animal that contains the internal organs such as the heart, lungs, and kidneys). Their body is covered externally in a chitinous exoskeleton which moults periodically and their appendages are joined.

Worms (earthworms, leeches, marine worms, etc.) are segmented, and belong to the Phylum Annelida; (from the Latin root word annelus meaning ring). The body of an annelid is divided into repeating sections, with many internal organs repeated in each segment. All of these creatures could be regarded as ancestors of mammals and each one at some point emerged from the sea. The fluid-filled body cavity that contains the internal organs such as the heart, lungs, and kidneys, being a particularly potent connection, a likeness that was beginning to worm its way into my own visual poetry.

Dreams of the fluid-filled body cavity

Inner body double

I had also been considering the anthropomorphic as a way towards animist thinking, hence my homage to Beatrix Potter, on the other hand I have, as I have been reflecting on these things, tried to find forms that I can use either as fetishes or as analogies. For instance a heart pain, as I pointed out in my last post, was read by someone as an attack by some sort of invisible inside the body insect/creature. When I showed them my visualisations of this they were more convinced that it was more like the sting of a scorpion than an insect.

Crab/scorpion fetishes 

Looking back at the scorpion/crab forms I had made in response to conversations about pain and how it can attack you unawares, I began wondering around whether or not my votive work could be extended in some way by using these 'painful objects'. This took me back to thinking about pain and the depiction of body maps from imagination.

The imaginary inside of the body began with images made in relation to interoceptual experiences, but I now wanted to incorporate my feelings about non mammalian creatures. Their abundance suggesting that as we cause more and more problems because of our desecrating of the planet, it will be 'lower' organisms that will need to clean up after us.

Inner visions

One series of drawings began to link my thoughts of how to visualise an inside 'thought form' with the idea of plant growth. Another 'hybrid' image resulted. An easy step then to other variations, such as a visualisation of what a fusion between an imaginary internal form and a fetish arthropod external form might look like.

So how does all this relate to the process of coming to terms with transformative approaches to art making, and the ecstatic journey? What has this got to do with psychic transformations normally associated with religious practices?
If I go back to my parents use of 'tranculments', those ornaments kept around the house when I was a boy, I can see clearly now how they were used to externalise thoughts. In my post on 'Thingamajigs' I pointed out that those ornaments were full of psychic energy and that they gave some sort of protection from the reality of life. I also pointed out that originally horse brasses had been used as charms or amulets to ward off evil and to bring good luck. I.e. we use purposely crafted objects to effect psychic transformations.
I have had very useful feedback from people who have now lived with my loneliness votives for a while.

Loneliness votive

They are small ceramic objects designed to be held in the hand, especially if and when you are feeling lonely. People do say that they work and that they keep them about their person, or sit them on a handy spot in the house. They are about feeling and touch and are designed to represent a simple hug. I call them votives because they are objects offered in fulfilment of a promise. In this case two promises. One on my part to make something that I think will help with the wellbeing of someone and the other a promise made by the recipient that they will trust in the exchange and be open to the possibilities that the object offers.
In a post on drawing and spirituality , I referred to the concept of transubstantiation, at its clearest and most often used when the wafer and wine are taken during Mass and these are ‘transformed’ into the body and blood of Christ. The physical in effect becomes spiritual, but only because the people involved, both priest and congregation, have trust and belief in the process. The shaman is a figure that appears in many societies and who still plays a central role in some people's lives, such as the Inuit people. Shamans operate with a belief that every living thing has a “soul” or life-force which exists independently of its physical form. They have often been cited by people as a model for certain art practices such as those undertaken by Joseph Beuys, but there is another role slightly different in the way it operates that was written about by Clare Milledge (2012), that offers the viewer a shamanistic vision but then makes sure they are aware that this is an artifice, a construction, that they need to take part in as much as the artist. I.e. it is a conversation and a co-construction. Milledge points out that there are several artists working in this way including Marcus Coates, Steinar Haga Kristensen, Jonathan Meese, Paul Thek, Justene Williams and herself; artists who have designed practices that return to the viewer the power that we often think of as invested in the artist, in effect giving to others the “gift of sight.” I like the idea of a practice that emerges from a conversation, especially one that helps both participants come to a better understanding of themselves and their relationship with the world around them. Another issue is that, as is pointed out in the introduction to the book 'Shamanhood and Art', (2014, p. 8), "a shaman should not be confused with a priest; he or she is an active practitioner and not a passive receiver of mystical messages..." As an 'active practitioner', I see myself as someone involved with the imaginative transformation of materials into carriers of ideas.

The body as landscape cross section

References

Djaltchinova-Malec, E.E. and Hoppal, M., (2014) Shamanhood and art. Budapest: Akademai Kiado, Warsaw: Polish Institute of World Art Studies.

Milledge, C. (2012) The Artist-Shaman and the" Gift of Sight: Sydney College of the Arts: PhD thesis Accessed from: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/9452

See also:

Magic

The continuing influence of Surrealism

Thoughts on a collaborative practice