The Next Things That Happened

The next things that happened have more to do with finding my connection to my art from myself, which I find interesting, since that is what I think phenomenology is all about.

Here is the random weave of thoughts, Google action steps, and insights:

From attending the recent (Jan 28 - Feb 2, 2009) archetype work in Chicago with Caroline Myss, I found that I need to embrace the engineer archetype in me, honor the genius. This was reinforced by the showing of Flash of Genius movie on the plane ride home. How random...

Engineer >>>>Genius>>>>>Gilbert >>>>>>Just show up for my part>>>>>autoart flows out of me: in early February 2009, influenced by these events, in the deepest recesses of my mind, fueled by some career-related stressors, I embrace just showing up for my part.

I recall first hearing about phenomenology at the MCAD WAI I attended in 2006. It was so crucial hearing this piece (Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard - that one little tidbit that a young woman better schooled than me in all things that are art gave me). I remember it, I honor it, I use it.

Elizabeth Gilbert - the genius:
Remember that the flash of genius comes through me, is not me. Partner with it. Let it come through and then as Elizabeth Andrews said, just show up for my part. Show up for my part.

For three years, I’ve been struggling with the concept of appropriating versus creating my own stand-alone art.... and then this link comes to me last night while doing this autoart. I Googled (still can’t believe that is a word) seattle hotel room circles, because I was doing this art working from a boo-boo photo of this suite I was placed in at the Alexis hotel last year. I like to stay at the Alexis because it is a haven for art. The art there informs me and supports me, and now I am getting back from it in this oblique, random, highly improbable way because I took this accidental photo that I remembered was in Seattle.....

The Google links take me to the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, because seattle hotel art circles links with Merleau-Ponty Circle, which is a group of people devoted to studying Merleau-Ponty’s theories on phenomenology, and in 1997 they have had a conference in Seattle to discuss his work and hear one another present papers, one of which informs the title of this art piece I was doing - I call it The Temporal Cliff of the Flesh.

Sidebar note: it is in keeping with Shepard Fairey’s manifesto on phenomenology that I got here. I also struggle with how to title art pieces or where to find prompts to do art, and I discovered through accident and sheer personal genius that because I always have a computer nearby and I love Google, that I could find information (writing prompts and art titles) by taking a few words that describe a feeling I have in me (about a subject, or about an art piece I’ve created) and put that in the Google search bar. What comes up first (past any advertising-based links) is fodder for a dialogue when writing (call-response) or a good title for the art.

On the CARP site on phenomenology there is enough on this CARP for me to really understand.

I know - I’ll go to Wikipedia! Wiki has a good entry that I first land on, but I have to make another click to get to a better discussion of it through a hot link. I’m still trying to find context for some names I know - where does this stuff exist out in the real world that I know. I recognize John Paul Sartres and start to realize that it is a philosophy. Philosophy is a topic that I've had no coursework in or training on in my career as an engineer.

I go all the way to the bottom of the Wiki entry and see there the List of important phenomenologists and phenomenology-derived theorists.

There I find Shepard Fairey’s name. I like him because he helped Obama, and because he is in the center of a vortex of controversy around the issue of appropriating and art.

I go to his Wiki page and find that he has a manifesto on phenomenology:

In a manifesto he wrote in 1990, and since posted on his website, he links his work with Heidegger's concept of phenomenology.[13]

I look over his Obey Giant website but can’t find the manifesto popping out at me, so I Google it and come to a very brief and elegant piece on phenomenology and his OBEY sticker campaign.

So now, I feel connected to this approach to conceptual art that is what Shepard Fairey does. I would say he is influential to me in my art. I can now embrace the concept of appropriating as appropriate! for me in my art. I can let go of trying to understand the WHYs of what I was put here to do, art-wise, and other-wise. I can remember Elizabeth Gilbert’s mantra - just show up to do the work.

The FIRST AIM OF PHENOMENOLOGY is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment.

This is a truth statement for me - a fundamental of my existence. I would substitute art for phenomenology, but then maybe as Jerry Zaltman says, art is a vehicle for phenomenology.