25/06/10 - Thoughts on Mythology, Art and Social Change

Posted: Jun 25, 11:33 am

Common Threads started out as an idea foccussing on sustainable textile production, and the application of printed textile design to communicate ideas surrounding sustainable food production. This thinking was strongly entwined and influenced by the formation of the anti food waste campaign This is Rubbish. Having become aware of how many resources including food, are wasted in the industrialized food supply chain, I became preoccupied with ways to reduce wastage in the supply chain, and ways of encouraging positive deviance, including transferable models of community food production, distribution and a widespread agricultural and horticultural re-skilling.

However, during my initial research, I became interested in the actuality and metaphor of growth. I was especially interested in exploring ideas of benefit and enrichment that become associated and embedded in the process of plant and food cultivation. This thread of thought resulted in the decision to focus Common Threads on examining a broader environmental view. I decided to concentrate on exploring cultural appreciations of the natural world in general before foccussing on the joys and riches of food production. I believe that a deeper connection to the wild world, to biodiversity, human and ecological interconnectedness, to the abundant hedgerows, woodlands and the humble ditch has huge benefits for human well being, and the perception and subsequent valuing of natural resources; resources that we are trying to conserve, reduce the consumption and decimation of, and preserve. I feel the best way to encourage preservation is to facilitate the fabrication of emotional bonds with the place, thing, animal, plant, element, person, idea, belief that becomes meaningful to the individual. Plants, natural cycles, bio diversity, growth and a co existence with elements, natural resources, wildlife and wilderness may be a way to fuel a desire to steward and safeguard such valuable and vital resources.

Mythology as a means of information communication

Common Threads explores an interconnectedness with the natural world through a visualization of the language of Welsh mythology. I have researched ancient tendencies to worship and revere the natural world, using characters found transcribed in the tales of the Mabinogion. I hope to use mythological archetypes to illustrate how emotional and psychological connections with the natural world are long established and important to our well being, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically as well as physically. After all, we are all dependent on clean and available water, clean air and fertile soils to sustain our most basic needs. Mythologies from all sorts of different cultures contain recurring motifs, themes and characters. Within these myths, are contained universal values that outline and preserve behavioral norms, not only towards each other as a species but also towards the environment at large. It is these narrative, ancient and sometimes overlooked that I am interested in reawakening and reutilizing such mythological narratives to encourage and visually communicate the benefits of preserving emotional, spiritual and practical bonds with the environments that directly support human life.

On Art as agent for change

“What it (art figuration) does denote is the degree to which the very essence of art has been realized; the undoing of the world of things, the construction of the world of values, and hence the constitution of a new world.”

“Those who envisage a different future are obliged to define their position towards the struggle.”

John Berger, Selected Essays, Revolutionary Undoing quoting Raphael Max

Art is a discipline that can sit beyond the constraints of instruction from another individual or institution. When practicing independently, the artist answers to no one in the work created but to themself. This autonomy is not self absorption, but a unique stance within society and culture that allows the artist to interpret and articulate ideas that may otherwise not have come into fruition, if instructed and initiated by another individual or institution. This position of independence is a privilege, and not something to be squandered by fixating on self cantered experience.

Artists and art critics have been exploring and communicating the social and political for a long time. There has been a progressive and oppressive use of art throughout history. During the Third Reich, visual propaganda was used to achieve Nazi goals, and the visual communication of enforced ideals were widely deployed. While many applied arts were used to further the Nazi messages, directed by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, all other artists, writers, film makers, directors, and playwrights were forced to register with one of the Ministry’s subordinate chambers for the press, fine arts, music, theatre, film, literature, or radio. The use of art and creative thinking in times of political unrest and social change has also been used to positive effect. Nicolas Bourriaud’s concept of relational aesthetics that he published in the early 90’s, explores art as an arena to conceptualise and facilitate actual social and relational experience, as a pose to an experience that is removed from social interaction. Put simply, relational aesthetics can be defined as ““a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.” Bearing in mind the behavioral and social impact of both public and private art, creative thinking and artistic expression has a role to play in supporting a change from high consumption communities to low consumption, ecologically integrated and more sustainable communities.

“He explored the way that art mediates between imagination and matter,, the ways in which art crystallizes and stores in itself that revolutionary force, which when released by the action of consciousness and activated by the process of politics and history, can transform the world in accordance with the model art has provided.”

Marxism and Art, Max Raphael, pg 420

“Smile not at the fantasy of one who foresees in the region of reality the same outburst of revolution that has taken place in the region of intellect. The thought precedes the deed as the lightening the thunder”

Heine, Religion and Philosophy in Germany

The artist is a visionary, imagination is a response to the realities of lived experience. It is not an escape or separate exploration of reality; but a vital tool to imagine an alternative set of social codes, beliefs, actions and ideas using means of communication that transcend academic elitism and engage all the senses. The role of art is as a catalyst for investigation of areas of thought, it should not be seen as a decoration or commodity to be purchased and simply displayed. Effective art is physical substance that prompts an emotional and intellectual assessment of the idea in question. John Berger describes art as the birth of ideas and motifs, and something that is complete when the two are born and inseparable from each other. I feel that art is often dismissed by those taking an extreme rational perspective on life, simply because art is not anchored in rational or deductive logic. Art does not exist to produce repeatable and reliable outcomes, it examines the other end of the spectrum of perception. Rationalism is theoretically defined as “a method or a theory in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive” Art serves to explore the role of the senses in the formulation of meaning and the role of the senses and emotions in the successful transference of information. Sensory stimulated learning is a theory that suggests that learning occurs when the senses are stimulated (Laird 1985) Laird quotes research that asserts that vast majority of knowledge held by adults (75%) is learnt through seeing. The same research states that if all senses are stimulated then greater learning takes place. With this information in mind, the use of art in communicating ideas and information about sustainability, and low impact living, as well as other areas of ethical responsibility may well offer an emotional and multi sensory space that can assist in the subtle and emotive transference of idea, fact, emotional reasoning resulting in the activation of lifestyle change.

When people are engaged emotionally and sensoraly, I am of the opinion that they are more likely to be receptive to withholding and cementing the information presented to them. Empiricism is the philosophical antithesis to rationalism, and is a view point that asserts that knowledge arises form sensory and physical experience. Sensory stimulated learning is a theory that suggests that learning occurs when the senses are stimulated (Laird 1985) Laird quotes research that asserts that vast majority of knowledge held by adults (75%) is learnt through seeing. The same research states that if all senses are stimulated then greater learning takes place.