I only read until "Better to be the poor servant of the poor master" so far. But I actually remember the allegory quite well. Surprising, most have had quite an impact when I originally read it.
I am going to post the rough I am working on that is relevant to the cave:
In Plato’s analogy of the cave, humans are born shackled and bound, only able to look forward at shadowy projections on the wall. Backlit marionettes cast shadows on the wall. All the prisoners know is shadows, unaware of the unreality and unable to see their bodies or even the puppets. A group of the shackled manages to gain awareness of there bounds, loosening them enough to look around the cave. In it, they see that all of their life the shadows that terrified and elated them, are merely projections of puppets, a gross unreality. Managing to leave the cave, free to walk and experience reality directly, they emerge and see real forms and the sun for the first time.
This parable of enlightenment is analogous to much of the explorations in my work. I am interested in depicting what can be seen and what cannot, the material and immaterial. I layer materials with particular attention to light and shadow, two dimensions with three dimensions. Through the layering of forms and the play of light, the viewer’s perceptions of what is real can be played with. A flat surface can be made to look three dimensional. A form can be out of the viewfinder but its shadow projected and layered onto forms within the frame. For example, a form of head can appear in its shadow as a sun.
Like the layers in my work, knowledge is different in different states of consciousness. In waking state, while viewing a tree, one can notice the subtle changes in shape of each leaf, how the branches emerge from the trunk. Sleeping under the tree, one can no longer experience any aspect of the tree, consciousness is black. In dreaming about that tree, the tree can morph into a golden sphinx. In a heightened unified state of awareness that spiritual leaders talk of, the changing states of awareness as part of and in the context of a unified constant state of awareness.
Our mind and state of awareness and body are intimately connected. I place my body in the compositions as a stand in for my state of consciousness in experiencing the world. Sometimes I am masked by a layer, unable to see ahead or behind me. The viewer of my work can see a more comprehensive view, seeing many layers and the complex connections between them.
This parallels my experiences in daily life. I sometimes feel confined to limited awareness, shackled and bound, prisoner to mundane states of reality. I am unaware of my restrictions, the reality I have constructed for myself. A friend or teacher can see beyond the my limited bubble and see the states of life of which I am unaware. In moments of clarity, I can peek out and see above the noise of daily life and see the processes of life humming. I am aware of the constants in the midst of the permutations of my consciousness. Ultimately, I hope my work illustrates that reality is unfathomably larger than our typical view of life.
2 comments:
okay. wow.
so in terms of the tenuousness of the "real", i feel like that's what i was talking about a bit in the last paragraph of my thesis proposal. the images of the female body are so relentless that our physical bodies themselves seem to lose materiality and we live solely through the images of bodies projected onto us. it's really the poverty of sight coming into play here, only in our culture, as Barthes said, the image always has the last word. so the image is all powerful, especially and specifically in terms of the female body. the image is so powerful it is a reality that is actually replacing the material reality of our bodies. not to say that men don't experience this too, i think everyone does to a certain extent, but women are more prone to this happening because they are perceived as a sign for so many things (ah, iconography). so you could say that, in many ways, we (women) are shackled to a cave looking at images of ourselves, only they are not ourselves, and we have lost perception of our own bodies in the process.
it is a deviation from our 'true' selves... the images that we see projected all around us dellude us from experiencing ourselves and our body directly. They dellude us.
I am not going to respond yet to the comment about our work being dissimilar yet... too tired.. i might give a perfunctory shot tonight
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