week 9 already, sheesh!
This week's reading was a chapter from Thought in the Act, with a focus on the work and practice of Bracha Ettinger. Ettinger creates "paintings" by harnessing the power of light sensitive materials. Every piece is unique and can never be reproduced in exactly the same way.
Along with a beautiful description of her work and unique process, the authors also touched on various ways we think and feel through our pursuits as A/R/Tographers. The term "Intercessors" continued to pop-up. The text describes the term briefly, as "forces of the outside" but when investigating further, I found a dictionary definition of " a person who intervenes on behalf of another, especially by prayer". This is very intriguing because the text never references two people. It's not discussing a collaboration or a mentor/mentee relationship. No, it is using the term to describe the tension occurring within a single person. "The intercessor is a complex singularity that activates a process, a force that acts as a differential within an ongoing movement of thought. The intercessor: the felt forces that activates the threshold between thinking and feeling". The analysis also refers to the intercessor as "the friend". I think this idea is so cool. It reminds me of the long held belief in a genius (before genius means what it does today). A genius was a type of cherub or fairy that would visit a person and inject them with ideas and inspiration.
(If you have the time, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this concept so beautifully in a TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA)
The idea of imagining an external force helping us sort out our creative internal voice, or even an internal voice guiding us (much like the concept of the intercessor) takes a lot of pressure off us as creators. There's a comfort in imagining that there is a shift taking place within us when we move thoughts and experience through the physical motion of making. "Vibrations are of time more than in time: they make time as they take it, moving the image toward what cannot quite be seen in the seeing. The intercessor, the friend, activates these vibratory tendencies, creating an intensive passage between past and future outsides, the canvas a complex polyphony". Our experiences, thoughts, feelings and intuition work alongside one another and in tandem to allow us to be the individual A/R/Tographers we all are.
This week's reading was a chapter from Thought in the Act, with a focus on the work and practice of Bracha Ettinger. Ettinger creates "paintings" by harnessing the power of light sensitive materials. Every piece is unique and can never be reproduced in exactly the same way.
Along with a beautiful description of her work and unique process, the authors also touched on various ways we think and feel through our pursuits as A/R/Tographers. The term "Intercessors" continued to pop-up. The text describes the term briefly, as "forces of the outside" but when investigating further, I found a dictionary definition of " a person who intervenes on behalf of another, especially by prayer". This is very intriguing because the text never references two people. It's not discussing a collaboration or a mentor/mentee relationship. No, it is using the term to describe the tension occurring within a single person. "The intercessor is a complex singularity that activates a process, a force that acts as a differential within an ongoing movement of thought. The intercessor: the felt forces that activates the threshold between thinking and feeling". The analysis also refers to the intercessor as "the friend". I think this idea is so cool. It reminds me of the long held belief in a genius (before genius means what it does today). A genius was a type of cherub or fairy that would visit a person and inject them with ideas and inspiration.
(If you have the time, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this concept so beautifully in a TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA)
The idea of imagining an external force helping us sort out our creative internal voice, or even an internal voice guiding us (much like the concept of the intercessor) takes a lot of pressure off us as creators. There's a comfort in imagining that there is a shift taking place within us when we move thoughts and experience through the physical motion of making. "Vibrations are of time more than in time: they make time as they take it, moving the image toward what cannot quite be seen in the seeing. The intercessor, the friend, activates these vibratory tendencies, creating an intensive passage between past and future outsides, the canvas a complex polyphony". Our experiences, thoughts, feelings and intuition work alongside one another and in tandem to allow us to be the individual A/R/Tographers we all are.