Psyberspace

Here is a summary of J. L Moreno’s theory, the Canon of Creativity:

• Creativity is innate, universal, it is everywhere. We all have it.
• It is awoken by spontaneity, without spontaneity it is useless.
• Spontaneity can be trained.
• Spontaneity comes through warm-up, and warm-up is expressed through roles.

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Is that a good summary?

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There are lots of roles needed to produce art. Ability to manage time, money, resources. Knowledge of the culture, networks, marketing, techniques, organisation. I think of these as functional roles, and they can be taught, coached and trained, and yes they will help, but there is more…

Question:

What are the roles involved, what is the warm-up, say, when Marcel Duchamp exhibits “Fountain”? Or Pollock drips for the first time? Or Warhol mass produces every-day objects as art in a Factory?

Are these moments of newness simply a product of being functional? having lots of functional roles. Will inspiration come from perspiration?

I imagine great inspiration comes from another type of role… or states? Angst. Pain. Trauma, mania, love, hate, despair… attitude, belief.

Perhaps the central role is to be able to put ones madness to good use?

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So it is an age old question: Can art be taught? Or are we born with talent? Or is it circumstantial, luck, being in the right place at the right time?

Moreno, I am sure, believes we are all geniuses, and that we can train ourselves and others to be great innovators of our time. That is the sort of role training I want to see happen!

Thinking about ‘Artist Statements’.
Molly Gordon, Art Business.com, Wikipedia

Apparently artists are supposed to have them. I am not sure why. I have never had one in my career as a psychotherapist, a Psychotherapist Statement. Never the less I can see the point. I like focus, commitment and direction, and not only that, I already have a lot of those, and a statement might help to convey that. I blog and so make heaps of statements, but now is the time for FOCUS.

I’ll work at it. Blog about it. Come up with a crisp statement, one that can last me a good while, or at least as long as it fits. Warming up: Those “how-to” links above don’t quite do it for me, though they are start. What about Lars von Trier, he might inspire. And De Stijl, or the Der Blaue Reiter, these people had statements. I’d like an artistic one, perhaps a Heraclitus quote, here a few I like:

You could not discover the limits of soul, even if you traveled by every path in order to do so; such is the depth of its meaning.

Soul is the vaporization out of which everything else is composed; more-over it is the least corporeal of things and is in ceaseless flux, for the moving world can only be known by what is in motion.

Soul has its own inner law of growth.

It is hard to fight against impulsive desire; whatever it wants it will buy at the cost of the soul.

It would not be better if things happened to people just as they wish.

Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than dung.

And a Bio is different from an artist statement, but I am gathering together what I have – so I can revise both.

Psyberspace Bio

Walter Logeman and the Thousand Sketches Project

The Thousand Sketches website

Definitely a time for a re-vamp, with a show planned, I need one.

And to conclude, a picture, last nights effort, is this a statement?

Glowing Circle
Larger Image.