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ART422- Exploring Magic and Chance
I chose this theme because I wanted to look deeper into it and find out more about how people approached and portrayed it, discovering concept approaches and sharing their experiences and knowledge about it.
I looked at author David Abram where he quotes “ the lives of other animals , the minute gestures of insects and plants, the speech of birds, the tastes in the wind, the flux of sounds and smells” (1996,p.201) ,this quote really interested me as he’s describing various things experienced using our senses, being more open and aware of them an how the people around him are not taking part in this whole other world of opportunity. Where he goes on to say “My family and my old friends all seemed so oblivious to the sensuous presence of the world” (1996,p.201). This showed me a different perspective of my surroundings and how the Magic part in this theme is shown to me as a natural energy the world provides, and experiencing it is similar to being more aware of our sensory capabilities. Furthermore, using them to look deeper into the environment and how our sensory can be stretched further, deeply thinking about natures sensory and what it offers to our sight, touch, taste, sound and smell.
Abram also talks about Magic in a video with Merlin Sheldrake, he discusses how it explores perception from his experience being a sleight of hand magician where he says “ a very playful engaged act of participation between the perceiver and the perceived” (CRASSH Cambridge,2021). Showing how magic can also be an action where it can change people’s visual image and how we would then be more aware of things, how a magician would play with our blind spots. It also focuses on object and how we interact with them like the space surrounding us, he talks about meeting people in Indonesia known to be healers and how their cultures see their surroundings as sentient and alive changing his idea of what a magician is. He says “ anything the we can sense was assumed to be sensitive even sentient”, “those folk were most susceptible to the solicitations the calls the cries of these other human shapes of awareness” (CRASSH Cambridge,2021) he continues.
I researched an artist that inspired this theme called Ana Mendieta and she links both Magic and Chance together in her 1973-78 Siluetas Series. She creates a visual, physical perspective connecting the earth and human body using nature as the main material. This image really helped me understand the concept of Chance and how can be a brief moment. From my research of her work, a blog website by Abby Morgan described her work as “ silhouettes created from the earth overtime, documenting their ephemerality and presence via absence” (Morgan, 2015). Mendieta used sand to create
a figure shaped silhouette and then added a red pigment. The waves slowly erode away the structure evidently
removing any trace of her work, showing this idea of ephemeral and things being short lived, not being able to predict how long they will last for or what form they will take.
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