The Transformative Self

8/11/2019 The Transformative Self

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The Transformative Self: Art and Image

Marko Zlomislić (forthcoming from Quest for Wi sdom: Unf olding the Mosaic Self )

Aesthetics is traditionally defined as the study of the nature of beauty. Aesthetics examines therole of taste, the meaning of art, the purpose of art, the relevance of artistic intent and how art is to bedefined. Rather than focus on these traditional concerns I want to show that there is a deeper meaning to

aesthetics that links it to transformation, metamorphosis, creativity and ethics.Oscar Wilde argues that it is “through art and through art only, that we can shield ourselves from

the sordid perils of actual existence.” Art according to Wilde protects us from the Real, from the actual bytransporting us into the virtual. Art provides us with a world of antiseptic safety.

Art for Wilde is preferable to life because, “we weep but are not wounded. We grieve but ourgrief is not bitter.” Art for Wilde transforms the real into the virtual. In my view, art must force us to

confront the real. Art can heal us when it forces us to confront our fictions.If our social space is becoming virtual then our art will conform to reproducing the dominant

images of that space: anorexic models, advertising porn, beer commercials, fast food and infomercials.This art is sterile, generic and mechanical. It leads to further confinement, rather than genuine

transformation.The art of the virtual promises us a better world. This better is to be achieved through more

consumption of things that we really do not need. In service of this mouth that must always eat and themind that must constantly be entertained, media, advertising, marketing, merchandizing, financialservices and retailing have invented the space in which we are to make ourselves into the new, the exotic

and the exciting. This very old game has its roots in the bread and circus of ancient Rome.In our time, instead of actual creativity we have the left over’s of a disposable culture that sells us

poison in the guise of what is beneficial. It is little wonder that William Burroughs in Naked Lunch

symbolizes this state of affairs in an anus that can speak. Instead of saying enough, it cries more! Theempty commodities that we are told will transform us are packed into an ever-growing structure of plastic

storage bins to be re-sold on E-Bay. Plastic and junk circulate within a loop of desire.Modern art shows us the decay of its own meaning much like the end of Pulp Fiction when

Samuel L Jackson’s character opens his case. The audience sees a golden glow reflected on the lid but

does not see what is inside the case. There is nothing inside the case, even as it is filled with cows, sheep

or sharks as in Damien Hirst’s work. What would it mean to live one’s life as a work of art? The performance artist Stelarc believes his

skin hooked body suspensions are transformative. In his performances that make use of prosthetics, heseeks to re-organize the body. He believes the “body is an object for redesign.” Stelarc argues that with a

complete prosthetic body we would no longer be subject to the limits of human life. He argues, “this lifewould no longer commence with birth and end with death.” Stelarc envisions metamorphosis onlyconcerning the organs that would be replaced with synthetic counterparts. For Stelarc this would redefinenot only the significance of being human, but “also of that which we call existence.”

The French performance artist Orlan uses plastic surgery to question standards of beauty. The

surgical knife becomes the tool that helps her to achieve her metamorphosis. The skin is a site whereidentity can become transformed. Both of these examples are outer transformations and as such are still

caught up in the imaginary and the predictable.

W.J.T. Mitchell teaches us “we cannot see what seeing is.” But we can attempt to uncover theunseen, the unseeable and the overlooked. I take this activity to be what art attempts to do. Because weare seeing animals, our society is arranged on the foundation of visuality. Plato has warned us against theseduction of images because they lead us to ignore the truth of what is real and unchanging. What would

a world without images look like? Would eliminating the image mean eliminating the light?To live in a culture is to live in a culture that is visual. Yet there are societies of the blind where

vision is not central and where images do not hold sway. The light, while bringing clarity and clearness,can also bring blindness. We are told not to stare into the sun. Not being able to stare into the source oflight we turn our stare to other things. The stare is the time required to make sense of the unexpected.



Can the images created by art evoke the stare that holds your eyes in one place? To stare is to beattracted and confused by what is seen.

We gaze at what we desire but we stare at what confuses us. Our eyes cannot adjust to what is placed before our view. I think that excellent images cause us to stare. It sends our vision into disarray.For the most part, our art extends the comfortable narrative we have created — art adorns walls, it is usedin advertising and other media. Of course, this is what corporations who control the dissemination of

images want. How do we move away from the corporate image-making machine to images created byindividuals who show us how to look at our world with new eyes? We must close our eyes to what

present day media presents us with so that they can be opened anew. The truth of art lies in its ability to provoke us past our complacency.

In an influential book entitled, What Do Pictures Want ? W.J.T. Mitchell outlines the strangerelationship we have with images. What does it mean to say that images influence us? We know that

pictures are material objects, “marked with colours and shapes.” Yet Mitchell writes we “frequently talkand act as if pictures had will, consciousness, urgency and desire.” Mitchell asks, why do people “behave

as if pictures were alive, as if works of art had minds of their own, as if images had a power to influencehuman beings.” What does it say about us that we can be persuaded, seduced and led astray by the

image? Mitchell argues that we have a “double consciousness” towards images. We know they are notalive and yet we treat them as if they were. Mitchell asks, “is our task as cultural critics to demystify

these images, to smash the modern idols, to expose the fetishes that enslave people?” Further, “Areimages the site on which political struggle should be waged, the site on which a new ethics is to bearticulated?”

What would this new ethic of the image look like? It might be in the impulse to lessen the holdthat images have on us. In our culture “image is everything.’ This is evidence that we have allowedourselves to be enslaved by nothing. It is nothing but an image. But the nothing of the image has the

power to affect our emotions and behaviour. We give our desire over to what is impotent. The image likethe idol is sterile and hollow. This what makes it deadly. It pretends to offer us something and we are so

willing to sacrifice ourselves to receive its false promises.A woman was recently charged for keeping her dead husband in her house for ten years. She told

authorities that she could not accept death. She chose to hold on to an image that she had staged for her

memory.

The image has a hold on us. The image captures a moment in time. It makes available for futurerecall. Each photo album is like a crypt to be opened. The image inhabits the realm of death even as itmakes us cry or laugh. This is one way to read Holbein’s famous painting The Ambassadors The imagealready carries with it the stain of death that is its true ground. Yet at the same time, the image provides us

with moments of joyous recall. The image is both mourning and joy.What is there left to see? What new spectacle can art offer us when what is placed on stage for

our view is a spectacular example of mediocrity much like a beauty pageant or a fast food commercial?Art must make visible what cannot be seen. This is why Andy War hol’s Brillo Boxes remain

coffin boxes. There is no surprise. Art must retrieve what the darkness attempts to hide. It must bring the

unseen to light. This light does not only saturate the canvas it also radiates from the face of the child inclarity and beauty that cannot be anticipated and therefore never boxed in.

Following Nietzsche, Schlick sees the metamorphosis into the spirit of the child as the highest of

all transformations. Schlick writes that we ca learn from the child who is capable of the purest joy.Schlick believes that the enthusiasm of youth can save our life-worlds from decay. But most cultures,send their youth off to war while generals are decorated with medals for their good deeds in foreigncountries. The fight of art, if there is a fight still left to fight, should be against those who serve death and

decay in all its forms, while presenting these forms to us as images of true beauty.Stephen Levine attempts to "focus on the ways in which arts can come to terms with human

suffering.” His conclusion that Samuel Beckett's work is exemplary in capturing the essence of sufferingis fine from a literary point of view but not from an existential position.



Levine believes that "we are powerless before trauma.” This is not correct. In trying to makesense of the traumatic, we have power over it. Unlike Levine, I do not see trauma within the perspective

of tragedy. The fictions of Greek tragedies are not on the same level as real trauma. Yes, someone may provide yet another reading of Oedipus or Electra, but in the end, the traumatic still happens. Thehopeless are not saved by the publication of another book on Sophocles.

Levine does realize that his work is "an impossible project" As he puts it, "it attempts to speak

about the unspeakable" and in doing so, "must necessarily fail" Of course, while Levine's logic may becorrect, I do think that we can make sense of trauma and suffering. After all, trauma and suffering have ahuman origin. It is not as if some alien descended from the planet X and committed these atrocitiesunexpectedly. Humans did these things because this is how humans choose to act. As such, there isnothing mystical or unspeakable about suffering. We simply assert- humans did this to their own kind.

I differ from Levine in believing that trauma and suffering do not defy understanding. If they did

defy understanding, I would not have begun to paint. I would have sat down like Job in a pile of ashessmoking Marlboros and eating apple pie. If trauma defies understanding, then the obvious question to ask

is, what role does the therapist play in analyzing the so called "unspeakable.” Levine argues, "in suffering, the sense of the world disappears.” I believe the opposite to be true;

suffering is one way in which to sense the world. This also means that trauma forces us to discover thecore of joy that no amount of suffering and sorrow can erode. This great truth emerged for me, out of the

mass grave at Vukovar.Levine believes that "art aims to become effective, to have an effect on others.” Last week, I

looked at the collection of paintings that I finished during my time of trauma. Over 200 pieces of work

were completed. The works that I will never publicly exhibit are foreign to me now. All that can be said,is the person who painted these pieces was obviously suffering. The fact that I no longer recognize myselfin these works shows me that trauma does not remain, "a badge of identity.”

Art, as I see it, is not surrender to death, but a struggle against it. Rilke may have loved life sogenerously that he loved death too, but I no longer believe in Greco-Germanic myths that have us

surrender to our fate so that we may become blessed.Levine's brand of Dionysian poesis, in my opinion fails to capture what is really at stake. For

example, he writes, "The only cultural act….which the West brought that was meaningful to the besieged

city of Sarajevo was Susan Sontag's production of Waiting for Godot.” Having lost friends in that

conflict, my reply is simply, how wonderful of Susan Sontag to bring culture to a city that was one of themost culturally developed capitals in Europe before this Europe allowed it to be destroyed.

Levine sees Godot as "a mimesis" of the Sarajevans "own reality. What the citizens of Sarajevodesperately needed was not another staging of Waiting for Godot but the arrival of a means of defense. As

Zizek has repeatedly pointed out, such beautiful souls fail to do what really needs to be done. For thosewho lived through the siege, the cultural act par excellence was the West allowing the bombing tocontinue for so long when it clearly had the means to stop it. Godot in Sarajevo signals the catastrophe ofmodernity.

Levine writes, "this is the groundless hope of a Dionysian philosophy that even in an abyssal

world, it is still possible to sing.” At the grave, I did not hear any singing. Perhaps people sing afterhaving seen Oedipus Rex staged. At the mass grave, I heard only silence. It was a strange silence; very

different from the meditative silence found in Buddhist temples and university libraries. Here the words

of psychologist Rudolf Arnheim are poignant. He writes, "eyesight is insight.”The insights I gathered from my lived experiences run counter to Levine's theoretical insights,

however well articulated and well referenced they are. Any theory of art therapy will ultimately fail tocapture the uniqueness of every singular experience. This is why so many have not caught up with

Derrida's Franciscan insights as they continue to read him through other filters. Theory is useless whenone is confronted with trauma.

When I saw the mass grave, I did not think to myself, "You know, Beckett was right when hewrote, "Nothing to be done" or Lacan was correct in his formulation of objet petit a as the basis of humanlack. At the grave, I did not think of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body even though hundreds



of stinking corpses surrounded me. No, I recalled the children's song, "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down",especially as I gazed upon the little skulls with bullet holes in them.

I returning to my homeland ravaged by a war imposed on it, I was told that I alone wasresponsible for what happened to me. I do not think that I was looking for death. I was looking for justice,not revenge. I do not need to understand why this happened to me. I need to understand why this eventhappened at all. It is of course, reassuring for those on the outside to blame the victim so that somehow

they will avoid the same catastrophe. Did I ask for this gift of death that was to become an event thatwould re-orientate the co-ordinates of my life?

I did not seek out the traumatic because I enjoy suffering. What if the opposite were true-thatsuffering was the only way to finally wake me up from my philosophic slumber. The mass grave was akind of initiation. Here I can agree with Chogyam Trungpa’s insights. He writes, “ to our horror we findthat there is no place to run. We are discovered in the act of hiding behind a façade, exposed on all sides;

the padding and armor that we have worn are all stripped away. There is no longer any place to hide.” Themass grave forced me to really stop properly. This proper stop, where X marks the spot put an end to self-

deception and dreaming. At the grave, all of my dream-worlds disappeared.Levine would have us "embrace our own chaos.” However, what does this exactly mean? He

writes, "Since we are chaotic, we can face the chaos of trauma without feeling that we must expel it fromour being.” Is it not the other way around? Since we are not chaotic, we have such difficulty with trauma.

If chaos were the essence of our Heideggerian ground, then there would be no problem in dealing withtrauma. Trauma would be just another form of chaos that we already are. The experience of trauma saysotherwise.

Levine asks, "What kind of art is adequate to the experience of trauma? To me, the answer is theart of the terrible, the grotesque, and the ugly.” Here Levine cites the paintings of Francis Bacon. Bacon'swork had a huge impact on me. I thought, yes, this is it. I must take his work further into ugliness and

darkness. Therefore, I painted a la Bacon and then I had an epiphany. What I was painting was onlygiving strength to death, darkness and chaos. I then began to paint landscapes and I think this is when I

began to heal. Ten years after my traumatic event, I realize that art cannot save us from anything. Art isnot salvific. It is not a salve or ointment. Returning to life is the grace that saves. Art can be compared tothe planting dead trees, decorating them with plastic fruit, taking a picture and then submitting it to

landscape magazine. Your deception is rewarded with the best garden of the year award, which simply

reinforces the delusion that there is nothing wrong with your approach to “reality.” Levine believes that we must find a way to acknowledge all the pain and suffering in the world

and still say Yes! to our existence. This Nietzschean turn of phrase is very poetic. Somehow, I would liketo see an existence that is free from trauma. If the Buddhists are correct, then such freedom can be found

in the kitchen sink while the dishes are being washed.Levine contends that " the wildness of Dionysian revelry is the orgiastic coming of new life from

the grave of the dead.” At the mass grave, I did not see the Dionysian things that ground Levine'stheorizing. To answer Yeats, the rough beast that slouches towards Bethlehem to be born is a humanmade chimera that will be celebrated by the Dionysian mob that never quite knew what thinking means.

When I hear a return to the Dionysian I am reminded of what Hulsenbeck, one of the founding fathers ofDada said in Berlin in 1918: " Life should hurt, there is not enough cruelty.” This is the art that Paul

Virillio calls "pitiless.”

Levine argues : "And when the grave digger shows us our grave, we will leap into it, bothlaughing and crying.” Here I am reminded of a song by the Dave Matthews Band. Matthews sings,“Gravedigger, when you dig my grave, can you make it shallow, so I can feel the rain.” I wonder, why allthis negotiation with gravediggers who have forgotten what it means to be alive. My son and daughter

love life. They are reminders for me that any philosophy that still traffics with death suffers from anegativity that destroys life. Art is an attempt to overcome all graves. It is precisely the grave that must beovercome. The Dionysian orgiastic is a thanatophilia without hope or promise of resurrection.

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The Transformative Self