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Project Proposal: Video Narratives Landscape Proposal On Creativity and Spirituality

Exploring How Spiritual Journey and Creative Experience Maps Come Together

How might the creative experience have in common with the major spiritual texts, traditions, practices and insights on consciousness?

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Hilm af Klint - The Swan No. 23

Creative Commons Licence

The Spiritual and Creative Experiences - Exploring Commonalities

Landscape and Dimensions

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  • Surrender

  • Devotion

  • Sacrifice

  • Community 

  • Non-attachment

  • Connectedness

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Opening thought: So many artists report that 'it wasn't me who created that"....are there connections between the spiritual (ego) journey and the creative ego journey?

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I'd like to throw out a thought experiment...the future of "art" (I'll come onto a chosen definition) is in how the relationship between the intimate; personal experience of the creative process and the output/object/work of art is communicated.

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In other words, for my definition of art (any act of expression for the observation/consumption by a public audience), a next evolution is in how we relate to the object through how we relate to the artist themselves....the object of art becomes transparent, or merely a small part of the transmission.

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And perhaps video will be a key vehicle in how the experience, meaning and purpose of the creative impulse is communicated?

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These ideas come from my fascination with the psychology of creativity, influenced by the following books.

Art and Physics

Leonard Shlain

Key ideas: Directionality in the evolution of artistic perception; Inscrutibility of modern art (hidden meaning);

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Ways of Seeing

John Berger

waysofseeing_berger-1.jpg

Theosophy, Arts and American West

Sarah Victoria Turner

Enchanted.jpg

The Hidden Order of Art

Anton Ehrenzweig:

Key ideas: Syncretic thinking / perception

the-hidden-order-of-art-1_edited.jpg

The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art

Charlene Spretnak

The Spiritual Dynamic.jpg

Quotes on Creativity and the Arts

"The artist's life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him on the one hand the common human
longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life, and on the other a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire. The lives of artists are as a rule so highly unsatisfactory, not to say tragic, because of their inferiority on the human and personal side, and not because of a sinister dispensation. There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire.”

- Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

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It is not surprising that as we ride the crest of evolution we have taken over the title of creator. It would help if we realised the awesome responsibility of this new role. The gods of the ancients, like Shiva, like Yehova, were both builders and destroyers. While we cannot foresee the eventual results of creativity of the attempt to impose our desires on reality, to become the main power that decide the destiny of every form of life on the planet at least we can try to better understand what this supports is and how it works because for better or for worse our future is now closely tied to human creativity. 
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity, Flow and the Psyschology of Discovery and Invention

 

​Research References

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