This performance was realized by Monica Fererros and Irina Mishina for the art festival “Do” that took place in La Mirona, Salt, Girona, in December of 2010.
ATTUNEMENTS is a project that invites multiple layers of reading constructed around two apparently different disciplines: clay sculpture and digital photography. And we say “apparently” because one of the questions we pose is how the tool and the media affect the creative journey within and if it really makes any difference. Besides that, the juxtaposition of the two media invites a revision of the psychology discourse regarding primary processes and sublimation in the human psyche.
We see on the scene two characters, both can be viewed as separate entities as well as two parts of the same being. Each one of them will go through one’s own process of personal transformation.
One, a Creator, shares on the scene her intimate and personal creative process born out the attitude close to the mechanisms of surrealism and Dadaism, intending to liberate oneself from any filter of conscious representation and expression and connect to the primary source of creativity. The result of this process will reveal, like a mirror, a part of the Creator that even she doesn’t know of herself yet. And it will give space for the dialog between the piece of art and its author that, without any doubt, will enrich the process of the author’s personal transformation.
The other character, the Viewer, at first presents herself on the scene as a passive observer. Progressively her attitude changes, as she begins looking for a dialog with the creative process of the other. Starting from reading and internalization of what she observes she initiates her own creative process, leading her to a deep connection with her own primary creative essence.
And yet, Attunements offers more layers of meaning. Both characters can also represent two parts of self: an internal self, a Creator, connected to the subconscious, and an external self, what one shows to the world, the ego. Both interact with each other through the creative process, and so different parts of self converge at a metaphorical level. When the Viewer takes place of the Creator on the scene, we see how the creative process transforms the person, leading one from the internal dissociation to the sense of unity.
The creative process can be divided into two phases: divergent and convergent. The divergence – the creation of options – is represented by the Creator. The convergence – the evaluation of options – by the Viewer. But it is not a rigid linear structure. The informational interchange between divergent and convergent thinking is a fluid process: so the evaluation turns into the creation of new options, which leads again to another evaluation phase.
What is necessary for the optimal divergence is the suspending of judgment. It allows the connection to the subconscious, to the intuition, letting oneself go and flow. It creates the possibility of playfulness. That is why we make the allusion to the childhood world: as this child’s attitude of play is what facilitates this type of creative thinking. The convergence, on the other hand, is related to the formal self, the ego, that organizes the personality and creates meanings and judgments, looking first of all for the survival of the being, but also searches for the sense of life and for what makes it worth living.
