Connectivity as an Evolutionary Step

Abstract

This research is a multidisciplinary investigation into individual and collective disruptions of our time, which argues that the making and viewing of art is a vehicle for achieving harmony within ourselves. It acknowledges my personal experience as an echo of observed global disconnections and explores dysphoric catalysts such as industrialism, anthropocentrism, post- colonialism and agnosticism as causes for separation. This thesis examines the liminal spaces of making and experiencing art; regarding the making and viewing of art as a form of connecting to ourselves, one another and Presence, experienced as peace. I postulate the making processes of my art practice as a form of meditation where art making is undertaken as a mantra and my practice and process becomes prayer. Cocreating with invisible forces in an effort to imbue the works as votive objects I examine the prevalence of religion and ritual in cultures and draw from my personal spiritual experiences as a means of overcoming the limitations of my own power. This research draws on, yet is not limited to the work of artists and theorists on spirituality including theorists Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Aldous Huxley, William James, Wassily Kandinsky, Joseph Beuys, Carl Jung, Martin Heidegger, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jane Bennett and Elizabeth Grosz and the environmental and political scholarship of Timothy Morton, Edward Said, Brian O’Doherty and artists working with ideas of disconnection and connection such as Fiona Hall, Lynda Benglis, Marina Abramovic, Abdul Abdullah, Yhonnie Scarce and Mark Rothko. I attempt to elucidate the transformative ability of the making process and the invaluable importance of connecting with ourselves, each other and Presence as a means of raising consciousness and ultimately, using art as a tool to evolve.