'I'm getting emotional ... and to think that I already know how it ends...' | Hybris and its plots

'I'm getting emotional ... and to think that I already know how it ends...'
Hybris and its plots.

On the occasion of the conference Ajax and Phaedra. Shameful Love and Loving Shame, Syracuse (Italy), May 31-June 2, 2024.

A problem that arises from the outset concerns the possibility of extending the psychoanalytic method in contexts other than the individual clinic.

In The Problem of Analysis Conducted by Nonphysicians (1926) Freud tells us

Psychoanalysis, as a "psychology of the deep" or doctrine of the Psychic Unconscious, can become indispensable to all sciences that study the history of the origins of human civilization and its great institutions, such as art, religion, and social organization. I believe that it has already offered these sciences considerable help in the solution of their problems, but these are minimal contributions compared with those that can be obtained when historians, psychologists of religions, glottologists, etc., are enabled to use themselves the new research tool placed at their disposal. The therapeutic use of analysis is only one of its applications, and the future will perhaps show that it is not the most important.

Extending these observations of Freud, we come to hypothesize the possibility of thinking about a new meta-psychology. A meta-psychology that, as was the case at the beginning of the discoveries about the value of the unconscious and how decisive it was for understanding the human being, can now, through the

extension of psychoanalytic practice to multi-psychic apparatuses, call into question the conception of another model of intelligibility to account for the plurality of places, dynamics and economies of unconscious psychic reality that emerge in such areas or apparatuses... (R. Kaès, The Extension of Psychoanalysis, 2015).

Beginning with Bion's early experiences in his observations of groups, one begins, in fact, to speak already of the group mind and the plurality of each individual. It comes, then, to approach and extend that Copernican revolution already initiated by Freud regarding the loss of centrality of the individual. It was another "catastrophic change"!
It is appropriate, therefore, to remain faithful to Freud's thought by declining it on the variations of experience that are produced in the process of progressive knowledge of the unconscious. Knowledge that, as can be guessed, can never be accomplished and requires a continuous plurality of interventions (L. Caldironi, 2018).

H. Kalweit tells us that «healing means daring to step outside one's fence» but this stepping outside is far from easy and affects all fields of knowledge. That is why it is important for each field of knowledge to ally itself with the other, not out of a form of scattered eclecticism, but out of an openness to the world; an openness that comes to intertwine and involve concepts such as approximation, intuition and intention, defined or declined within the creative process.
For these different framings to become suitable probes to investigate new territories, it is necessary that the field of observation also widens and contemplates an asymptotic approach to a project that can only proceed through transient and provisional instances. It is an exploration "of the adjacent" with respect to many and successive stages.
This is also true of the psychoanalytic "method" and its "framework".
And we come now to the staging.

Passions are staged in an a-temporal dimension. A dimension that is proper to the unconscious; we know, in fact, that there is no impulse, no instinctual drive or response that is not experienced as an unconscious fantasy.
And it is at this level that communication takes place.
Psychoanalysis itself was born from myth and through this it has been able to communicate and intervene in the difficult currents of our emotions.
Passions are kindled and so love, shame, and the shame of love come alive as 'works' of the gods, by 'inter-post-for-sonat'.
Dislocations are created that support different responsibilities, who is playing the game and where is this game being played?

In the dynamics addressed in Sophocles’ Ajax and in Euripides’ Phaedra. Hippolytus the wreath bearer, the 'caesura' in the flow of mind during the occurrence of experience no longer represents and no longer becomes a transitive and dynamic space, but, on the contrary, precipitates into rupture and collapses into an irremediable wound. There is no longer 'logos' and dia-logos between the parts.
The parts become 'alone'.
In these solitudes Hubris weaves his plots:
Phaedra's Hubris trespasses into the conflict between super-egoic aspects and restraining but pathological projections; in Hippolytus, on the other hand, it is inscribed in a kind of fanatical and defensive rejection of sexuality and erotic love and is punished for this.
In Theseus, blindness, the impulsive use of power and not seeking the clear-darkness of truth, is his hubris. A lack of wisdom and expectation, the failure to put oneself in a position of comprehending that is also 'under-standing'. That is a placing oneself 'underneath' to foster a 'supportive being'.... It is not possible, it is not free.
What I was also interested in pointing out here is that Aphrodite also suffers from jealousy ... it is her hubris, a divine hubris. She resents being ignored and not being preferred to Artemis ... the gods too, then, like men are made of the same stuff ... in their own image and likeness!

In these two tragedies the 'play' becomes rigid, in Ajax the field within which the passions are acted out becomes a container of tensions that cannot find re-solutions except in the consequence of the dramatic relief of a lack of contact and thus in the grief that arises from the knowledge that there is no glimmer of reconciliation except in death, a death that foresees no redemption.

Pride colliding with humiliation results in a psychotic 'break-down,' there is no longer the area of dreaming and the nightmare of wakefulness and unbearable reality drags into the arena of shame.
Perhaps only after Ajax's 'move-out', the appearance of his brother, Teucer, can the hypothesis of an encounter with the moderation of a 'new' man, Odysseus, be created.
An Odysseus reminiscent of the one who will meet Achilles' shadow in Hades, but only when Achilles has also become a shadow himself. A shadow of a past now extinct, but one whose drives are still alive.

In Ajax there is a different form of Hybris, it is a Hybris that differs from that of Aeschylus, Euripides, in Ajax a psychological profile prevails that leads to personal ruin. It is not, therefore, a matter of arrogance, but of character rigidity and inflexibility.
To change is unacceptable. It is not divine punishment, but something self-inflicted generated by an inner crisis that leads to progressive isolation to its extreme conclusion.
Ajax has a very different idea of salvation; it is a path he can only accomplish 'alone', an affair in which the figure of his father looms over him.
A face, the sight of which is not bearable. The father, contrary to his name, Telamon, which from 'tlénai' would mean 'hold up', 'lift up', is a figure of no 'support' or 'backing'. It does not facilitate the generational transition and Ajax, despite himself, becomes its interpreter; we could say that Ajax, moves but does not 'move', does not move along with the others and ends his existential affair by saying, I go where I have to go .... But the most absurd thing, we add, this 'I must go' is a place that does not exist except in its 'absence' but, precisely because of that it is very powerful!!!

Traces … but: “Healing means daring to step outside ones fence”!

Traces … but: “Healing means daring to step outside ones fence”!

‘Right Now’

‘When can we get closer to ourselves? In bed, on the road, at home, where so many things seem better when we return? Everyone knows the feeling of having forgotten something in his or her conscious life, something that was left halfway and did not come to light. That is why it often seems so important what was meant to be said just now and has escaped us. When you leave a room in which you have lived for a long time, you look around strangely before you leave. Something is left here, too, that one has not grasped. Still you take it with you to start again elsewhere’. [E. Bloch]

Among the physiological difficulties, there is one referring to the possibility of seeing and observing events at the very moment they happen and involve us.
How, then, can we deal with the zeitgeist in which we ourselves are immersed?
This is why we believe it is important to begin a work of reflection, a work that involves the possibility of reflecting on the experience we are having and, in so doing, fostering a perspective dimension of it.
This is work aimed at identifying the levels of distress that run through our culture, and their genesis.
We are supported by the belief that the psychoanalytic method is a useful tool in this process. It is, in fact, a method that has as its fundamental statute the observation of what we call psychic reality. When we speak about psychic reality, we mean a reality that resides within the subject, and which goes to condition with desires and fantasies what we are operating in the world.
A large part of the environment around us does not invite us to listen to our inner world, and our attention, if spoken of at all, is increasingly focused on the new media rather than on deepening the contents and their meaning.
In our proposal, as Freud did with the quote placed at the beginning of his essay ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’, we will hold valid the statement, "Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo".
Therefore, we will attempt to state our positions in a manner analogous to that used in The Interpretation of Dreams where we move between latent and manifest contents. Through free association, we can say that we propose hypotheses in which our view of the social life will consider observations concerning the psychological mechanisms and states of the individuals who comprise it. It is a way of proceeding that necessarily involves several points of view: the economic, the social, and the political; however, in our case, a special emphasis will be given to the psychological. We believe the help that can be derived from psychology, particularly the contribution of psychodynamic psychology, is fundamental in order to be able to grasp those forces that determine the actions of humankind. In other words, to use a well-known statement, "The ego is not master in its own home". And if it is not master in its own home, it can hardly be master when it leaves home.
Psychoanalysis can offer us useful insight in understanding what Freud in ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’ already pointed out as a grave danger to humanity. That is, the danger of diverting the anxieties and conflicts of our inner world to wars and destructive powers. It is only by being able to better understand and face this world that we can act in a more responsible way in the world around us and in living with others, while avoiding the situation where the group and/or unconscious crowd takes over the individual's ability to discern.
While it is clear that it is important to be able to intervene in these forces that run through society, we also know how difficult this operation is. It involves approaching forces that are intertwined with our psychic defense mechanisms - mechanisms that are deputed to the removal of everything that is undesirable and which creates discomfort. But it is equally true that this need for splitting comes to interfere with the possibility of facing reality as it arises.
In this way, when defense mechanisms are amplified, it can have the effect that what we are defending ourselves from and therefore push away creates its harmful effect without our conscious component being aware of it.
This awareness is an operation that involves frustration and the ability to tolerate moments of pain and bewilderment. In this regard, we find it useful to recall the thought of W. Bion when in ‘Learning from Experience’, he tells us how precarious the human being's ability to tolerate truths about himself is and how, consequently, the mind is always ready to create lies to oppose this pain.
W. Bion in Cogitations (1992) says, “The man who is mentally healthy is able to gain strength and consolation and the material through which he can achieve mental development through his contact with reality, no matter whether that reality is painful or not. This view may owe its origin to experience in no way metaphysical, but such as might be achieved through failure to admit the existence of a physical hazard to physical progress and the resultant fall. The reciprocal view is that no man can become mentally healthy save by a process of constant search for fact and a determination to eschew any elements, however seductive or pleasurable, that interpose themselves between himself and his environment as it really is. As a psycho-analyst I include the man’s own personality as a part, and a very important part, of his environment. By contrast it may be said that man owes his health, and his capacity for continued health, to his ability to shield himself during his growth as an individual by repeating in his personal life the history of the race’s capacity for self-deception against truth that his mind is not fitted to receive without disaster. Like the earth, he carries with him an atmosphere, albeit a mental one, which shields him from the mental counterpart of the cosmic and other rays at present supposed to be rendered innocuous to men, thanks to the physical atmosphere.” (W. Bion, Cogitations 1992)
Another problem that arises from the outset concerns the possibility of extending the psychoanalytic method into contexts other than the individual clinic.
In ‘The Problem of Analysis Conducted by Non-Medical Practitioners’ (1926) Freud tells us, "Psychoanalysis, as a 'psychology of the deep' or doctrine of the Psychic Unconscious, may become indispensable to all the sciences that study the history of the origins of human civilization and its great institutions, such as art, religion and social organization. I think that it has already offered these sciences considerable help in solving their problems, but these are only minimal contributions compared with those that can be obtained when historians, psychologists of religions, glottologists, etc., are enabled to make use themselves of the new research tool placed at their disposal. The therapeutic use of analysis is only one of its applications, and the future will perhaps show that it is not the most important." (S. Freud, 1926)
Extending these remarks by Freud, one comes to hypothesize the possibility of thinking of a new meta-psychology. A meta-psychology that, as was the case at the beginning of the discoveries about the value of the unconscious and how decisive this was in understanding the human being, may now, through "the extension of psychoanalytic practice to multi-psychic devices call into question the conception of another model of intelligibility to account for the plurality of places, dynamics and economies of unconscious psychic reality that emerge in such devices ..." (René Kaès, The Extension of Psychoanalysis, 2015)
As Bion's early experiences in his observations of groups one begins, in fact, he already speaks of the group mind and the plurality of each individual. One comes, therefore, to approach and extend that Copernican revolution already initiated by Freud regarding the loss of centrality of the individual.
It is appropriate, therefore, to remain faithful to Freud's thought by declining it on the variations of experience that are produced in the process of a progressive knowledge of the unconscious. Knowledge, which, as can be guessed, can never be accomplished. (Caldironi L., 2018) 

Luca Caldironi

References:
Bion W., ‘Learning from Experience’, Karnak Books, London, 1962
Bion W., ‘Cogitations’, Karnak Books, London, 1992
Caldironi L., ‘Psychoanalysis and Cyberspace’ in ‘Reconsidering the Moveable Frame in Psychoanalysis’, Routledge, London and New York, 2018
Freud S., ‘Opera Omnia 1886-1938’, vol.10, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino
Kaès R., ‘The Extension of Psychoanalysis’, in ‘L’estensione della psicoanalisi’, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2021

How does "art" work?

How does “art” work?

“The answer is the question’s misfortune” - Henri Poincaré

The moment in which a dream becomes narrated, it leaves its most private and nocturnal place in order to translate itself into a more public and diurnal moment — just as our scene aspires to do so, always on the delicate border line that exists between what is known as familiar and what is extraneous. This is the same ‘uncanny’ pathway that the artwork must accomplish, even in the passage between thought-thoughts (still pre-verbal) and their possibility of being expressed. More generally, it is what happens in the passageway between ‘private’ space and ‘public’ space. We learn how to use art for the purpose of enhancing our perceptual and communication skills, which strengthens our work with emotions. Working with such associations and interpretations elicited from selected works, participants can then further a nuanced emotional and self-awareness, as well as explore this sense of awareness’ impact on observations, engagement and communication skills. Participants use the exploration of art works to move beyond their perceptual habits so that they can ‘see anew’. 

I will conclude this brief presentation of a personal journey with the words an artist expressed regarding what she would like to happen with the presentation of her works:

“I want the pieces to feel both familiar and strange … The work needs to call up multiple references and ideas all at once and often opposites at the same time. I want the pieces to evoke those questions that sit at the back of the mind. The ones you didn’t know you had. The once you don’t know words for yet.”

IT IS TO THIS VISION THAT WE WOULD LIKE BE FAITHFUL.

'Mission statement' Protocol of artistic fruition

Venice and New York 2023

‘Mission Statement’
Protocol of artistic fruition
Luca Caldironi

"Human minds are mirrors of each other, because each reflects the emotions of the other, and because those rays of passion, feeling, and opinion reverberate by gradually and imperceptibly fading away."
(Hume 1739, 2.2.5.21)

"One uses a glass mirror to look at one's face and one uses works of art to look at one's soul."
(George Bernard Shaw)

“Change alone is unchanging”
(Herakleitos)

Scientific research has increasingly shown us how indispensable a trans-disciplinary approach is to better understand and develop knowledge of the human being in its complexity.

Declining this general consideration in the field of art and particularly in the field of artistic enjoyment, the discovery of neuronal plasticity and the system of 'mirror neurons' has led us to a greater and deeper reflection on the neurological basis of the phenomenon of empathy and its psychological correlates.

V. Gallese (2003) reminds us that an observer in front of an image "brings into play not only vision, but also the motor system, the somato-sensory system and the circuits that preside over our ability to feel emotions" and goes on to say that in this process there is the co-participation of multiple senses. This is what he calls the 'multimodal approach to vision.'

The aspect we are interested in exploring has its neuro-physiological basis in the fact that the mirror neuron system is activated, not only with the presence of the sight of 'real actions', but also when these are simply 'mimicked' or 'depicted'. A kind of 'embodiment' would take place through a neural transition of the potential action depicted. In this the artist's ability to represent becomes important.

David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese propose that the motor gesture by which the artist produced the work solicits the mirror system of the viewer (Cappelletto C., 2009). The signs, the traces, of which the work is composed would be "the visible traces of purpose-oriented movement; they are therefore capable of activating the respective motor area in the brain of the observer." (Freedberg D. and Gallese V., 2007). These two authors thus propose the hypothesis that, by virtue of this mechanism, the observer reacts to a painting or a work of art in general as if he or she were experiencing the action firsthand. This process is what makes these two researchers associate the phenomenon of empathy with that of mirror neurons. This feature extends the neurophysiological discovery to the multiplicity of stimuli, both real and imaginary that surround us.
We are particularly interested in its extension into the field of art, artistic enjoyment and the emotions that are coupled with it.

The digression we shall now attempt to develop sets itself the task of juxtaposing the neural pathway of mirror neurons with the psychodynamic processes that from Freud onward have characterized models of study of art and its fruition. On the other hand, Freud, already from his writing on meta-psychology indirectly pointed out to us how important a certain imaginative speculation was in the study of phenomena that would later find correlations in later scientific discoveries as well.

In Semir Zeki's studies, too, we find confirmation of the functional involvement of areas of the brain and Freedberg and Gallese's hypotheses regarding the perception of 'gesture', of the movement of the 'artist's hand'. But to these, Zeki, also adds the importance that, to these neural pathways, individual 'experiences' can also be associated. Indeed, we know how important these experiences are in the assumption of meaning with respect to the work to which we are exposed.

What has been stated so far is an invitation to integrate neuroscience with psychology and in particular with psychodynamic psychology. Integration that seems to us fundamental in order to broaden the field of observation of aesthetic fruition that cannot be confined only to biology but must also inscribe itself in the field of individual experiences and cultures of reference.

We could therefore say that: we do not only see what we see, but we also see what the experience arouses within us, what we 'feel'. Our representation of 'reality' is always linked to our emotional experience.

Hence the importance of establishing a personal relationship with the work one observes, giving oneself time to do so, time to 'mentalize' the experience. An experience that benefits from being as 'un-saturated' as possible regarding any kind of information about the object being observed.

Graziella Magherini particularly dwelt on the experience of artistic fruition and proposed a 'grid' through which we can deepen our research on it. This experience is based not only on 'constant' mechanisms such as biological and neurophysiological ones but also on 'variable' mechanisms such as those related to ‘early life experiences’, the phenomenon of the 'uncanny' ('Unheimliche') and that of the 'selected fact'.

Let us see, now to better sketch these last three variable mechanisms, because it is precisely on these that Graziella Magherini's aesthetic fruition protocol is based. Regarding the first, it can be framed in the primary 'mother-child' aesthetic experience or encounter with the 'primary' object’. In fact, as Magherini says, "In the moment of the viewer's encounter with the beauty of the artistic object and its appeal, 'the aesthetic object' recalls and re-actualizes the relationship with 'the primary object.'"
This reflection is confirmed by studies of 'infant observation' and other research within the clinic. Traces of this appear evident in numerous works of religious art, where, also through the use of colors and light, traces of the 'sub-lime' are ritualized, both in its meaning of something that 'emerges below the threshold' and of 'un-veiling’.
‘Nature loves to hide’, [Becoming is a secret process]. (Herakleitos, 540 – 480 BC]

With the term 'uncanny', Magherini takes up the Freudian concept of the 'return of the repressed', which, applied to the work of art, tells us how it has "the power to 'evoke' in the viewer ancient and removed, forgotten personal events, that is, the unconscious represented (...). Under certain circumstances, the work of art can also reach places in the mind where very remote emotional experiences of our personal history are reposed, not yet represented, thus recorded but not encoded, not symbolized, which find symbolization in the work of art. Thus there is the bringing into form of an emotional experience that had not yet achieved a symbolic image in the mind: a union takes place between a set of emotions without form, which take form precisely in the moment and thanks to artistic enjoyment."

Following this path gives the possibility of increasing personal growth and utilization of resources, it also gives the possibility of containing and reorganizing 'chaotic material' and 'primal turbulence' of our psyche.

When we talk about the 'selected fact' we start from the reference that W. Bion (1962) borrowing this concept from the thought of mathematician Henri Poincaré. The mathematician meant by this a process through which a single observation offers the possibility "of arriving at a coherent 'configuration' and suddenly introducing order where the appearance of disorder reigns."

W. Bion applies this to the psychoanalytic method and in particular to the way the mind of the analyst and his patient functions during free associations and interpretations.

Magherini, Bion Talamo and others (1995) "have highlighted how the mechanism of 'selected fact' also operates in the process of creation-fruition of the work of art, both as a mental function of the artist and as 'revelation-discovery' at the moment of fruition. At the moment of fruition, in particular, in the complex of elements that make up the work of art, one emerges that at that moment, in that particular person, gives considerable emotional significance to that work and at the same time casts a beam of light on aspects of the person's life by suddenly organizing them in a new way. The specific characteristics of that element, definable precisely as a 'selected fact,' become a powerful mental catalyst."

In light of the considerations we have proposed, there emerges the need to elaborate a protocol centered on aesthetic fruition that can give us guidance on both the psychic elements involved and the evolutionary possibilities derived from this encounter/experience.

In doing so, we have kept in mind the research of Graziella Magherini, the protocol proposed by Alessia Anello and our direct experience, both in the clinic and in its extension into the field of creativity and art.

Aesthetic experience is obviously not limited to the visual field alone, so the protocol also includes applications and adaptations to other sensory involved.

Let us now give prevalence to the visual one as an explanatory track.

Protocol Example:

1. After asking if the image or art work has been seen/experienced before, we ask: What did you perceive visually (auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory ...) at this moment?

2. Describe what you see and what you feel. Describe the emotional experience given by this encounter with the art object.

3. Are there parts of the work (or moments) that you feel most intensely? Are there images that you can most connect to your emotional experiences?

4. If you use this experience as an 'emotional probe' are there echoes, dreams, fantasies, memories from your life that come back to your mind?

To this protocol we find it useful to add a couple of activities as suggested by Anello.

1. Subjects are asked to represent with a picture the experience of encountering the work and observe the creative act together.

2. They are then asked to be willing to make a written account as a narrative of the experience they had.

Interestingly, through these last two activities, 'selected fact' can be the cornerstone of a process that participates in the possibility of reading from two vertices.

One is from encountering the experience to experiencing it, the other from experiencing to creating an aesthetic narrative.

Protocol Objectives:

1)Awareness and increased awareness, not only of the moment of enjoyment of the artistic work, but also of one's own psychological mechanisms and experiences.

2) Enhancement of internal dialogue, with the art object and the environment

3) Awareness essential for personal growth and for developing talents and creative possibilities that were previously difficult to access.

4) Consequent development of further individual and/or group paths.

5) Education to a different form of enjoyment of art that can be extended and involve different 'containers' such as cultural centers, galleries, museums ...

6) Integration and use of multiple skills in approaching the 'complexity' of the artistic phenomenon.

References:

Anello A., (2016), ‘Psicologia dell’Arte e delle Percezione’, Libreria Universitaria, Padova

Bion W., (1962), ‘Learning from Experience, Heinemann, London (ed. It. Apprendere dall’Esperienza, Armando, Roma, 1972)

Cappelletto C., (2009), ‘Neuroestetica. L’arte del cervello’, Laterza, Bari

Freedberg G., Gallese V., (2007), ‘Motion, emotion and empathy in esthetic experience’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 197

Gallese V., (2003), ‘The roots of empathy: the shared manifold hypothesis and the neural basis of intersubjectivity’, Psychopathology, 36,171

Herakleitos and Diogenes, Translated by Guy Davenport, Grey Fox Press, 1976

Magherini G., (2007), ‘Mi sono innamorato di una statua’, Oltre la sindrome di Stendhal, ‘I ‘ve Fallen in Love with a Statue’, Beyond the Stendhal Syndrome, Nicomp L.E ed., Firenze

Magherini G., (2010), ‘Psicoanalisi ed esperienza estetica’ Un modello interpretativo, PsicoArt 1 n.0 - 2010

Magherini G., Bion Talamo P., Falci A., (1995), ‘Aesthetic experience as psychotic uncanny and the function of the selected fact’, IPA 39th International Congress, S. Francisco, 30 uly-4 August

Zeki S., (2003), ‘La visione dall’interno’ Bollati Boringhieri, Torino

Aesthetic Reaction: Protocol based on Graziella Magherini's Model.
Luca Caldironi

1. What did I perceive visually, audibly, kinesthetically?
   How was my sensoriality involved?
   Was there a predominant mono-sensoriality or did multiple senses articulate together?

2. Let us now turn to emotional sensoriality: what do I feel on an emotional level?
   What emotions are activated?

3. Can what I feel on an emotional level be associated with an image, music, or movement?

4. Are there parts of the artwork that I feel emotionally in a more or less intense way?

5. What Memories, Dreams, Fantasies surface in the mind?

6. If I use the work as an 'emotional probe' what echoes come from it?

Night in the gallery

Night in the gallery
‘The thousand and one nights’ project

Works by Kaethe Kauffman
Group moderator Luca Caldironi

On November 11th, after several years of activity, in the space of the Castello925 gallery, Luca Caldironi mediated and organized the experience ‘a night in the gallery’ with the artworks of artist Kaethe Kauffman. The experience is part of the project ‘The thousand and one nights’.

The meeting of the participants took place in an in-formal way. From the very beginning, it has been left space for sharing the emotional motivations that each person brought with them and the fantasies that supported them. It was not, therefore, an introduction in classical form, but rather a moment that allowed for the expression of those personal elements in which each person could recognize themselves and which they felt were characteristic for expressing their own personality.
Thus, a way was created to immediately interweave individual and group experiences through their own private symbology.

 Evocative was the date. November 11th is, in fact, St. Martin’s Day, whose origin is Christian, but whose meaning goes beyond religion. The secular possibility of talking about the ‘gift’, the ability to give something of oneself to the Other, an Other with capital O as representative of the encounter with otherness in its broadest sense. An otherness that involves not only the relationship with people and with each other, but also with one’s own inner parts, not surprisingly, the conversations went on talking about ‘dreams’, both the dreams of the night and dreams of wakefulness.

 But let us proceed step by step! After this first stage, a certain ‘sensory’ or ‘taste property’ could not be excluded. Eating together expressed the value that emotional nourishment could not neglect, that of the body!
Returning the mind to the body, T. Ogden reminds us event better ‘Re-Minding the Body’, which allows us to play with the meanings of the verb: re-mind, ‘to remind someone of something’, ‘to provide a new mind’, ‘to take care’!

Then, restarting from the ‘container’-gallery, a deepening of the meeting was resumed in anticipation of the night. The themes continued to be that of the ‘gift’ and ‘for-giving’ and for this purpose some literary traces were used such as J. Borges and his tale of Cain and Abel, a ‘secret companion’ of the participants – Conrad would say. Again, the encounter with the other offered that useful disorientation in which, or rather ‘though which’ memories could con-fuse.

Once the mattresses were laid out and the blankets arranged, participants slept under Kaethe Kauffman’s works that like totems protected and ruled their dreams.

The following morning, over a cup of tea, the guests once again shared their experiences regarding the activity, with a special focus on dreams. Given the topic and its privateness, we cannot go into it any further, but the more general notes that emerged among the participants can be referred to a ‘sense of security’, a ‘non-invasive’ sharing of space and the fact that the different perspective of observation, both of one’s own thoughts and of the exhibited works, led to a fruitful regression that opened new dimensions of meaning and worldviews.

Given the value of this experience and the positive feedback provided, Castello925 gallery is committed to organize and propose it again with other artists and those interested in the project.

LUCA CALDIRONI

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

VENICE, ITALY