The plastic has, unfortunately, become part of the marine landscape, what might seem a new innocuous panorama, supposes an extermination of the habitat, of the customs and finally of its inhabitants. The new elements that appear integrated, at first sight, hide an imbalance to which different species cannot adapt.
An imposition that brings a chained imbalance. Plastic and other human waste, invade exquisite ecosystems that perish and die out gradually.
Scientific studies have discovered that the drugs thrown by the toilet are altering the behaviour and reproductive functions of fish and molluscs as well as causing hormone disruption, antibiotic resistance and synergistic effects. 
Saving the oceans is a pressing need today. Conscientious responsibility and empathy can define a near future or its accurate dissolution for all terrestrial inhabitants.
The peaceful beauty of the plastic transparency underwater contrasts with the mortal danger of its presence. The enormous risk it entails for our ecosystem, the continuous proliferation of plastic and the poor management of human waste, positions us at a point of no return, in which human survival is in doubt.
An apparent peaceful invasion that predicts our end.

HUMAN WASTE I

"Prosoche" is the maintained attention that guides/facilitate the creation, attention focused on the moment and the connection.
Decisive moments, a progression of instants and captures of relationship in the process of creation that will become a complete work in permanent transformation.
Frozen actions in fugues and fleeting frames, which revive a dance magnifying the vividness, the force, the colour, the natural environment, the prosoche; a fragmentation orchestrated and received in a new compound of photographic creation.
"Prosoche" is the term used in Stoic philosophy to refer to the attitude and constant practice of mindfulness.

With Henri Cartier-Bresson in mind, this photo essay constitutes a collection of different "decisive moments" in progression. It is a confluence between two decisive instants of creation: dance and photography. 

Underwater dance perfectly materializes the representation of prosoche, the only mental state where creation is possible.
Thus, the dance with its perfect forms could well symbolize all the arts, and therefore, the potentiality of creation and the infinite possibilities that the creative process entails.

The prosoche is obtained with the conjunction of discipline, training and effort, giving way to a state of mind that enables moments of creation, an optimal state.

Sustained attention to the work transmits, through the empathic nature of the creation of art, the aesthetic experience and potentially generates that optimal state in the viewer.
Observing works with attention -  that is with "Prosoche" -  grants the observer a mental state from where "everything is possible"; it is a gateway to the infinite possibilities of creation.

PROSOCHE. An aesthetic experience of dance

(First Part)

MEDUSA I: TRAUMA and MEMORY

“When our experiences are terrifying and overwhelming, the mind may fragment and become disorganized. The very fabric of our internal world begins to unravel, we become disoriented, and we are unable at times to maintain either a clear connection with others or a coherent sense of ourselves. If the past trauma or loss is not resolved, our internal narrative too will break down. If we try to tell our story to others, we may be overcome by feelings or images that have not found a place in the larger narrative of our lives.” Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Poseidon, the god of the sea, brutally attacks an adolescent priestess from the temple of the goddess Athena, who then punishes the young Medusa for that attack, Perseus finally kills the already transformed and traumatised Medusa.

The project aims to relate an alternative story in which Medusa also undergoes the changes that the trauma deposits in her body and mind, but in this version, she transforms it through conscious awareness, changing her reality and her “destiny”

The traumatic horror that the snaked hair and the blood symbolise, will be part of her wardrobe and her journey towards the transcendence of the trauma.

In this first part, dissociation, flashbacks and fragmented memories are presented as the horror that precedes the inner journey, from chaos to mental integration, the awakening of the courage of the hero who, transforming herself, will transform her own life story.

The journey of Medusa, like that of the people who live with the trauma, from this perspective, is a heroic journey towards oneself.

“The hero’s will is not that of their ancestors or of their society, but his/her own. This is to be oneself, this is heroism.” José Ortega y Gasset

“The Hero’s Journey” by Joseph Campbell is taken as a reference in this process towards healing, due to the parallelism with new knowledge in psychology. A few egregious scientists who decided to undertake non-traditional paths within the profession, teach us that trauma, far from being a mental illness, is a transformative life experience (Dr Peter Levine M.D) that can be completely healed (Dr Daniel J . Siegel, Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk, and others).

“If we can make sense of our past—if we integrate our narratives—we can free ourselves from what might otherwise be a cross-generational legacy of pain and insecure attachment. (…) taking responsibility for one’s own mind can lead to liberation of the self, and to the ability to offer nurturance and love to the next generation.”

Dr Daniel J. Siegel. “Mindsight.”


MEDUSA. The heroic transcendence of suffering.  The Hero’s journey to freedom.

The Shakespearean character of Ophelia is immensely complex, and opposed to other characters, reveals social dynamics that describe the underlying reality of an entire era.

At no time does this fragile adolescent set out to follow her own will, since she lacks such will as a consequence of it being strongly repressed by the social structure of the time.

A passive death seems to be the only way out, and even so, wasn’t a choice either. Let herself go without even avoiding to die drowned was some sort of fate for her. No will nor identity was present, there was no individual.

Elisabeth Siddall, painter, poet, and eventually model, poses for Millais in icy waters and contracted severe pneumonia as a result. Siddall commits suicide with laudanum in response to the infidelities of Rossetti, her husband. The ghost of Ophelia materialises in the abandonment and death that traps this artist in tragedy.

The repeated representations make their way into our unconscious, accompanying us on the journey of life as omnipresent ghosts. They remind us of what is acceptable to society, and therefore, what we must emulate to survive in an organised society.

In this project, Ophelia rebels against the destiny previously imposed on her and accepted by her.

In this new representation, Ophelia does not rise up in belligerent opposition to tradition or in a fight against persistent ideals, but in a blooming of consciousness, an awakening of awareness of her own responsibility for her life, her emotions, her psyche and her destiny.

Thus, a change of perception arises, and in spite of continuing in the same life situation, surrounded by old liquefied structures, these give way and become blurred in tenuous glazes that float around, no longer important or authoritative. The change of consciousness generated at will makes possible a new future.

INSURGENT OPHELIA. A contemporary representation.

Butoh pursues the awareness of repressed emotion, pain, and its evoked images, seeking transmutation through dance to achieve the liberation of the socially established. The social and individual “masks” have to vanish with a trance turned into a dance.

Butoh is a dance born in Japan from the turmoil and confusion generated after the World War II, butoh is developed as a form of theatrical dance partly in response to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in protest of Western materialism.

Before becoming an aesthetic movement, it seeks its roots in the most authentic experimentation in the expression of the unconscious. Just as the surrealist “pure psychic automatism” was a “dictation” of the unconscious through literature and the visual arts, butoh is dictated through corporal expression and dance.

Butoh reveals the ascetic dimension of the body by getting rid of the stipulated conventional aesthetic and unmasking the grotesque, androgynous and obscure that resides in the repressed unconscious.

Kazuo Ohno and Hijikata Tatsumi are the main founders of the dance. Zen (the cultural base of Japanese asceticism), the Nō theatre, the surrealism and the German expressionist aesthetic influence basic forms of butoh.

Butoh is not a meditative practice, it is a process of expression of the unconscious for its awareness.

Around 1968, Hijikata convinces himself that the female gender is innately prepared for the connection with the senses and the unconscious and therefore, was predisposed in a natural way for butoh.

“I would never jump or leave the ground; it is on the ground that I dance.”, said Hijikata.

Butoh is an earthly dance; it needs the gravity, the support and the tension that it facilitates. Water relaxes the muscles, it lacks both, gravity and oxygen. Butoh underwater, naturally, has been never done in the Japanese tradition.

This project does not aim to document butoh dance, instead, it aims to provide a symbolic representation of the metaphoric inner process of the original Ankoku Butoh. For this, is established parallelism between the preparation process of the dance and the dance itself as a process of internal transmutation. The terrestrial exterior is used as a conventional conditioned mental state (unstable and confused) and the underwater dance as a process to the state of consciousness, through butoh and its own elements.

ANKOKU BUTOH (Dance of Darkness): Moments of transmutation.

The final part of "Human Waste" trilogy series: HUMAN WASTE III

What would we do if our only home, the only place that we can live in, would be invaded with unknown materials that we have neither the instinctive knowledge nor genetic information passed by prior generations for avoiding it nor use any already build defence mechanism?

How would we feel? Would we be able to survive?

Millions of species of animals and plants live this reality on a daily bases.

Now we can change their situation, stoping this suffering and agony by assuming responsibility and taking serious global measures.

We are interdependent.


HUMAN WASTE III

This is a project that explores the healing process of a given illness, and the path to optimal health.

It shows a visual and experimental metaphor of the experience of people with a physical and/or psychological illness, or in a degenerative process.

Creativity is shown as a fundamental and necessary characteristic when adapting to a new environment, or to physical and psychological characteristics different to those known previously.

The process of continuous adaptation is implicit in the creative process. The acquisition of new skills is necessary, like those acquired when learning to dance underwater. This is the same process that must be undertaken to relearn lost skills when we recover from a physical or mental illness.

Professional dancers will have to adapt their skills to the underwater environment to illustrate a metaphor which is experimental for themselves, and initially visual for the viewer.

Dance is used as a symbol to represent the steps to take, both to start the creative process and achieve and develop our creativity and resilience.

Each of the dances symbolizes an aspect of the path of introspection and transformation.

Mind training and six dance to train the body are exhibited.

Mindfulness: An allegory of the importance and necessity of the training the mind.

Butoh: An allegory of conscious acceptance of suffering in order to transcend it.

Burlesque/Cabaret: An allegory of rejection of social repression and external wrong guidelines.

Classic ballet: An allegory of the importance and necessity of commitment, discipline, and hard work. Introspection.

Traditional Indian dances: An allegory of the importance and necessity of the training the mind and body.

Raks Sharki: Dance of fertility/creation. An allegory of the creative process, and the inner connection that we need for it.

Contemporary dance: An allegory of the Creative “Flow” and the “Prosoche”, the Creative Moment. Consciousness.

-Artwork series part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Photography of Colombia


CREATING DANCE UNDERWATER

This second part of the Trilogy series of "Human Waste” contemplates how human waste in our oceans is affecting sentient beings in our oceanic ecosystem.

The photographs are based on real cases of animals trapped in plastics and human waste found in the ocean. By means of the rhetorical figure of prosopopoeia, inverse, in this case, this panorama is presented visually, equating animals and human beings to enable a deeper connection with this reality.

It is already scientifically established that animal emotions and, therefore, animal suffering, is comparable to the human one. We are actively contributing to their distress and agonising death with our waste thrown into our oceans.

Our unconscious behaviour has a great cost to the planet and ourselves.

The micro-particles of plastic are now fixed in the food and organs of the animals and thus in our own too.

There is less and less uncontaminated water on earth.

HUMAN WASTE II

IPSEITY

The borders were drawn in our mind. Constructed identities fluctuating and flexible as water.

Layers that clothe and shape us or imprison us, reflections of our surroundings that we assimilate and mirroring as our own.

Variable identities, such as the clothes that cover our body, help us to adapt to the environment, to find our way, to recognise our uniqueness, nevertheless, when these fictitious identities are fixed, clothes become immovable skins, huge problems arise, we begin to dwell in a body suffocated by external and internal impositions acquired by relational habits.

The only escape lies in the search and encounter with the only invariable. A difference and essential uniqueness.

Ipseity, from where creativity can arise.

Ipseity is a term used in neuroscience and contemporary psychology to describe the vital experience without the trappings of constructed identities. Our nuclear conscious being.
A process of discovering layers of ornamentation and artificial clothing. An allegorical project on identity. When constructed identities constrain us instead of helping us adapt to new situations, and how the awareness of the "Ipseity" our nuclear being means a new experience from where creation can arise. A liberation.

(Project awarded by FINE ARTS PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS In the Categories: Conceptual and Open Theme

http://beatrizglezsa.com/4-premios-por--4th-time-awarded-by-fine )

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Beatriz GlezSa