The study of Chaos, a kind of math that looks to account for all the possibles and helps define the Quantum of things, has a visualization called the “Butterfly Effect”. This was popularized with a metaphor of cause and effect, that all things are interdependent; that a butterfly’s wings can cause a hurricane. But this was not quite the point… it’s more like the Elders put it. False: A single cause can have one result, or many results, many causes do not lead to a single result. True: Many causes have many results.

The Butterfly Effect is actually a model of elegant math expressions that were discovered, that show while chaos means spinning off in all sorts of directions… when we add up all those directions, there is a tendency to hover back towards a central point. There is a folding, that when graphed looks like the wings of a butterfly. Or a magnetic field. This tendency for things to group locally is called an Attractor. They’ve found a variety of elegant equations that give similar ‘concentrating tendency’ results. Quantum, which means “all the possibilities at once, simply held as one tangle”, is nicely illustrated with Chaos theory here. It shows there is within the chaos of all possibilities, there is a natural attraction to cluster towards something like order. It is natural, *deep down in the basic numbers themselves*. Or to put it another way, Nature, in its utter chaos, is naturally prone to evolving towards increasing order.

In a dryly humorous application, the most famous use of the Butterfly Effect recently is the Finance Attractor, which shows economies fundamentally are less prone to trickle down or distribute, than they are to cluster and concentrate, and that loose ‘trickles’ ultimately will be attracted to a singular center. It was proposed as a reassurance, ‘don’t worry if you lose financial control, wealth will always return to wherever it is most concentrated”. This might have been something Cronenberg was attempting to touch on in his latest movie.

The Law of Attraction has become a popular folk belief today, that wishes come true. According to chaos theory, there is a law of attraction already at work in everything, wishes or no. What may be poetically drawn here, is that every action, however small, will contribute towards its concentration, the ‘butterfly effect’ being a very real law of attraction. Small acts of good do contribute to the overall quantum of good, small acts that stress add to the overall concentration of oppression. “There is always room for new input into the system, which gives the scope for free will.”

Please note that contradicts another elegant observation: the law of entropy, that all things ultimately break down, and nothing can remain unchanged. This is one of the great stumpers, mysteries, of physics.

In any case, from a human perspective, what your disciplines permit as contemplations in your mind, no doubt, are concentrated and increased within your mind. These attractors are as much at work forming elements within stars, as they are formations in the virtual chambers of our thoughts. Dwell on fear, and we concentrate fear. Dwell on anger, we concentrate anger. Dwell on ambition, we concentrate demand.

(This bit inspired by the stunning work of a designer known only as “Chaotic Atmospheres” of Geneva.  Plugging Chaos math formulas into his 3D design software yielded stunning visuals of the strange undertones of our world.)

(for Concord Collective Archival Project, Dec. 2012)

[Author's note: This is experimental. It's designed to entertain by puzzling the language circuits.]

Just who do we think we are when we overturn the rubble and find remains? Truly beyond the pale of the present, genuine remains, not memories still being digested. We run into an unfamiliar legal arena – sovereignty.  It begins with only a split hair, the difference between reality and realism.

Karen LaMonte, Glass Dress.

One fact seems loyal to our sense of passing time – this tree is in my orchard, so the fruit it bears is mine to eat.  But when a stump is pulled up from the field, and it exposes a frail skeleton that grips the golden disc of history, who can say they own these bones?  In this dream, we share the domain of the present with the past, but it seems rare that our thoughts would turn to the tree, bearing fruit, to see how it once belonged to people of the past, and perhaps was for them equally as remote.

For an archaeology of the recent past that is transparent to the single person, say an artist, one must have a clue where to begin. The earnest shoulder their picks and shovels and survey the site, strewn evenly across with fluttering sheaves of paper, gold reared gears, coils of nucleic acids.  Every word turned over with smooth fingertips, to blow on its petals and see it flutter.  All to see it live, to model it with the mind, whether the wind of time could carry it intact all the way here from a point marked on yellowing charts.  Can we bear to be a part within a whole, and surrender our sovereignty over time?

What do we inherit by calling anything Contemporary?  Are we counting breaths, counting lives, clear who we are?  Can we keep our eyes from the river of glittering treasure stolen, melted, reshaped?  Was it most alive in the sweat of the miner’s palms, the golden mask of an emporer, a chalice, wedding bands?  Do we taste it as we reach deeper into the hilltribes to devour their traditional adornments?  Do we lay beside it as we reach for ever more exotic predictions of doom, does this mend the fences?  How are we to even know which direction the sun sets, watching history so closely?  Are we certain of ourselves by knowing our function?  By knowing our places – from, going, and belong?   Does certainty come from dreams, is there a foothold in the suspension of gravity that takes place beneath our consciousness, does our raw complexity insulate us from the phantasmal food of the past?

Katie Scott.

It isn’t decay that fills the cosmos with background radiation – it’s the hissing sound of aftermath.  We sort and set aside, brushing at the stone of our adopted home, but the one who digs does not experience loss.  It is the instance and the spark, long nights and involutions that reveal we are not scraping away at tangible dead time but reconstructing time to include, and match, our findings.   If we could not project, the past would be ruins (even less than that) instead of the elementary building blocks of inner life we use it for.

Thankfully we can know, by that eminence in our being: therein lives a creator.    We don’t feel remorse for what is lost, because what we gain was built from scratch, past to present, so every sepia tone ancestor and rattle of the shaman’s chants is gripped as a discovery, never considered a survivor.  We own what we make.  This is a hunger on a floodplain, and all that has washed up at our feet offers itself to this end.  The variety of things washed down is vast, all materials waiting for assemblage.  So our hunger comes without despair, satisfied with such abundance – it instead should be called youth.

It seems appropriate to look to poets this time, to those who recover from the noise of broad language stray sounds of meaning.  René Char, about eight decades ago:

“With my teeth I have seized life upon the knife of my youth.  With my lips today, with my lips alone.”

And it is a hunt, to find anything about the past that could deliver itself unfallen.  It is hunger that drives youth to claim what it will – what it can? – of the past, quickly, by reflection.  The first claims from the floodplain of time are proxies.  So certain in a shared existence, so sure are we that in the past a heart beats still, that we track the past as nothing less than an extension of ourselves.  Outnumbered in time we amend ourselves to its stream.  We call to the spirit of the past, paint it on the walls, sacrifice effigies, until the hunting ground is ours.  And if we find something promising, don’t we celebrate?  Or returning empty handed, will we know nothing is lost?  Will we know we have won ourselves, are more intact than before?

We take from the past and we do not ask, because we know by now that the hunt may as well be called ritual as survival.  May as well be called fashion as feeding the people, may as well be executed as a replica in fine gold, as served roasted and tenderly put to the mouths of the elderly and the children.

Carmen Stiffelman, Diana.

History migrates away even as we prepare ourselves to hunt it.  Its potency is spilled, all bottles drained; we could know that when we are drunk on the glory or the burden of it, in truth we drink not of the past but from our own vitality.  But we never seem to know this; the lives beside us warm, and each of us gripping our knives, we seem to know quite clearly that hunger drives this feast, but never notice we share a table with the dead.  Char later wrote:

“Just like a lamp whose halo of light is perfume, she will leave, her back to the setting sun.
It would be sacrilege to talk to her.
Little sandals brushing the grass, let her pass.  Perhaps you will be able to discern the ghost of the night’s dampness on her lips.”

The colony ships crashed upon the shores of human consciousness so long ago the masts have been pounded to soggy shreds in the surf, dispersed into the sands like the billowing hair of a siren in the saline fluid of memory.  The undersides of every leaf on the Tree of Life seems coated with the soot of our encampment fires.  We build fantasies where the past is allowed to survive, modeled and predicted, tracked like wild game, inventoried like the fruit of an orchard tree.  Islands in a sea of stars where observation gives our creativity the breath of life.  In our experiments there are bunkers, holdouts, forgotten paradises, Shangri-La’s.  If we know them well enough, our lives attest to their reality.  Our own reality, in these places, becomes discernable theory in action.  Our own reality then is only threatened by the proliferation of other places, so we spend a part of each lifetime, after the hunt, to willfully erase from the charts this lion’s share as terra incognita.   And none of this ever seems to be much bother, for all the clouds painted above our palace of preservation, our excess is eagerly painted over with an arch vault of night.  Each brick placed by trading the feeling drawn from living for precursors made of found object thoughts.

Agostino Arrivabene, White Stag

How noble then is the diver in the wreckage!  What words could be used to describe the hunt outside of hunger, the stillness beneath the waves?  What more loverly touch can be offered the marbles of sunken cities than to be observed by the living?  And what becomes of the wanderers in time’s wilderness who, sparingly distributing the glory and secure retirement that their resurrection palaces might provide, instead climb these steps with the cool eyes of post-fortune saplings to build what is never finished?  Could they brush so close with their inheritance and remain living, something constituent, somehow present, by their own merit?  We were handed all these questions, that is the book we open when we identify this moment as Now.  Adrienne Rich wrote about this curious hunt, hungering not only for the known but the new, as it happens one person at a time.  She seemed to know where to place the surface of the abyss, and the ladder to the surface.  She wrote,

“I come to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done, and the treasures that prevail.
[..] The thing I came for, the wreck and not the story of the wreck.
[..] We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who finds our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera, a book of myths in which our names do not appear.”

If overwhelmed by time, falling into identification with the past, we move smoothly into the enfolding wilderness.  But while we hold the knife, we are passing through, breathing and still alive.  All the same, the dive into the wreckage is unnerving, the veil so obviously thin.  The line between observed and considered, reality and realism, present and past.  Later, Rich wrote on the stakes in Equinox,

“Time split like a fruit between dark and light,
and a usual fog drags over this landfall.
[..] Dull acres of developed land as we had named it:  Nowhere
wetland   burnt garbage   looming at its heart
gunmetal thicket    midnightblue blood and
tricking masks.
I thought I knew history was not a novel.”

 

Sonja Vordermaier, Formed absence of light.

What do we inherit as contemporaries?  The same flood, the same treasures and choices, which produce by our character their own outcome.  Is it overwhelming, the hunt?  You could consider the old saying, “Against untenable odds, reconsider your imperatives.”  Here it is, all of everything else, trade it if you can for the single pearl of a lifetime.

Manuel Rodriguez Sanchez

In researching contemporary art I have encountered an image that, while not entirely new yet not very common, seems to have gained increased circulation. The image is that of the flying house, defying gravity and drifting.  The image, especially without apparatus, gives a feeling of slowness, and so a paradox, as though the weight of a house would somehow limit the degree to which it is defying the laws of physics.

It is an image I find strangely compelling, as though it possessed some measure of meaning that might reside in dream logic. In circumstances where some mechanical explanation is given, the method is similarly paradoxical, with a cluster of balloons, elaborate (and weight increasing) gear-works, or magic, which only enhance its curiosity.  In my personal encounter with the images I have run across, I have paused and said to myself, ah, there is another one!  The presence that I feel from the image, the weight and suggestion of slow movement, seems to be confirmed as a profoundly unconscious dream symbol for a number of reasons.  First, it is most typical to run across the house as a singularity – it is typically just one house.  Secondly, the house serves as the single focus of interest, typically combined with a landscape that serves to cradle the relative disturbance the symbol is creating.  For these reasons we are delivered a deep symbol of human consciousness, and I will demonstrate as we go on that for its dreamy character, its isolation and its reflective capacity, we have in the flying house an inner symbol of human identity as an individual.

Before we embark on this visual essay, it would be suitable to define what the house might symbolize itself, which won’t take much.  Four walls and a roof, basic shelter, comprise an image of belonging and permanence.  The house is a symbol of social roots – the privacy and property of a house distinguishes homeowner from renter, householder from wanderer.  A house in the country signifies an extension of personal, social roots into wilder spaces.  Long ago a young husband built a house for his family, a settler built a homestead to convert the land.  The significance of the private dwelling as a symbol of the natural family unit is pervasive even where families do not dwell in houses.  A study held at Cabrini Green, a housing project in Chicago, asked children to draw a picture of what a home is, and all produced a simple, four-wall house with a peaked roof.

Today the house may carry as much anxiety as it might stability, being a symbol of access to the middle class, a place where the banks may be partners in ownership, an instrument of leverage for entering significant debts, subject to taxation and eminent domain, the place of keeping one’s valuables and so the place where they may be stolen.  The house is subject to weathering, neighborhood decline, fire and natural disaster.   But the flying house is a completely different story.

Antigravity

Because the flying house has the characteristics of dream logic, it would seem to belong in the category of Surrealism, which often claimed to draw from psychological and dream material, but the symbol itself is much older than that movement, as I will demonstrate.  As it happens, for such a potent image the subject of the flying house was only touched upon by a few of its artists, among them Rene Magritte and Remedios Varo, both of whom could be characterized as working so deeply in human consciousness one could say there is a sense of mysticism.

Rene Magritte, The Castle in the Pyrenees

Viewing the event of a flying house in the language of mysticism (which is an arena where dream, symbol and double meaning play), what we have in the house is an image of stability.  It perfectly serves this role in its very shape, the square, which is an ancient representation of the classical element of earth, so the simple house and the earth have long been rooted together.

Benoit Paillé, Landscape

But the imposition of a structure on the wilds of the land is easily spotted from a great distance, and for this reason its straight lines are the introduction of a certain human element into the natural state of the earth.  The linear creativity is expansive, giving rise to borders, states, and structures.  Even the sky is divided into airspace and orbit, and this could be seen as a superimposition, like the house, that man places on nature.

Mary Iverson, Linear Empires

The aspect of the flying house then is a curious recombination of this relationship of human and earth – a rearrangement of the scene without the abolishing of any element.  Ultimately, this is a representation of human consciousness, and in that respect may be understood, and employed, in many ways.  What else is human consciousness than to receive, interpret, order and arrange the outside world, then bring it into an intercourse with the inner mental world?

Remedios Varo, The Flutist

I believe that because the flying house as a symbol of the conscious identity represents a subject that is at its very best rather obscure in daily life (the workings of the mind are for this reason largely the domain of artists), there is a clear enough reason why it broaches on the mystical.  For this reason, an encounter between the self and the reality-bending way in which consciousness reacts with the world leads to a clear suspension of natural laws.  That this depicts one’s internal process would seem to defy the cornerstone of self-awareness, that one accurately understands reality.  One sees a tree, and one recalls in memory the same tree, so there is no reason to question, or even consider, the way in which the memory arises from the fact.  But in dreams we are able to witness the miraculous, the magical, and the suspension of real logic is routine.  And we find in the symbolic presence of antigravity an indication of partial awareness of this fact.  It is generally understood that dreams of flying are indications of lucidity.  Lucidity is a state of clarity within dream, essentiality, a place in between what we could call ‘dream reality’ and the in-between reality of consciousness itself, the awareness of the dreamer.

Tereza Vickova, Photograph

Returning to the Rene Magritte’s painting, it would seem very evident that its stable and insightful character reveals the apparition of solidity in the workings of conscious perception.  The painting combines two subjective devices he came to employ in his mature work – petrifaction and antigravity.  The former relates nicely to the earthen symbolism of the house, the transformation of perception into hardened idea, and it is the primal, unshaped stone that is most often found floating.  The titles of these paintings point clearly to an association with the concreteness of mental formations, as with Invisible World, Origins of Language, and Clear Ideas.  Perhaps in The Familiar World the boulder’s symbolic role is made most plain, and in a painting that evokes the universe modeling art of alchemy, the boulder is declared to be familiar, indeed ordinal, and is placed at the top.  This strongly suggests that for Magritte, the floating earth was symbolic of the solidness that consciousness assigns our own mental formations, and the emptiness of our individual identity in such a formation.

Rene Magritte, The Familiar World

The Castle in the Pyrenees adds another element to the mix.  The stone, symbolizing earthen foundation, is placed over the ocean, a strong symbol for the abyss of the unconscious, and elements that essentially are not solid.  The house then becomes something of the personal – it is a dwelling, a structure, and was somehow built on this most inaccessible, unnatural foundation.  So the house can be viewed, though it is a static structure, as resembling human dynamis – our energy and action.  The story behind the title suggests this layer.  In the ancient myth behind the naming of the Pyrenees, the great mountain range that divides France from the peninsula of Spain, we have the story of a woman named Pyrene, which means Fire, who was wronged by a drunken Hercules.  She managed to knife him in his sleep and escape.  When he awoke, he believed that she had taken her own life, but could not find her body.  In his grief he piled up the mountain range as a great tomb for her.

So we have a reference to a remote, inaccessible tomb for a fire that is not to be found residing there.  In this way, the house symbolizes the memory of the fire, and the entire depiction of the painting is something of a memorial to the inaccessibility inherent in the structures of human identity, built as it were as on monolithic solidity that defies reality and holds itself above oblivion.  Was this intentional, or accidental?  The title suggests the artist was very aware of his depiction.  But an artist could just as easily have arrived here in a more abstracted and accidental manner, by the arrangement of symbols in relation to themselves:

Ryan Browning, Birth of an Island, 2008

Sky Mirror

Understanding then that the flying house is a curious way of depicting the internal symbol of a fantasy of solidity and action in human consciousness, we can see that its aspect – a fixed thing floating in free space – is an anagram of the way we might ordinarily view reality.  It would be more accurate to say that consciousness reflects reality in its thoughts through a personalized semblance of reality – to mention a flowering tree, we picture a flowering tree, and we do not picture it upside down!  But the flying house is in a sense upside down, which is why we can recognize it to be dream logic.  It is a rearrangement, where the rules of reality are changed in order to describe the reality of something that might not ordinarily be acknowledged, or is not easily presented.

Ekkehard Altenberger, Mirror House

It can take a flying house to picture what conscious identity is, because describing what it does is little more than explaining photography.  And the photograph is an excellent example of relating how the mechanism is a sort of inversion of both the subject and the result.  The lens of a camera, much like the human eye, operates on the principle of the camera obscura, where light information is collected through a small aperture which reproduces the image while turning it upside down.  In a camera, this is corrected by a second lens, with human vision this is corrected organically by the brain.  We do this unconsciously, correcting reality to some semblance of its appearance, mixed with our understanding of it.

Do-Ho Suh, Reflection

Curious then that in dream logic the stable and structural may be suspended in mid air.  In a sense, this would make of the sky something like a second tier of land.  But this new land is no place beyond – it remains essentially tied to the earth itself, it relates a logical continuation of the land.  If this were not the case, and it were some celestial beyond, some kind of heaven, we would see the flying house depicted far more often than it is.  No, the house is a continuation of our identity within reality, and is in no way supernal or ethereal.  It points to a real, personal experience, and this explains its presence in the work of artists who are prying into their inner workings, rather than being a transcendental trope.

Tommy Hilding, The Bridge, 2007

With this increased understanding of the symbol as one of reflection, and seeing that the reflection is of our identification with reality, we can proceed to consider the implications. Given the scope of human individual identity, we can expect that in the employment of a reflection of this state, we will be presented with characteristics of the viewers themselves.

Rafa Zubiria

We know from oneirology that our dreaming attends to a vast array of cognitive purposes.  Some of the strongest roles are in the formation and review of memory, problem solving, and the resolution of social mapping.  The context for understanding this symbol then becomes the dreamer’s own purpose for having the dream.

We also know that symbols within dreams can be duplicitous – one moment being a background replica of something in waking, the next moment being an animated element of the individual’s own unconsciousness, wearing the symbol like a cloak.  For this reason we must look at the overt and invert of each purpose.

Peter Shelton, Pagoda Window Skull, 1993

Ultimately, the reflective nature of the floating house, with its mirroring function, not only relates our own active consciousness as it processes reality, but also demonstrates in a curiously breathtaking, logical way, that by placing its symbol above the natural order, that it is in fact reflecting that which takes place below – both here on earth, and down in the depths of our unconscious lives.

Francois Mazabraud, Les Dessous de Table (Under The Table)

Giants

Given the powerful role of social mapping – the relationship between the self and others – it follows that a symbol regarding the way this identity is handled would be affected by the social conditions of the dreamer or artist.  A person who lives under a state of social oppression may well find something ominous in the monolithic image of a stable structure that is high above and inaccessible.

Max Gomez Canle, Invasion, 2007

Or it may follow that the individual socially experiences a state of tranquility, perhaps having no qualms with the structural presence overhead.  The symbol remains no less remote, its occupation no more distant, but in such a fanciful depiction might be well described as a castle in the sky.  Such an image, I would think, would be fairly rare, better used to describe clouds.  It would take considerable personal integrity to reconcile a vision of this remote, unreachable seat of conscious power that felt cheerful and perfectly in place.

Takanori Aiaba

One very old story comes to mind when we speak of a mirror land in the sky, that would be familiar to children of English descent and many more beyond.  In what are considered oldest of that culture’s folklore, the Jack stories tell of a hero who as often as not accidentally gets himself into trouble, and bravely gets himself out.  The most famous of the Jack tales involves a beanstalk, and a giant.

Because it is an old story, there are many versions, but here is the synopsis.  Jack’s only cow stopped giving milk, so he is sent to town to sell it.  On the way he meets an old man, who offers to trade a few magic beans for it.  His mother, furious at the trade, tosses them out the window.  In the morning, Jack discovers the beans have formed a stout vine that he climbs high into the sky, where he find himself in another land, and a castle.  He discovers that a giant lives in the castle, who senses his presence, and thunders, “Fee fie fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.  Be he live or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”  With the help of the giant’s wife (who is not a giant), who wants Jack to help her murder the giant in his sleep, Jack discovers he has a goose that can lay golden eggs, and decides he is going to steal it.  She plays a magic harp that soothes the giant to sleep. The murder fails, and he flees for his life with the goose.  The giant tries to follow him, but the vine breaks under his weight and he falls to his death.  Once back on earth, the goose turns out to only be able to lay ordinary eggs.

Jay Fleck

Like most tales of such antiquity, its roots contain shamanic elements, in this case probably Celtic.  Shamanic traditions are inevitably composed of deep psychological elements, dream symbols, and social fabric.  The dried up cow indicates earthly troubles, and the appetite of the giant suggest a powerful, oppressive force also lives up in the house in the sky.  By way of magic, the courageous Jack ascends to that place in order to have a look at its occupants.  He discovers a treasure there, one that produces gold, but taking it requires killing the monster that rules the house.  It proves too difficult a task directly, but through the journey itself Jack defeats the giant when it severs the link between the flying house and reality and falls on its own.  And with the help of his Anima, his inner feminine counterpart is set free of its subjection to the Giant.  The treasure of the goose’s gold eggs turns out to be ordinary in reality, and could only be produced in a dangerous mirror land above that is approachable through the dream-logic of magic.  Little in real life has changed, except that Jack has slain the giant, and so his only troubles are here on earth.

Anselm Kiefer

The ominous giant above certainly stands for the powerful role the flying house plays as a symbol of consciousness.  And under the conditions of oppression, the individual may find it difficult not to regard such a place, in its remoteness, to be a representation of the individual’s powerlessness.  Even at it is clearly drawn from the internal stuff of our own psyche, shaped into the very image of stability in our reality, it is out of reach yet overbearing.  It is curious that one of the most destructive forces unleashed by humans upon themselves, the atomic bomb, was delivered in a ‘Flying Fortress’, and the oppressive symbolism of it would be noted by many thinkers as forming a distinctly oppressive giant in collective consciousness.

Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Dirty Bomb, 2008

Another way of projecting oppression onto the symbol, rather than the outright destructive nature of its occupant, would be to reverse the meaning of its antigravity, becoming a representation of instability.  It would follow in this case that the weight of the structure would dramatically increase.  Monolithic cities in grim landscapes can be found as a subject of artists in the Soviet days, characterized by the massive, sterile structures, and at times these are found floating in mid-air, all reflections on a grand scale of the oppressive lack of vitality perched up there in the chambers of conscious identity.  Even recently, in a popular Japanese cartoon Howl’s Moving Castle, the tale includes a struggle to maintain the necessary magic to keep a tremendous, scarcely occupied structure aloft –wonder and fear combine in the mysterious maintenance of stability in identity.

Bzzz88, Flying City

Yang Yongliang

Foundations

Deep symbols will appear as they are personally perceived: as an object of mystery, whether the viewer finds it ambiguous, hopeful or despairing.  This is the role of symbols of this kind, as we internally project into them the meanings we summoned them for in the first place.  The symbol of the flying house, particularly in its contemporary art contexts, seems to introduce another layer to the mix – decay.  The exposure of the underside foundations, crumbling, falling bits, and fire have made their way into the symbol’s use.

Laurent Chehere, Flying House, 2012

Mark McCoy, Hallow, 2008

This could be interpreted in a number of ways.  If we are to understand the flying house as a symbol for the individual identity in the context of social mapping, we can see a sense of instability, and the flying house is a ready reflection to the sense of rootlessness and lack of belonging.  The uncertainty of the structure, viewed in this way, is a reflection of the uncertainty of the individual.  The isolation of this places the individual in the setting of insulation symbolized by the house, but also sets them adrift, without foundation.  This more despairing reading of Magritte’s painting makes the castle not an illusory house for a dynamic element of consciousness, but instead the individual has become trapped, inaccessible, and actually occupies the empty tomb.  This reading of consciousness places reality in question, and traps the individual’s identity within the dynamic of consciousness alone.  Instead of reflecting reality, this reading interprets consciousness as equal to reality.  The resulting existential isolation, and the erasure of identity, is a significant theme in contemporary, post-modern art.

Jeremy Geddes, Cosmonaut, 2010

Thomas Doyle

Alternately, and perfectly in step with the reflective, inverse capabilities of deep symbols, the opposite may be true to similar effect.  In a music video What else is there? for Royksopp, Martin de Thurah presents a dark landscape of slowly drifting structures shedding debris to accompany the message of a floating singer who is shedding droplets of a similarly dreamlike white fluid.  The message of the song suggests that in the presence of everything, of a total reality, there is nothing left but the isolation of the individual, and the desire for contact with another individual as the only remaining need.

In either case, reality has become something foreign to the conscious needs of the individual, and the individual finds the emptiness of their internal flying house to be a literal, direct translation of reality.  Distinguished again from the Magritte symbolism, this art does not reveal that our identities are largely empty reflections of self-structured reality.  Instead, it finds that our consciousness is as concrete as reality, and any other dynamic in the human experience than that between individuals is essentially what is empty – reality, and its reflection, are both empty.

Martin de Thurah, Video Still

Royksopp, What else is there?, Video

Another way despair may be projected onto the symbol of the flying house can be found in the dream function of memory.  One subject of modernity that has been widely addressed can be found in the effects media have on our memories and the identity that relies on them.  The archival role media plays that changes our relationship to the depth and accessibility of information.  The speed and global reach of media and their effect on our ability to recall information, use complex language, and distinguish culture.  The way in which modernization profoundly diminishes the distinctiveness of traditional cultures, and the way urbanization replaces the natural face of the land with human growth.  All these can be viewed under the umbrella of memory, and many people find the effects devastating.

Richard Baxter, Memory Drift

The impact of this projection onto the symbolic structure of the flying house would seem plainly to be that of blowing apart the integrity of it.  Still, as it belongs in unconscious fashion to our identity within reality, the structure becomes a flying exploding house.

Ben Grasso

Given the suitability of the flying house for all manner of projections, and in contemporary voices an absorbent sponge for the grievance of the individual, I think it would be significant to point out here that in the many images I have collected for this essay, one peculiar rule stands out – nearly all the artists are male.  Could it be possible that the flying house metaphor in some way is a reflection of what we could call the masculine polarity of the human psyche?  I could read in this that the flying house is a masculine projection, and shows a deep awareness of the patriarchal divorce between structure and, to use the classical understanding, the feminine psychic symbol of the earth itself.  Indeed more often than not, the flying house is defined by its detached relationship from earth and sea below.

Dream Castles

As I mentioned before, the conscious symbol is an object of mystery , whether the viewer finds it ambiguous, hopeful or despairing.  As with a great deal of art, the ambiguous plays a strong role, it could be said that it truly speaks for itself.  The viewer may be uncomprehending yet moved, and the artist may very well be operating under the same principle.  So I will leave the dumbstruck silent, and conclude this exploration by mentioning the remaining projection – that of the hopeful.  Should we find ourselves considering our conscious identity in this symbolic way, it may be that we also view this identity in a beneficial light.  The biology of the mind demonstrates that the symbols and their appearance are transformed by the kind of attention they are given.

UP

A flying house has recently entered modern consciousness in the form of a Disney animated film called Up, which it could be easily said most modern children have now seen.  In it an old man, bogged down by life decides to elevate his house and travel using balloons.  The film proved so popular National Geographic set about making the flight a reality, and literally floated a house on a cluster of colorful balloons.  In this curious way the flying house of the inner mind became reality.

Disney, See the World

The idea of taking the house with you refers back to the previous mention of Giants, and the oppressive nature of mental formation reflected in the ominous above.  Here we find this projection of oppression reversed, where actual reality has become oppressive, and the inner reflection of reality, the flying house, becomes the refuge.  Here one may occupy the house where a preferable reality is reflected – mobility, travel, independence – and escape.  When the inner reflection of reality is a structure of hope, aspiration and imagination, it becomes preferable when worldly reality is viewed as oppressive.  This is not the first story Disney has spun that defied the laws of physics to escape earthly difficulties, in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the inventiveness and downright bohemian values of the characters transform a derelict car into a means of adventure and justice.

Kali Ciesemier

And Up is not the first tale of a house being used to take the integrity of the individual, combined with their own ingenuity, to escape oppressive conditions.  In The Wizard of Oz, the first step towards a new life in a flying house begins a journey of troublemaking for oppressors.  And there is influential The Flying House by Winsor McCay, from the Great Depression era, in which a married couple escape the burdens of high interest loans by flying away, in the process knocking about a number of elements of the industrial society that has delivered both their predicament and their means of escape.

Winsor McCay, The Flying House, 1921

In conclusion the flying house is a perfect example of a deep conscious symbol.  Its role in art clearly demonstrates the function of such a symbol, how it influences us, and how we employ it.  It shows that ultimately the symbol is a construction of mind, and it is dependant on the condition of that mind.  An objective view might see it as a perfect component for describing the mysteries of human consciousness, and the way we order and relate to reality and our own inner life.  A subjective view might find in the flying house a way of describing the curious juxtaposition of the inner and outer lives, or of the invisible and seen.  And the symbol may become a medium onto which we project our dispositions and outlooks, seeing in them our own struggles, transforming them into symbols of our own isolation, or of our hopes and aspirations, however it is that we may be inclined…

* * *

Appendix

Happy Red Fish | Lonely Houses | 2012

Robert and Shana Parke Harrison

Jim Kazanjian

Peter Garfield | Mobile Homes

Rachel Robinson | This house is not a home

Alex Prager

Douglas Schneider

Artist Annabel Osberg creates images that weave contextual symbols of inner life into paintings that portray strong feeling and sparkling intelligence. Using her imagination like an alembic to condense pure images from the tangle and briar of her influences, her paint could be regarded as a blend of sweet cordials and poison elixirs, carrying the scent and flavor of contemporary life. In her new work, space and landscape are malleable textures on which elements, distilled from a concern for the social and personal impacts of technology and modern life, interact with each other. She produces pictures of isolation, injury, struggle, and identity, all under a spectral refraction of the distinct.

Ultimately, the artist is more concerned with the total aspect of studio painting than she is in conveying a specific message, finding in painting an investigative process that leads to insight in pursuing her interest in the nature of reality. She constructs a fulcrum where her way of life finds its balance at the point of expression. This has been a lifelong approach, generating art from an instinctive level, while her interests involve intellectual fields such as philosophy, and extend to making observations in nature. Specifically interested in the nature of knowledge and phenomenology, her subjects lean towards the nature of consciousness, calling into question the uncertainties of conscious experience, and the peculiar nullifications and conflicts that seem to present themselves as diametric extremes.

Osberg maintains a focus on ambiguity in the end result, creating an invitation for others to form their own opinions when they view the work. “It’s important for the artist to have an open mind, rather than being didactic.” She identifies images from the notebooks she regularly fills that are destined to become paintings, and goes about adding additional layers of interaction that will bring them to fruition. “Art is very subjective, and my paintings are interpretive. If I had something specific that I wanted to convey, I would be a writer.” She does not work in terms of a show or series basis; each painting is approached as a distinct work that contains its own problems to resolve, spinning ideas into the fabric of its surface until they are ambiguous enough to create space for the viewer. “I am not thinking illustratively, my ideas are more general, but constantly being generated. It’s not a one-to-one, question to painting, ratio.”

Mine Stream

Developing her ideas into visual generalities, she interprets concepts found in the modern world and the aura of tension they produce in inner life. Even though her paintings are filled with identifiable objects – buildings, animalia, people’s heads and hearts, the representations are more akin to elements of feeling, phantasms of concrete objects. Taking ordinary images she activates them through estrangement, teasing up from the undefined and vague references a sense of the depth behind them. In her statement she describes the intentional convolution of “the morbid, the whimsical, humor and pathos” as a means of questioning the way we relate to reality. She cloaks loaded, often vicious imagery in soft colors to reflect the way we presume to manage our own conscious life, and the results that extend into the outer world. “We treat our thoughts and actions as if they are miniature topiaries that should be pruned to conform to predictable patterns… The world is full of possibilities, but we imprison it, subjugating the unknown and papering it with the familiar.”

Through her deliberate representation of aspects of inner life, one of the easiest comparisons to her work is Surrealism – Varo, Carrington, Kahlo, Dali and Tanguy. There is a disregard for the fundamental laws of space while relying on their enclosure at the same time, creating spectral landscapes out of mental life, something also found in Cubism. The artist acknowledges the affinity but notes that she is less interested in the subjects of dreams and Freudian psychology. In this respect her work is a non-representational display of human experience, more aligned with the enduring sense of the surreal genre than the manifesto-driven movement. She mentions other inspirational artists who employ simulated mental environments – Jean-Michel Folon’s spacious neutral landscapes that float with anthropologized ideas, Maria Lessnig’s reductive action painting full of body awareness, Laura Owens with her tapestry-like, vegetal narratives, and Karen Kilimnik’s approach to portraiture that scatters and displaces creating an almost iconic subject. Perhaps most strongly among her references, in the early modernist Florine Stettheimer one sees the wholly human references that tie the work back to real, daily life, along with a bright palette subdued within spaces liberated from artificial perspective. Also in that artist we can discover the parallel to the artist’s motivations – Stettheimer viewed painting as a wholly private pursuit, placing a greater emphasis on the artist to work relationship that Osberg also embraces.

Generational Tree

The mirroring of conscious life to reality strikes a note of the absurd for the artist, especially when she sees the phenomenon intensified in digital, computerized social life. Her paintings become screens that mimic the ones we find inseparable from our daily existence in the form of computers and smartphones, daily conveniences that increase our exposure to the ideas and actions of others, which she sees as intensifying the desire to conform. To affect the backlit screens and social mirroring of digital life, she primes her canvases with oil ground, increasing the potential luminosity of the paint. As with digital life, and her work to reveal its ugly side, everything is exposed at once, or as she puts it, “There are no shadows in this world.”

Expanding on the dehumanizing in technology, she pulls from her critical eye a number of reflections, exposing the detrimental aspects of technology. As a tool for knowledge, she mentions the way technology encourages outsourcing, connecting to it remotely rather than carrying it with them. With a concern for the sedentary life computer use produces, alienating one from their own body, she paints mutating and cybernetic figures. “Sometimes, individual body parts re-assert themselves, take control, and fight back against what is happening to them, as in ‘Besieged’ where a man is literally being attacked by his own heart.” Reflecting the increase in communication with text and email, sinuous threads and empty landscapes seem to suggest alienation and tenuous contact. “Generally the way it is used now, it erodes our personalities. People spend less time even using their voices.” The idea of social media appears to her as daydreams, exposing us to one-way snippets of other’s lives, and making personal expressions into a form of communication directed at everyone, driving the movement towards conformity.

I asked Osberg if a painting isn’t somewhat like social media, producing a single instance that is broadcast to any and all who might view it. She notes that her work is evocative of the digital world, but also, “there’s an absurdity to making something that looks like the digital but has more human touch. Painting contains the human touch, it’s creating something that’s personal.” I wondered if she approached her studio as a way to be in touch. “When you paint, you’re making something that can last a long time. I’m interested in dichotomies, opposites. Creating something permanent out of something ephemeral is along these lines.”

Because progressive means movement towards new developments that further, and inspirational means weaving from that which can be found within. I apologize for the lack of transgressive language, but that’s boring and old hat.

I. NEW UNDERSTANDINGS, YET TO BE ABSORBED:

1. Time is a dimension, not something that just passes by real fast.

The proof is as simple as looking through a telescope. This starlight is x billion years old. That starlight is twice as old. That light over there is from the beginning of this universe. All visible at the same time, and it’s not because it takes very long to get here. It’s because time is relative, it’s crinkled and warpy like an unrolled ball of aluminum foil.

This, among other aspects of physics, represents something truly new, and quite large – a different and unexpected view of the cosmic order. Like using a pot to rinse your nostrils is for Americans, it’s so unexpected it still is yet to be grasped, even loosely, by the general population.

2. Humans evolved into very sexual, very closely connected communities.

Much the way our brains are bigger and smarter than most of the animals on earth, our junk is very evolved, and, er, enlarged as well. There just aren’t any animals out there that are as well equipped as we to appreciate nature. But as we all know, this is still a difficult subject.

If we were to take an honest look at our primate cousins, we would observe that humans are naturally gifted for being closely bonded, and enjoying each other’s company. The kids take years and years to mature because we evolved a social-based setting full of care and protection. Also, it is very likely that females are sexier and generally smarter because, for most of human pre-history, they were in charge.

This concept is really frightening for a lot of people. It brings up a big obstacle to gender equality: recognizing complete, sexual solidarity between women and men (the idea that women have sex drives of their own remains a medieval terror to most modern men). Changes in the balance of power always strike fear to the roots of social order. Still, it’s true.  We all know, consciously, that women have tremendous power, and the structures that have held this back are loosening. Restoration of balance is an inevitability, which means extremism from the old order is also around the corner. All the more reason to communicate clearly: the inevitable is hardly the end of the world, and it’s silly to be such a scaredy-cat.

3. Prosperity is a communal feeling.

Socially, this translates to a clearer understanding of wealth. Wealth (prosperity) is actually the feeling of the well being of everyone in the community. It is experienced as mutual esteem, celebration, and generosity. It allows us to relax and develop all those advanced capacities; dancing, singing, storytelling, and… you know.  Collective prosperity breeds hope. Sense of scarcity breeds ruthlessness, hoarding and competition.  We need only look at the abundance in this country, and the resulting obesity epidemic among the country’s poor to see that ours is a scarcity-driven culture.

Because everyone is deeply programmed with neuro-linguistic devices invented during the cold war, talking about wealth will roll the tapes on the old left vs. right shell game. Still, people are becoming aware of the truth, and suspicious of these programs. Humans have a way, collectively, of shaking off unnatural programs, though it takes generations, which is why new programs are regularly introduced (the new one is terror).

The antidote is probably to deny terror exists. It’s not a hard sell – every grocery store in the country has maybe five varieties of vegetable, while every farmers market has 200 and they all taste better. Pretty much, everything communities do is more relaxing, interesting and tasty than what the monopolies offer, and without fail costs less in providing fun for more people.

This message gets easier every day. It’s about to really get a boost, as globalism makes traditional methods of exchange look totally absurd (Real butter comes from Chile?), while it gives us all new dancing partners with interesting and different ways of life – diversity is at the heart of a healthy ecosystem.

4. People are afraid of being alone, and it’s making us anti-intellectual.

We have come to believe education is something gained personally from institutions, instead of collectively from a community. This has allowed socially distant rulers the opportunity to experiment with our brains, and groom us for unnatural, anti-community ways of life.

This especially shows up in one respect – people are terrified of being alone. And it’s probably an understandable fear, when you factor in the lack of community. Yet being independent is just as natural and human as being dependant. We evolved socially into a balance of both – real solitude, and real community. Part of this fear developed because we are trained from childhood to give up our privacy. It’s a basic part of our education, where we are grouped by age into classes and denied any freedom of movement during school work time. The less comfortable we feel being alone, the less likely we are to do the many activites that require it – reading, making art, inventing, resting, developing refined skills. The less likely we are going to have something interesting to bring to the table, and keep our workplaces and social experiences interesting and lively.

The antidote is probably something along the lines of making everything richer, more involved and layered than might seem necessary.  It is likely that this is happening, quite naturally, with the internet. Go ahead, complicate things. It’s less boring, and gives people something to investigate.  Research means someone new is conducting a search they encountered for themselves.

5. Politics do not work.

If defined as the enactment of the will of the people, large-scale politics in all of its forms has yet to do the job. Somehow the ‘will of the people’ winds up limited to more of a taste-test choice for the people between a few brand names. The illusion of choice is more of a swinging pendulum of competition, meanwhile the legal system is really just built on riders and other private, solid vote-buying systems, just as the economy is similarly a one-party system of solidarity that is essentially untouched by political sentiments. One of our greatest challenges has become finding new ways to empower individuals, communities, and especially gain the power for small groups of people to say “no” to laws, and businesses, that they don’t approve of, and to be able to communicate among ourselves based on our own needs.

The antidote here is probably having a sense of humor. Primates evolved laughter to relieve stress within the group. There are endless loops in the political mind, but nothing restores power to the people like making a laughing stock of the pompous and power hungry.

6. Most of the universe is invisible.

So much for, “If I can’t see it, I can’t believe it.” Science is exploding at the moment with new understandings for just how weird, and in many senses of the old term, magical the world is. We’ve learned that most of the matter out there in space, Dark Matter, is totally see-through and makes no sense at all, but it’s substantial enough to hold galaxies in its center. Or that genes and proteins are constructed with microscopic organic machines. Sub-atomic particles blink in and out of existence, meaning nothing solid is really solid, just the result of temporary attraction between invisible, blinking and swirling bits. We’ve also learned that, contrary to the belief that we are trapped inside mental observation booths, even our attention impacts events that unfold around us. All this demonstrated in scientific laboratories.

So, don’t worry where superstition ends and reality begins, because the scientific truth from the top of the expert pile is: we actually don’t know even a small part of everything, we’re completely baffled by what reality is, we’ll get back to you when we have some answers. Sit back, enjoy the return of mystery, and maybe learn a little respect for human limitations. It might help resolve your differences with other cultures too, by dropping the first world bias towards the ‘primitive’. Because guess what – if there’s anything that describes the rich, primitive raw resources of creativity in the human psyche, it’s not really coming from the rational and egoistic side of the brain.

7. Psychology, like many intellectual ideas, was not discovered in modern times.

Oh sure, the term was coined then, just like America was named after some Italian. What is out is the idea that the individuals who translated timeless human self-observations (personality types, illnesses, dreams, outcomes of decisions and behaviors) into the language and methods of science gives them the title of discoverers. The myth that needs to be debunked is that the West is the center of the universe. Humorously, this is related to another myth that needs to be debunked – that we as individuals are the center of the universe. Fortunately, we are entering a time where we will start hearing more and more about China, which also believes it is the center of the universe, and we will all be able to laugh together about how funny history and bias are.

What is really happening with psychology is that we are learning with astonishing speed how every sound, sight and smell can be used to manipulate groups of people. Scientific research is being used to make people hungry, angry, greedy, confused, political, afraid, ashamed, addicted; in general, separate. A lot of it, because it is science, is just accepted, applauded for its profitability, and considered worthwhile.

Illustrating the antidote to this bad use of research is as simple as comparing our collective imaginations. Which has greater depth and understanding of subtlety in human communication, an old movie or a new movie? How many new, complex and sophisticated myths have we come up with lately, or are we preoccupied with remaking old ones? How often do people around you undergo dramatic, stimulating changes in their world view? Why are old people, who have heard more, less likely to be consulted for storytelling than young people?

Evidence that deep knowledge of ourselves is diverse, useful and quite old is everywhere. The bogus story that the ‘real truth’ was discovered in the 20th century is really a story about putting what is merely useful ahead of what is interesting and free. Science is full of conquistadores whose duty is to label us all as pagan savages that need to be guided.

8. Pick any topic, and work from the desired result up. (i.e., happy people, clean water, tolerance, justice, free time.)

Like mines left behind from old wars, the stakes and fences of territory, the sheer amount of work making anything good requires, out there it’s a hairy mess of obstacles. By working from within, you have the advantage of working unconquered territory, and are more likely to produce positive, clear communication.

Art, my friends, is one of the ways we can demonstrate that the existence of such a thing as the ‘savage’ is a tremendous, deluded lie. The real savage, as we all know, is the person who would force another person to submit to their own will. To be civilized is to harness the will to uplift others through appreciation of the personal freedom you have won, and with a desire for the prosperity of the community, into a position where another person can develop their own will.

II. AN IDEA THAT IS NOT NEW BUT IS BELIEVED TO BE, AND IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME:

1. Love is a four-letter word.

This is a leftover of the language of existential despair that followed the scientific materialism and global war of the last centuries. Love is hardly an ‘old way’ that must be overturned. But the fact that this idea even exists, let alone is popular among progressive, educated people is a great reason to read George Orwell’s 1984.

Far from being a universal cultural constant, an objective view of history shows that since the time of agricultural settlement, we’ve been slaves to staying put, arranged marriages, hard labor, and obeying people with thugs for a long time. You don’t hear much about love until the cultural renaissance a few thousand years ago, closely tied to slave rebellions, where the revolutionary idea, essentially, was free will. From eastern philosophies of compassion to Mediterranean idea of agapis, the concept of universal generosity was all the rage among the lower classes of the various Empires. Similarly, old tribal lore in the West led to ideas of chivalry: choosing one’s partners and loyalties, protecting the weak, settling disputes in a quorum rather than waging war. It would seem obvious that there wouldn’t be empire if this root of love was fully realized. So what do we blame? Like universal Stockholm syndrome, we blame the love and accept the rule of empire.

So how did we get so confused, that we want to reverse the meaning of pretty recent, ostensibly decent terms such as love? A lot of it has to do with the fact that we are yet to complete points 2 and 3 in the section above. Without really grasping what the functional reality of those understandings will look like, we’re really getting ahead of ourselves by focusing on the outcome so intensely. It’s very much like that old saying – cutting off the nose in spite of the face.

A big part of the confusion is that dominant Western religion has taken the position that points 2 and 3 above are not true, or may be partially true but only in the way they interpret it. Meanwhile it continues to talk about love as though it owned the idea. In both respects, it would seem dominant Western religion has taken the position that individuals are incapable of knowing what’s good for them.

Of course, there are many voices in the spiritual discourse of the humanities that may be found to be significantly more clear-eyed and in touch, not at all literal, and who are eager to point out beautiful elements in the mix, but (see point 4 above) we generally don’t hear from them.

To resolve this modern conflict, most people grasp that we are evolved, and are primates, but all it seems to prove is that this makes us organic robots, and that our intellects and feelings are delusional. This is, unfortunately, little more than an inversion of the fundamentalism that gave birth to this view. It is essentially saying, “We are animals, we don’t have feelings.” Have you spent much time with an actual animal recently?

The West got this way after science more or less made it clear that observations and experiments worked better than blind belief and guesswork. If there were any questions where to place one’s faith, technology, weaponry and factories made it pretty clear where things were going. The dominant faith became existential, and the ever-present extensions of whatever is dominant – state religions and wars of conquest – adapt to the new view of humanity. Isolated, meaningless organic machines have no need for community, tradition, or sacred rights. Certainly, no need for love. As a result, colonialism (domination of others) and pure competition elevated to a primary virtue become not only accepted, but desireable. Competitiveness is the mark of a high-functioning, modern existential machine.

If we are really bent on stamping out human love, reversing its meaning is not enough: follow Big Brother’s advice and do away with any access to thinking of the word itself. Saying that it takes hostages is merely double-speak. I would try wearing a device that straps to the neck and makes your voice sound more like a robot, then demand others wear them as well, and soon no one will note the absence of the term.

To sum it up, love is not ‘the old way’, it is a relatively new way that is, and always has been at odds with empire and its reliance on humans as resource units. Love is synonymous with free will. If anything has failed, it’s not love or hope or kindness, which are simply words that describe something observable, but social conditions that have made a desperate hunt for a scapegoat out of them. Like all good words, the term love can be perverted, used politically and worse. So what? If you’re swindled into paying too dearly for a dozen apples, do you hate the apples?

Meanwhile, if you wish to amuse yourself with something that has real creative potential, that has actual worth and needs to be communicated, try any of the points in the first section. You will find discovery rather than certitude, bonds made of affinity rather than rejection, and a few useful gardening tips.

Robert Seitz

Union Center for the Arts

As I finish writing an article about this artist’s long and still flourishing career it seems appropriate that the news of the day is of excitement over a solar eclipse, one that begins just west of Hong Kong to eventually make its landfall at the northernmost edge of the San Andreas fault in California. The transit of the eclipse seems a perfect metaphor for the great distances Wong has traveled in her life, her work, and her perspectives of the world.

Her approach is concerned with beginnings and endings. Without preoccupation over inevitability or the abruptness of change, she blends careful preparations in order to be positioned for full realization of the moments of freedom that can be drawn from them.

There is an aspect of journey in the way she relates her creative pursuits, packing and preparing, reveling in the anticipation of discovery that she is after. A legend from her early childhood mentions her wandering out of the family home during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in search of candy, and being found to the relief of her parents in a police station, prize lollipop in hand. She prepared the way to art by developing a strong affinity with the object of her pursuit, envisioning herself early on as nothing less than a master of classical painting.

Hong Kong Farmhouse, Ink on Paper, 1960s

The drive towards freedom and skill development led to the hatching of a long, involved plot with a close friend – they would live in Italy and make it as artists. They would sneak out of their classes in high school to take lessons in painting.  The girls found a priest and studied Italian with him for a year, found a convent in Italy that would accept them, and selected their teachers, preparing a way to make the dream possible. When their 17 year old daughter announced her decision to her parents, a year of preparations had already been made.

She lived in the convent for one year, making her long daily journeys to lessons from two masters of classical painting, but a different course soon proved inevitable. On arriving in Europe, Wong discovered everything was moving towards the futuristic and modern in the art world. At the same time her teacher dismissed her, he had concerns that she was progressing too quickly. As she began her lifelong movement towards abstraction, “I kept my resolve to never copy. I did indulge in a hard-edge period during the 80s, but was never motivated to make work to suit trends just because it would sell.”

Pacific Blue Trio, 1997

She returned to Hong Kong and established a studio. Ultimately she fell in love, married and had a child, only to have her husband grow sick. They traveled to the US to seek treatment for him, but it did not save him. She traveled the country and chose to settle in Los Angeles at the end of the 70s, moving to Santa Monica to be near the Pacific Ocean. All of these turns seemed to fuse with her initial convictions of finding her own way. After settling in LA, it took a good 5-10 years to fully get back to herself and resume painting. She felt haunted during that time by a sense of nostalgia, working on a Blue and Gold series that explored the monolithic presence of the Pacific, the gold of her memories, and in retrospect her cross-cultural role in arriving at the modern condition of Asia, the rise of a Golden Age of the Pacific.

Wedding of Woo and Wong, 1996

Wong also developed a strong interest in the I-Ching, the Book of Changes, and pursued knowledge of it with as much discipline as she applied to her painting, using her art to deconstruct, explore and express what she learned.

The I-Ching is an ancient collection of writings that the artist describes as the nexus between philosophy and art. Its seed was planted 6,000 years ago when Chief Fu-Hu wrote of the symbolism of opposites, of Yin and Yang. They developed into symbols composed of six of these binaries, called hexagrams, making 64 possible that make up the Book of Changes. In the combinations of lines philosophers saw the elements of nature, weather and transition, dramatic changes to their meaning by turning the hexagrams over, or how changing a single element can subtly alter their interpretations. It grew into a compendium of wisdom consulted, prepared and contributed to by several millennia of intellects.

Labyrinth, 16x16 feet, 1996

She muses over the fact that her three brothers were named after aspects found in the I-Ching, but not her, because of her gender. This would prove to become part of her adventure and identity, years later finding herself in close relation to it. She did find her name in the ancient lore, seeing critical success with her Labyrinth series of work which is drawn from it, serving as President of the American I-Ching society for fifteen years, and presently being recognized with permanent museum installations of her related work in China.

The labyrinth concept was initially inspired by a diagram in an I-Ching work that describes an ability to view the pathways (and chaos) of life when one places themselves in the center of things. She worked with multiple mediums to explore it, from dance and installation to paintings and film. In the performances, she created a labyrinth laid on the floor to move through, made from cube shaped pieces that she painted and assembled. Some of these pieces were used to create a wall sculpture, a working device that can allow for random selection, with painted blocks that when removed from a frame and turned around reveal corresponding hexagrams. This device is a variation of the randomness used to consult the I-Ching, typically using three coins, and traditionally, an elaborate process using the stalks of the yarrow flower.

Peng (Phoenix): Light of Heaven

The randomizing device to abstract interpretive insight allows for observations of one’s own mind, and of cycle and change. “My work involves not being too literal, the focus is on change itself, because nothing is set in stone, and nothing is forever. I am interested in the way all things arise from nothing, yet can become anything.”

Her development is more than just a transition from classical painting to abstraction, it reflects interest in the elements, in outer space, astronomy, quantum physics, and the cosmic order. She is inspired by the cycles of time, of energy and the world. In physics she found an artistic compliment with the concept that the world is self-created by observing it – that one’s attention affects what is observed, and the way in which creation is a process that is bigger than herself. “Art will take us to a different level on which our spirits will excel… To embody this experience of the universe – even for a second – is an experience of the eternal.”

She defines creativity in terms of psychological and spiritual completion, setting aside cultural borders as secondary refinements. “Art is critical because it is its own form of imagination, we need something different than the imagination that arises from text to be complete. Ultimately we ourselves are the creation, which is why you want all the tools, all the forms of imagination developed. It’s part of being a whole person.” The artist feels that one of the hard-earned observations she has gained is seeing the clear connection between creativity and emotional well-being. “The quality of life, everything is impacted by the way artistic imagination develops. It can also make a person more interesting. Like music, art can have a strong effect on thinking. Art is not something materialistic, it is spiritual.”

Quantum Bubble, 1998

Reflecting on the relationship between art and physics, of the two-directional influence between observer and observed, Wong believes art should be positive. “In LA they love the art of the dark side, artists use art to express violence and sorrow. Sure, it’s an expression of themselves, but if they looked deeper, under it, they’ll be able to see both sides. Both sides of themselves.” It seems obvious to her that a whole person would communicate the light side of life, because we are connected to each other, and she wishes for other people to knew the joy she has observed. She wishes to strengthen others.

She elaborated, warning that what we give our attention to influences us as much as we influence it. For Wong, it would seem there is no such thing as objective non-participation. “Even at my lowest points, I did not think too much about expressing desperation. By chasing something, giving it your focus, you feed it and give it life. Especially, if other people like it.” She finds that positive expression is eminently self-taught. “You don’t have to force yourself to make a positive message – if you can’t find it, you simply haven’t looked around completely. You’ve isolated yourself in your feelings. We only live once, make the best of it.”

She mentions the I-Ching, and the way the hexagrams with their philosophical meanings are often reversed simply by turning them upside down. “It’s not to say that expressing the dark side is wrong. If it’s genuine, it’s alright.” She has made her own works from these feelings, but keeps them for herself as a reminder of many things, primarily that things change. “Personality type affects this of course, having loving parents helps. It’s understandable that without enough loving influence a person may be depressed. But, they are also in a position to reverse, flip over, and become the opposite. In that respect, people like this are even more capable of producing truly positive work.”

Milky Way, 1999

She now approaches painting with a Zen-like way of not thinking, action painting, letting the materials guide her. In her way, this freedom of action is the result of careful planning and preparation of the elements, preparing the colors, getting the parts together. “I love it, love preparing for an action but having no expectations, and consequentially no concern of failure. If you are too certain what it is you hope to do, or must reproduce exactly what you see, that is when failure becomes possible. The way I paint ensures that I don’t get stuck; I like to be free.”

Scroll Painting, 2011

Her scroll-paintings are a new extension of this approach, and come from her own marbling techniques. They developed while working on a glass and steel Labyrinth installation in Beijing, where she was looking for something quick and easy to do during her down time. The staff would approach her, asking what supplies she might need, and found them prepared to provide fine paper, scrolls and folding books easily and cheaply. At her hotel, in the bathtub, she developed the technique. “The scrolls have taken me suddenly into monochrome. It’s delightful, periodically changing the medium can refresh the creative juices.” She points out that the speed of execution isn’t all technique, “I am fast because I have forty years of experience.” The traditional red-ink signature stamps she used to complete the affect could be found abundantly throughout China, in many styles and shapes. She finds it interesting and connective that she can travel and collect her own name in so many forms.

The artist has a great deal to be excited about. Following her touring success with her Labyrinths project in the US, she is being recognized with honors in China, and receiving due acknowledgement for her courage and devotion. Wong spent two months last year working on a permanent installation at the Shan Jyuan Art Museum in Beijing, and is returning this month to complete it. A 16 x 50 square foot interpretation of her I-Ching inspired Labyrinth work is being installed on the rooftop terrace of the museum, and will include projected light and video that will interact with the glass, visible at night. The ceremony will include dance, theatre, and music – she has quite an ensemble prepared. A poet wrote an epic piece about the work. Her next project is already lined up, another permanent installation at another museum in Gui Lin, “a wonderful place by a river and mountains.” She is already thinking ahead about the materials, considering stone and wood.

Scroll Painting, 2011

For a closing statement, she talked briefly about the approach of the Pacific Age. “Art is exploding in China, anything goes. There is such enthusiasm and curiosity for it. People here (in the US) are quiet when faced with art, but there it’s real excitement, everyone gets involved, openings are quite a celebration.” The artist describes the developments around her with wonder and enthusiasm, leaving it to those of us privileged enough to come into contact with her work with the realization that her statement left something out – that she is, deservedly, part of the reason for all the excitement.

Artist’s Website: http://www.dianawong.com/