Sat, 16 Sept
|Cambridge
CJC Members Present: Susan Rowland moderates their recent conference presentations
Gill Brown: "In nature’s embrace: Emotional emplacement and the search for an ‘eco-symbolic"; Andy McCormack: "Dramatising the Cultural Complex: Re-reading Fiction Through the Lens of Effective Protagonism"; and Lorna McNeur: "Active Imagination & Thinking Hands"
Time & Location
16 Sept 2023, 16:00 – 18:00 BST
Cambridge, 91-93 Hartington Grove, Cambridge CB1 7UB, UK
Details
Gill Brown: "In nature’s embrace: Emotional emplacement and the search for an ‘eco-symbolic"
If it can be said that our emotions connect us not only with ourselves and the other but also with the world of nature how then might we understand our interrelationship with, and attachment to, this landscape of the other-than-human? Recent global events seem to have emphasised how much our emotional health is intimately bound up with a sense of connection to our natural surroundings, and we have seen a significant turning towards nature for containment and restoration in times of restricted interaction with others ...... Jung himself spoke of feeling “a kinship with all things”, relating in Memories Dreams and Reflections how a profound sense of being part of the landscape at his lakeside tower in Bollingen led him to experience himself as deeply entangled in his containing environment. In this paper I will discuss how we might usefully frame our emotional bonds with the natural world and approach the experience of meaningful encounter with the environmental ‘other’ from a Jungian, symbolic, perspective.
Dr Andy McCormack: "Dramatising the Cultural Complex: Re-reading Fiction Through the Lens of Effective Protagonism"
Inspired by Terence Dawson and Susan Rowland, Andy McCormack responds to their call for a new way of ‘doing’ Jungian literary research by re-reading contemporary fiction through the lens of ‘effective protagonism’ (Dawson, 2004). In this short talk, Andy seeks to contextualise the relationship between the construction of childhood and children’s literature in the cultural imagination with Jung’s theories pertaining to the constellation of cultural complexes in children. Andy will do so through a case study Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970). Andy considers cultural texts as sites in which Jungian concepts can be dramatised, challenged and explored, opening up space for consideration as to how these concepts have become embedded in the contemporary collective psyche. Andy’s research focusses on the intergenerational impact of emotion on the inner world of individuals, and the immediate, familial as well as local and national cultures in which they live
Lorna McNeur: "Active Imagination and Thinking Hands" How clay sculpture creates itself through the hands of the sculptor
Presented at the London Art Based Research Centre conference entitled, “The Creative Psyche and Arts-Based Research”
The primary underlying assumption of the creative act, in my experience, is that one thinks with ones hands, rather than predetermining a design in one’s head. While the hands build, the eyes perceive and the mind learns, constructing more ideas for the hands to think about, whilst building. Thinking, making, perceiving and learning occur simultaneously in the “thinking hands”, the precious gift of creativity.* Whether creating architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, or any other creative arts, the creative mind is infinitely richer and more multidimensional, than rational thought can ever fathom. When rational thought overshadows design solutions, purely with pragmatics, the solutions can be lifeless. To have both working together, the creative mind and rational thought, the unconscious and the conscious working together, can lead to inspired solutions in architecture and all of the creative arts. In these short videos, I share stories, embodied in clay sculpture and in photo-montage, born from dreams, memories, life experiences, climate change, and the human condition.
* I first heard the term “thinking hands” from my colleague Alberto Perez-Gomez in the early 1980’s, which seemed to encompass my lived experience of the inspiration of creativity, as described above.
Cost
"CJC Presents" & Susan Rowland
£12.50Sale ended
Total
£0.00