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Transforming Reality Through The Arts
©2002 by Coni Ciongoli-Koepfinger
Does art reflect our reality or does our reality
reflect our art? The human imagination has kindled a plethora of
ideas that have manifested into real structures – buildings, bridges, cars,
and new technology. In addition, humans simulate realities that are akin
to desires, wants, needs by producing music, art and literature. Does the
reception of our thought patterns elucidate our visual pictures? Or does
the perception of those visual pictures that surround us in our daily lives
create the thought waves that then signal the internal screen for playback in
the imagination? However we choose to describe it, we must try to grasp
the fact that we are attempting to dissect a process that is in a constant state
of flux. I have been active in the arts for over twenty
years, and I propose that art is one of our best tools to transform reality. For
instance, as a playwright and poet, I have found the elements of language,
words, certain sentences, and even the letters that form the words to be my
internal tracking system. I have defined art as it spells itself out: All
Realized Truth. Still that means not much more than a word game – making life
nothing more than a giant game of Scrabble. Or does it help us to create some
sort of synthesis between our dreams and our realities? Let's take a
closer look. Like scientists examining a
culture of bacteria in a petri dish, we need to scrutinize how the first cells
of art and culture start to form. A thought drifts into the human mind. As
each thought enters the body it vibrates into a “feeling.” As the thought
passes through its feeling stage, it collects the energy to move into action.
However, psychology tends to reverse this pattern, looking at behavior from the
action stage, back to the feeling, and then to the thought stage. I propose that
through examination of the creative process (tracking forward from thoughts into
actions) we might be able to avoid much of societal despair. What I am suggesting is that by
learning how to engineer the process that creates the art, we can then begin
examining the process that constructs the social formations that create our
realities. We realize that the disaster stories in the nightly news can document
our reality into fiction – and our fears into a potential for even more
disasters. Perhaps we need to find an approach that will be able to transcend
the limits of ordinary reality, one that lets us break through the barriers of
time and space. It is then possible to bridge the gap between the real and
imaginary, between sociology and art, with a new set of blueprints and patterns
of words? We know that words effect us; they make us think and they make
us feel certain ways in certain situations. We have seen how the media is using
this to its own advantage. And often our media images depict humanity in a
somewhat bleak and dismal setting. Yet, could it be that art might be the
best deliverance from that possible eventuality? My particular response to this question is to
initiate a project called “Formative Stages” that explores the purpose,
scope and nature of the creative process. This is my PhD project at the I hope to gain further insight on the primordial
picture of art by studying the process that weaves words and other elements
artistically into a fabric transparent to the "either/or" mentality
– until imagination and reality are at last synthesized. Upon completion of my
academic work, I plan building a network of new art that will create a brighter
reality by the formation of words into living realities. The formation of words in
literature employs an unencumbered process. Through the very core of its
structure, it permits us to delve into alternative models of human experience.
It enables us to be in two realities at once, one real, one imagined. In
literature we may find the roots to the same cultural processes used in the
development of social structures. I'd like to suggest that the initial link
between art and sociology is the movement between. It is thus actualized
by the very essence of the conjunction "and" which allows the process
of vacillation between them. If cultivated properly, art just might be a
deliverance from division. If we can use the ampersand to sculpt society
through the artistic process, the divisions will eventually fade. But
first, the artistic approach must be accepted into mainstream reality. The
business departments, the industrialists must look to the way of the artist, and
accept the artist’s way as more than frivolous, recognizing the tremendous
transformative power in art. Looking back to the beginning surge of the
Industrial Revolution, society started to automate and expand its physical
strength through mechanical transformers. Now it must expand its imagination.
We need to take a revised look at art as a science, and see the science of life,
in its rawest formations breed into art. Maybe the creation of a society that questions the
reality of its fiction and the fiction of its reality is only a page turn away.
Conceivably it is no longer a question of controlling what is real; instead, is
it a question of controlling the market analysis that controls what the
individual assumes to be real? Perhaps then, we will able to give birth to the
new science that is no longer bipolar in its relations of the art and the social
– a new science that is born out of a culture that was modified to be the
perfect blend of both fact and fiction. About the AuthorCONI CIONGOLI-KOEPFINGER (PLAYWRIGHT) has a BA in theatre arts fromThe Author can be reached with your comments at: |
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