Photo by Vanessa Sinclair.
I’ve recently experienced a rising curve in my “life chart” when it comes to teaching. I’ve been used to being offered lectures at art schools, universities and other environments but these have usually been one-off occurrences: a talk about something or someone specific, etc.
Recently I’ve been brought in to teach more properly, and that’s an entirely different matter. At both the Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts and Prosjektskolen in Oslo, for instance, I’ve been invited to spend more time with both faculty and students, and it has been very rewarding for me and, I hope, for them as well.
Under the banner of “Occulture” I have looked at not only how previously “occult” phenomena and protagonists have become integrated in mainstream culture but also at how many of the thoughts, techniques or ideas presented have a potentially great value for creative people in general. The only thing that is usually needed is an exchange between one set of terms and another. It has mainly been a temporal intolerance or insensitivity to one set of terms that has made that set unwelcome or unacceptable.
But in the present time, when teaching environments need to reinvent themselves by looking at basically the same things in new ways in order to not stagnate or go completely inert (just like many other environments) my angle/perspective has proven very useful and appreciated.
Much knowledge and wisdom relating to the “magical” process within traditional occultism has been about defining and refining the Self with a kind of inner alchemy, and then, once one knows oneself better, to head on toward fulfilment and satisfaction in meaningful work (not seldom by using techniques and approaches that defy contemporary “normality”). We can use traditionally arcane symbols and techniques and put them to great use today – individually as well as in group settings. All of these aspects can easily be clothed in terms artists can understand and integrate. The main thing is simply that the creative individual blooms in individuation and progress.
Bringing in a magical perspective also helps place art as a proto-human Ur-phenomenon in its rightful central place in culture again. Art needs to be invested with intention and will. It needs to have truly personal content. The formal aspects must be subjugated to individual vision and desire. In this sense the formal experiments rooted in intellectual environments (rather than those stemming from the human soul) have been uprooted. I can sense that many young students find this very liberating. For too long, art in general has taken on a one-dimensional form that may or may not contain certain attractive elements but is usually completely devoid of the traditionally inherent potential for change through the integration of deeper layers of human consciousness (the sphere of myths, stories, fantasy, etc). The intellectual death-drive has almost killed off the ultra creative life-drive of art. But all of this is changing now, due to necessity more than mere decision-making. Art is strongly linked to our survival instincts, and unfortunately this is where we’re at in our culture today: we can change and survive, or not.
Making art-students aware of their own potential – not as some kind of intellectual clowns chasing pseudo-cathartic vanities, but as seed-carrying filters in an overall process of enlightenment – is a proper noble cause. I’m very happy to be involved in this. And grateful for the increasing number of opportunities to bring substantial ideas back to a public discourse within art and culture after many decades of politicised deprivation and self censorship.
Next up is a summer course in Cali, Colombia, called, very aptly, “Occultures.” Please join me and the following people for a super-creative time in which your views on art will be challenged: Anselm Franke, Beatriz Eugenia Díaz, Boris Ondreicka, Catalina Lozano, Dick Verdult, Don Nadie, Ian Svenonius, Jennifer Moon, Lizzie Borden, Luisa Ungar, Michael Taussig, Rat Trap, Sebastián Restrepo, Susan MacWilliam, Teresa Margolles, and Tupac Cruz.
More information about the course, applications, etc can be found HERE!
