Creativity in an Anaesthetised World: A Phenomenological View
Our experience of the outer world is inherently creative. When subjective perception penetrates the objective, physical world, it engenders a novel creation within the consciousness of the subject, which then emanates into the world in various forms – be it as a cognitive notion, a physical act, or as an abstract form of energy. The nature of the creation is phenomenological, perpetually novel because the experience cannot be replicated by the subject nor recreated by someone else. Think, for example, of your happiest memory - exhibiting in a major show, seeing Richard Ashcroft perform Bittersweet Symphony live, drinking cocktails in Santorini - now consider how futile it is to exactly recreate that memory because its phenomenological essence depends on so many unique factors colliding at the time of your experience. Not only the recent and historical context, the weather, setting (physical and temporal), sounds and smells but also the uniqueness of your physical body, comprising bone density, muscle mass, heart rate and metabolic processes, alongside the precision of your senses in discerning taste, texture, auditory frequencies and the full spectrum of light and colour, all significantly influence your aptitude for perceiving the external world when that experience takes place. The next exhibition, the same show in a different city, a second round of cocktails in Oia will all be inherently new phenomenological creations in the mind of the individual. In that sense, by merely existing and perceiving the world around us, we are all artists.
How did I end up here?
Martin Heidegger demonstrated the consequences of this in his philosophy of phenomenology. He claimed that our engagement with the external world is informed by the historical context of human existence and our positioning within the broader fabric of the world. This ‘historicity’ says that human existence is characterised by an intricate intertwinement with the past, present, and future, profoundly shaping our self-conception and our perception of the external world. This is why each generation is grouped based on stereotypes of attitudes, values and behaviours; they are shaped by their circumstances, and so too is their phenomenological experience of the world. For instance, the conclusion of World War II in 1945 ushered in a prevailing sentiment of estrangement, despair, and disillusionment, encapsulating the modern human experience which also coincided with the burgeoning influence of technology, radically transforming human interaction with the world. The post-war surge in technological advancement epitomised a mode of human conduct characterised by a pursuit of order, control, and exploitation, wherein individuals were moulded into ceaseless consumers, enslaving them on both a psychological and, consequently, phenomenological level. The Strauss-Howe Generational Theory can build our understanding of this further; depending on a person’s age post-war, whether in childhood, young-adulthood, midlife or elder hood, the general role they had to play would shift from the prophetic youngsters rapt with the urge to build a better future, to the reclusive nomads, war-weary and tired.
Yet, like clockwork, we find ourselves moving towards another cycle of crisis, one where the threat of alienation sensed during the mid—century is even more profound. Heidegger particularly feared technology, aware of how it endangers the richness of human experience, diminishing our ability to sense the external world and divorcing us from the genuine essence of our being. It begs the question, if our phenomenological experience of the outer world is inherently creative, then what happens to creation when experience is anaesthetised? In our recent historical context of war, pandemics, corruption and fear, compounded by doomscrolling, novelty and reward anticipation and infinite content online, it is easy to become like Ray Bradbury’s grey phantoms, shuffling wearily from kitchen to bedroom to living room in our tomblike houses. We still experience phenomena, but the saturation, volume and temperature has been dialled down to zero.
The role of the artist, like the philosopher, is to recognise how our historical context is influencing our phenomenological experience of the world. We must recognise that our mere existence is a rebellious act of creation itself, punctuating reality with new notions, acts and energies rather than being at the mercy of the machine of the outer world. Historically, artists (and remember, we are all artists) have had the wonderful gift and crucial role of being the world’s journalists, storytellers, time-travellers and prophets. But currently, artists face an immense challenge of navigating a world more interconnected and yet more polarised than ever. In such a time, artists must do more than merely interpret the world, they must be providers of criticism, hope and beauty.
Experiencing the sublime – that intoxicating feeling of terror that comes from standing in the face of the immense force of nature -can be a powerful antidote to our prevailing state of anaesthesia. To stand in the shadow of a centuries-old-glacier, a great, slumbering beast that etches its passage through the Earth by sheer mass and force, is to feel terrifyingly alive. Witnessing enormous icebergs break off a glacial facade, banded with blackened soil from volcanic eruptions that spouted centuries before, is to feel terrifyingly temporary. And to see those bergs, as big as apartment blocks, float into the Arctic Ocean, gradually dissolving into resplendent, crystalline sculptures, to rest on far sands for a few hours before disappearing back into the Earth, is to feel terrifyingly mortal. The extraordinary nature of this encounter evokes the need to create in anyone who experiences it. The extreme nature of the sublime is what will guide us back to the true nature of our being
Melissa Clements
The incomprehensible urge to curl up inside an ice cave
1 Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).
2 Ray Bradbury, “The Pedestrian,” in The Golden Apples of the Sun (New York: Doubleday, 1953), 73-80.