School of Art - Theses
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ItemThe kraken’s reach: manipulating subjectivity through dissociative play( 2018)The research considers the role of dissociation in manipulating subjectivity by examining its influence upon 'dissociative play'– a generative method where thought, feeling, action and production are undertaken within multiple dissociated fictional subjectivities. Central to the thesis is a question surrounding the workability of this practice in a contemporary visual arts setting dominated by static unitary self-representational modes. The paper distinguishes dissociative play from existing fictive and deceptive self-representational strategies in the visual arts that share surface similarity, and asserts that dissociative play differs by its reliance on self-deception, a key feature of dissociation that allows for multiple, often contrapuntal positions to be held by the mind. The research finds that the creative manoeuvrability of this state of mind allows it to freely function with limited conscious awareness, separating it by definition and depth of experience from common fictive and imaginative processes. The expediency of a wilfully self-deceptive, dissociative approach in shifting perception, memory, subjectivity and agency pushes hard against dissociation’s negative legacy in pathology. Addressing this issue requires both a reassessment of individual agency in pathological instances and an account of the benefits of dissociation in practice. In bridging pathology and practice, the research argues against the idea that dissociative states are entirely compartmentalised from non-dissociated subjective experience, instead positing that each bleed into the other for the primary benefit of the host. The enquiry reaches into disparate areas to provide evidence of that bleed, drawing from dissociative practices and phenomena in behavioural psychology, acting methodology, auto-fictive literature, heavy metal music and cultural possession - alongside the development of the author’s work creative work Kraken, exhibited at VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery in February 2018 - to demonstrate that not only is it possible to create within a dissociated mind, but particularly advantageous. It finds that dissociative practices assist in the avoidance of expectation, predilection and self-limitation, and allow artists to work outside their imagined capacity, steered largely by self-initiated hypnotic suggestion and self-deception, and that the generation of novel thoughts, feelings and actions from within a dissociated consciousness have the capacity to translate into seemingly autonomous and unlikely outcomes, affecting practitioners, audiences, and generated material.