Throughout human history as we know it, there is a range of stories in the arts and the humanities that meet in variations, which shows an old widespread human desire: a wish for as much life as possible, for being immortal or for getting the ability to be everything and to be everywhere- This wish is opposed to the finite nature of the human existence and the knowing about this fact. It has been and can be approached by forms and tools of narration that engage imagination.
For the investigation of the ways such practices signify an embodied experience in daily culture, I am approaching the use of language and especially metaphor and its application in therapeutic tools and trauma treatment methods. For this I am exploiting elements from the fields of hypnosis, meditation, neuroscience and lingusitics, along with storytelling patterns in mythology, religion, fairy tales and science fiction, My focus is not on language alone, but on possible combinations with the potentialities of artistic devices.
Both, teleportation and transformation can be understood as a three-step processes compiled by: State 1 (before), the in-between moment (the shift) and State 2 (after). Although State 1 and State 2 (before and after teleportation/ transformation) will be respectively studied, a special focus will be given to the middle part of the process, the in-between moment, including time, space, the (technological) device as well as cultural aspects and possibilities. The in-between moment as a moment of trespassing is a point that not much focus has been given in artistic research till now, unlike State 1 and State 2; what exactly happens after Gregor Samsa sleeps as human and before he wakes up as an insect, or what happens right after Alice steps into the mirror and right before she enters Wonderland, what happens while Clark Kent is inside the phone booth (in Greek “thalamus”) are all invisible. The Greek word for the booth is “thalamus”, the same word used for that part of the brain where all senses end up, the relay station for sensory experiences.
How to deal with the presence/absence of the body in terms of time and space during the in-between moment and how to stimulate imagination, memory and engage the senses towards the “impossible” using the means that consist a teleportation/transformation device?
The aim of my fundamental research-oriented or knowledge-open (erkenntnisoffenen) PhD project is, to proceed without pre-defining the format of the outcome, but letting it evolve through and within the study, investigation and experimentation instead, working on the following groups of objectives and research questions: i. approaching the ‘impossible’, ii. devices, iii. language storytelling) & other media, iv. possible combinations / experiments. Methods used are: reading connected to the main terms, practicing hypnosis, meditation and relevant practices that use language and engage the body, public presentation(s) and interviews with three groups of peers. As peers I consider persons who experience alternative mind sets, indicatively children, people in love and people with schizophrenia. From the very beginning and to this point, the methodology and the format evolve along with the artistic research.
