Blind men and an elephant
The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in the Indian subcontinent from where it has widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies; broadly, the parable implies that one’s subjective experience can be true, but that such experience is inherently limited by its failure to account for other truths or a totality of truth. At various times the parable has provided insight into the relativism, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behaviour of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives.
The story
In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like.
In some versions, they stop talking, start listening and collaborate to “see” the full elephant. When a sighted man walks by and sees the entire elephant all at once, they also learn they are blind. While one’s subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth. If the sighted man was deaf, he would not hear the elephant bellow.
During August to October 2013 Elephants where around my surrounding in many different ways I would see pictures of them on the walls, being mentioned in songs and films titles and in a poem that I was going to make a to a visual for a project called Telephone – An International Arts Game
This game works almost exactly like the kids’ game “telephone,” also known as operator, ear-to-e…are, and many other names the world over. One player devises a message, and that message is whispered to the next person, who whispers it to the next and the next. The message evolves as it travels, surprising and confounding the players.
My message was a poem which mentions elephants but I didn’t have time to make work from it as I was doing my dissertation. I decided to research any mythology about elephants and it led me to the story about the blind men and the elephant. In some ways this made a connection to the telephone game that I was going to take part in and some of the films that had elephant as the title like the Alan Clarke film which focuses on the problem of violence in Northern Ireland from different points.
During the period I had captured an image in Brick lane of the street image from an outdoor broken mirror which produced an interesting view of the shops buildings and the sky.
One day I sat on a small mirror by accident which gave me the idea to capture an image of an elephant via a broken mirror. The broken fragments would represent different views which for me would represent the world.
So I bought a mask of an elephants head which reminded me of the Hindu god Ganesh who’s enormous head of the elephant signifies Wisdom and Knowledge.
So this piece shows me that a fragmented image is a whole image if you appreciate and understand each piece.
