I’ve started to read this really interesting book called ‘The Melancholy Android’ by Eric G Wilson. It documents the practice of android making: when an inventor builds a robot or creature that emulates human form. Frankenstein’s monster would be the classic example although the practice extends to puppeteering and scary ghouls from horror movies such as Chucky from Tom Holland’s movie Child’s Play.
Wilson’s main assertion is that androids personify the repressed psychology of their creators. He says that “The humanoid embodies characteristics that its creator pretends to loathe. It is a register of what humans most desire and fear, what they hate in life and what they love in death.” As the title may suggest Wilson argues that what is manifest in this release of repressed desires is a deeper sense of melancholy. The role of puppetry in Spike Jonze’s film Being John Malkovich is used as an example of how narratives created by the film’s protagonist Craig Schwartz express his inner most longings: “Marionette forms of Heloise and Abelard from separate chambers, pine for erotic contact.” The puppeteer lives out fantasy via the products of his craftsmanship.
I’ve only read the first few chapters so far but I’m beginning to ponder in what sense this theory might apply to the work of the artist, or how much of an artists output could be understood as an actualisation of subconscious material. I’m thinking of artists like Paul Macarthy and his performance persona Bossy Burger, who managed to make me feel physically sick during his retrospective at Tate Liverpool a few years ago. While film directors such as Michael Haneke (who makes grueling and extraordinary films such as The Piano Teacher) may not create androids as such, I wonder how many of the actions of their lead characters could be interpreted as material out of the subconscious of the auteur. I’m thinking particularly of Hannke because in some ways he trumps my theory off the back of an interview I read with him last year where he boasts about his own psychological stability and his very happy childhood. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/oct/25/intervi… I’m not sure… I need to keep thinking on it.
A therapist once told me that I’ve got an agent provocateur. What he was inferring was basically that there’s a sort of self-destruct button in my head that I’m likely to push at times of great pressure. Lots of people have these buttons and some people get to do really glamorous things as a result of their decision to push, like misguided seductions and ludicrous spending. My provocateur is not nearly so exciting, but she is pretty powerful at times. I quit therapy by letter a few weeks ago; a move that I know wasn’t healthy for me. I did it anyway because we had been getting into some difficult stuff and I couldn’t deal with it so I legged it…. This is me at my finest: illogical, cowardly and a dead cert’ to be the first person to disappear when people try to help and support me.
Anyway the reason that all of this is relevant is because for the past two years at around this time of year I have began to draft a masters application. I’ve usually gone on and completed it, got references and in 2008 I even went down to London on the train to hand deliver my application to Goldsmiths, but at the last minute I decided that actually the application was rubbish and that I would be a fool to hand it in. Similar story in 2008…… when it came to finalising the proposal my provocateur kicked in and it got no further than my lap top.
We all have the voices in our head that tell us we are a load of old rubbish. In Transactional Analysis (model for understanding human personality developed by Eric Berne) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysi… these voices are called introjects and are often critical influences from childhood that we take on as component parts of our subconscious. For example the voice of a critical teacher who thinks we have no potential, whose views we integrate into our own perception of ourselves as our early personality develops. Sometimes these introjects can have particularly malevolent intent, maybe the influence of an incredibly negative force that we encounter during childhood: like a mother who becomes pregnant by accident and subsequently spends her child’s early years wishing it dead (this sounds like a horrible thing to talk about, but it happens). An agent provocateur can have many origins and although I have not identified the origin of mine, I know that it often encourages me to sabotage any possibility of getting what I most want in life.
So while for the past four years I have been craving to go off to London and study for a masters, I’ve not done it, for no other reason than the fact that I have lost faith in my own ability to be successful it at the most critical moment.
This year, this blog and the subsequent Group Therapy project that I am planning form the basis of what would be my 2010 masters application. I think I have some really interesting potential here and I am desperate not to fuck it up by loosing faith in myself at the last minute. I am trying to set myself deadlines so that I cannot meander and procrastinate my way into loosing my focus. I am also going to try and share draft proposals with people like Sid and Andrew who are interested in the blog and the subject matter. I’ve set myself the target of proposing the project to FACT before November this year. This will give me a real world dynamic to my ideas and hopefully a bit of faith in the fact that what I’m working on in my little study in Cheshire is of interest to the wider world.
These reflections come off the back of a particularly black Sunday, when everything I write seems stupid. I’m mainly just exhausted, as I’ve worked six long days this week. I’m enjoying my new promotion at work and relishing the challenge. I’ve been doing pretty well so far and have been keeping the provocateur at bay…. lets hope this means I’m winning the battle in a more long term way!
