A seminar for creators of all kinds–techniques for accessing the unconscious: using drawings, different art mediums, journals, meditations and readings.
Live Video Course | 6 Weeks | Begins Saturday Oct. 1, 2022 – 10am UTC-7. We will use the Zoom platform to meet. Video recordings of all sessions will be available to attendees.
The class will be taught from a Jungian perspective, but use a variety of texts. All reading material will be provided on scans (as much of it is out of print). Students will begin with large sketch pads and drawing materials and inks and water color. The format will include drawing and diary work, sharing art work, discussions of readings – seminar / studio.
The inspiration for this seminar is the artist seminars led by Joseph Beuys, where the participants discussed new ways of thinking about art, while making studio work. For Beuys the sacramental was in everything and an integral part of the artistic process. Marie Louise von Franz said the last time the imagination had been approached as an actual place where the inner imaginal happenings led to changes in the outer world was in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. This seminar will explore exercises used by Surrealists like Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst, techniques used by members of the spiritual branch of Russian Cosmism, as well as Jungian active imagination.
Course Outline:
- Dreams, visions, and active imagination as source material. We will discuss Jung’s work as well as Emanuel Swedenborg’s description of states between dreaming and waking.
- Depression as part of the creative process, and how art can help navigate depressive states.
- Art and Ritual. The relationship of ritual to the unconscious and Pavel Florensky’s writing on art as part of a sacred ritual.
- Ghosts and Spirits. This will include the work of Hilma af Klint and artists Agnes Pelton who channeled masters on the astral realm.
- Childhood. This will include Jung’s Memoirs Dreams and Reflections, and how childhood can show us paths for life. We will also discuss the child as an archetype of creation.
- Dimensions. We will discuss the work of Erich Neumann and Jean Gebser, and how artforms are related to the history of consciousness. This will include a discussion of new art forms like holography and works of art tapping into the forth dimension.