Teresa Murak is one of the principal pioneers of Performance, Land and Feminist Art in Poland. With her landscape pieces, Murak utilizes natural materials, especially cress, to create in her terms "organic architecture”.
The concept and gesture of "sowing” – a spiritual and cosmic interpretation of the cultivation of seeds – defines Murak’s body of work and helped her in developing her own style of performative art that engaged with ritual processes. Her work anticipated Murak’s nearly fifty-year concern with the phenomenon of life and the process of growth. The artist emphatically acknowledged a religious dimension to some of her works, pointing at the sacredness of life, but avoided to draw direct analogies between different traditions and rites, such as combining the East with the West, or Polish Catholicism with Taoism.
Murak seems to have striven to express universal truths, beyond national, religious or stylistic divisions, to find the universal in particular manifestations.
Teresa Murak, Cress Smock, photograph of performance, 17 cm x 17 cm, Rzeźba dla Ziemi teresa Murak 1974
Teresa Murak, Sculptures for Earth, making the work, photography- black and white print on paper, 17 cm x 17 cm, Rzeźba dla Ziemi teresa Murak 1974
booklet, teresa murak, 1974-1978, artist words and works
Ecological themes play a significant role in her works – nature, connection between man and nature, plants and relation of man with them. She works with landscape using natural materials: sprouting grains that create their own organic architecture, growing leaven dough, clay, river sludge.
Her most important works: “Procession” (Warsaw, 2974), “For Earth” (Ubbeboda, Sweden 1974), “Sowing – lady’s smock coat”, “River sludge – material of being”. Her individual exhibitions were presented, among others, at the Polish Institute in Düsseldorf, the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Bureau of Encouragement of Arts in Bielsko-Biała, Zachęta. In 2005 she was awarded Katarzyna Kobro award.
Teresa Murak, Starting with a Leaven- performance piece, Land Art Festival 2015, photography
Teresa Murak, Sculptures for Earth, photography- black and white print on paper, 17 cm x 17 cm, Rzeźba dla Ziemi
My reflection:
Land Artist Teresa Murak engages with the larger plain of the landscape. Yet, my practice focuses more on what comes away from the landscape in gleaning. Working out in forests, plains, large lots of gravelled land and grassy fields, Murak's practice walks deeper into wild nature than mine. Looking at the ritualisation, construction and manipulation of nature, Murak moves with hands in muddy soils. Nature covers the body or the hands in her works, specifically in works with her own cultivated cress fabrics. She engages with river sludge, leaven dough and forest soil as a way to connect with old knowledge.
Psychoanalysis became important in the collective thinking in the 20th century and this derived from Sigmund Freud, who in the end became one of his own patients. His book Interpretation of Dreams was a key to this term and he focused on the idea of how we can bring forward childhood trauma in an adult way.
The connection between art and psychoanalysis is that it makes the invisible visible. The role can be said to be the same (see below)
The Unconscious
Freud believed that there was a part of the mind that was beneath the surface, kind of like the iceberg diagram. He also believed that we are driven by the pleasure principle. Sometimes the pleasure principle becomes too much and we need to go to the reality principle. This is split up into id, ego and superego (see below).
id - impulsive and compulsive thoughts
ego - image we have about ourselves
superego - morals and idealistic which come about by societal pressures.
We all have to bow to the reality principles.
- if ages 0-1 are disrupted (e.g. not breast fed) it can lead to an oral phase of problems such as becoming nail biters.
- if ages 1-3 are disruptive (not going to the toilet when needed) it can lead to anal retentive such as being stubborn and tight fisted.
- if ages 3-5 are disruptive (do not adopt characteristics of the same sex parents) it can lead to feelings of jealously, fear and rivalry.
The Oedipus Complex can be said to be disturbing but is it really that weird when you go beneath the surface?
The Inner Child shows conflicts between the inner and outer persona.
We use shopping to work through the lack (the future from the past that is lost from when we thought we had immortality). Branding can be marketed by parental form.
- Mother replacement - safety, security, honesty.
- Father replacement - freedom, adventure, strength and encouragement with the freedom of man to go forward.
Known as a defence mechanism as some of our thoughts may be seen as bad. How do we put those bad emotions and urges aside?
When we are faced with issues we protect our egos via the defence mechanism which we do through displacement, projection, rationalisation, regression and denial.
Radical artists such as Dali in the surrealism movement were inspired by these ideas (see below).
An example of sublimation is the torches of freedom where women were smoking in the 20th century due to oral fixation. This can be seen as the first wave of feminism (see below).
(Above - documentary recommendation) Tech can be used to reprogram us as it sets off a reward chemicals and can become more addictive than drugs. Data is used to create psychological profiles to manipulate us.
Do we reveal something or is it just a verbal typo?
Free Association - where Freud would get people to lie on the couch and say the first thing that comes to mind and then interpret them to come from the unconscious mind.
Automatic Drawing - Allowed hands to move freely and make the unknown truths come to life. Is it real?
Sleep - Inspired by the interpretation of dreams
The Dream Collector - interviewed children about dreams and re-create them.
4am knows all my secrets - exploration of sleep disorders
So how valid are Freud’s theories today? (see below)
Bowlby researched into the Levels of attachment
- Secure attachment - trust
- Anxious attachment - clinginess and how small things are threats
- Avoidant attachment - Withdraw and go away from things.
The mirror phase - when a child first recognises self in the mirror which can be unsettling as we do not look how we feel inside as on the outside we are a contained entity. We end up being anxious about the way we see ourselves and that is how fashion profits off of us. Our own image is that of another.
Films can be sympathetic of the capitalist age. Cinemas are a way to avoid reality which end up cutting out our psychoanalysis.
Un Chien Andalou - Dream sequences and association
Coma - A simulation to feel like you are in a coma and separate yourself from the reality
Barzakh - 4 pour long trial with blinding lights, loud sounds and phobia induced simulations to cleanse people to have a sense of true empathy.
The Monstrous Feminine - Gender in a woman's monstrosity - vanity, perfection and youth.
Rotterdam-based architecture studio Powerhouse Company has developed a reception building topped with a 698-meter-long, circular rooftop walkway. The building is part of the new Unis Chip City development in China’s Chengdu’s Tianfu New District, which is under construction. The bright-red walking trail roof, dubbed Loop of Wisdom, is designed to...
