Upcoming Lecture: A Collage Of Consciousness as part of Collagistas #6 @ Maison du Peuple de Saint-Gilles, Parvis Saint Gilles 39, 1060 Saint-Gilles, Brussels, Belgium

Every moment of our life, our senses drink in fresh experiences, ideas, perspectives and information about the world around us. Fragments of imagery, sound, taste and feeling are constantly woven together to form the rich fabric of our conscious experience. Each of us is infomed by our culture, our education, our peers, our memories and our own unique creative intelligences in the way we select and sort through information from the wider world.

As we reflect on our lives, we can make sense of what has happened to us, what has gone before and what may happen in future. We look to the vast mllieu of our past experience to provide us with a map of the world and how to operate in it. But we also do something else. . .

In our dreams, our daydreams and through intentional creative practices, our minds bend, collide, break, smash, blend, meld, forge and integrate together previously unrelated elements of thought, sound, memory, sight, concepts etc. Into new, unique and fantastic forms. We are never satisfied our old map, continously adding new and colourful territories. A synthesis of old forms into new, an innate creative drive which is elegently reflected in the process of Collage.

The skilled collage artist follows his/her own intuitive and aesthetic sense, selecting imagery, cutting, tearing, placing, playing, dicing, splicing and bracing. Filtering the infinite possible array of visual and textual source material through their own unique experiences of living in this world, with its triumphs and trials; andproducing in the end something new, a singular reflection on the times in which we live.

Join artist Anthony D Kelly for a lecture exploring The Collage of Consciousness:

Sunday 8th September 2019

11.00-11.30

Maison du Peuple de Saint-Gilles, Parvis Saint Gilles 39, 1060 Saint-Gillis, Brussels, Belgium

As part of Collagistas #6

New Digital Collage - Resonant Empathy

Part Of The Inner Space Series. Resonant Empathy is a Digital Collage which reverbrates like a tuning fork with the experiences of another and chimes a deeply resonant note within. Empathy is a natural capacity we share that enables us to feel into and understand the pains, trials, tribulations and joys of our common humanity. We get to the heart of a matter by opening up, listening attentively and picking up that which occurs in each other; as well as in the space between us. By practicing Empathy we learn to lay aside our own predjudices, predilictions and agendas in service of entering into the lived experiences of another person, stepping into their shoes and seeing the world from their eyes.

When we meet at this deeper level, we reach out and bridge the gaps between one and other; We can form powerful bonds, erode isolation and gain new insights, whilst providing sustenance and support to those around us. By really taking in the experiences of others, the act of empathy changes us; like a chemical reaction the interaction alters both parties, promoting growth, and deepening understanding of other people, of our own self, of how we relate, of the nature of meaning in our lives, and of the brilliance and burdens of the existences that we share.

New Digital Collage - An Emergence To Consciousness

An Emergence To Consciousness is a Digital Collage which manifests into being by synthesizing meaning from our environments and experiences. Our intuition guides our focus, absorbing some information and highlighting some aspects of our experience and editing out other elements based on our immediate situation; but also through the most intimate elements of ourselves, our personal histories, our values, our interests, our agendas, our vices, our pleasures, our hates and our loves. A subtle and powerful process of questioning. What feels pertinent? What feels meaningful? What feels right?

In Gestalt psychology we describe this process as a figure (That is something of meaning, needing our attention) which emerges from the background of our experience, to be engaged with and then when the necessary change comes about the figure of our focus fades into the background again, altering it to in the process. There is a cycle to our experience of the world, awareness, engagement, creative enterprise, integration and finally a return to rest, making space for a new figure to emerge into awareness.