FOUNDATION DIPLOMA IN ART, DESIGN AND MEDIA
statement of intent
"Every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance".
-Sigmund Freud
The subconscious mind is a random mechanism that takes control of our dreams, but which we have no control over...they are all by chance and extremely random that reach to new depths of our minds, ones which we choose to ignore consciously. Using my friends' dreams as chance generator, I try to bring their subconscious minds into life using collage techniques, book-making skills and 3D modelling.
PSYCHOANALYSIS - SIGMUND FREUD
Dream Analysis
According to Freud the analysis of dreams is "the royal road to the unconscious". He argued that the conscious mind is like a censor, but it is less vigilant when we are asleep. As a result repressed ideas come to the surface - though what we remember may well have been altered during the dream process.
As a result we need to distinguish between the manifest content and the latent content of a dream. The former is what we actually remember. The latter is what it really means. Freud believed that very often the real meaning of a dream had a sexual significance and in his theory of sexual symbolism he speculates on the underlying meaning of common dream themes.
PSYCHOANALYSIS - SIGMUND FREUD
Dream Analysis
According to Freud the analysis of dreams is "the royal road to the unconscious". He argued that the conscious mind is like a censor, but it is less vigilant when we are asleep. As a result repressed ideas come to the surface - though what we remember may well have been altered during the dream process.
As a result we need to distinguish between the manifest content and the latent content of a dream. The former is what we actually remember. The latter is what it really means. Freud believed that very often the real meaning of a dream had a sexual significance and in his theory of sexual symbolism he speculates on the underlying meaning of common dream themes.
For this project, I want to bring these repressed feelings out into real life. Using small symbolic drawings (shopping list in pictures - sketchbook) and paintings, I will illustrate what is going on within the dreams that my friends sent to me.
Most of these dreams are very jumpy. I'm no psychoanalysis expert, but to me this means the person is perhaps experiencing stress and have had a lot on their minds on these particular days. The subconscious mind is trying to deal with all their situations at once, enabling them to remember parts of their dreams which may seem light-hearted to read in the morning but it's the mind's way of letting go of all emotions during our dream state. I think a deep red is an appropriate colour that symbolises this heavy mind and the day's burden, so will use a lot of it within the experiments and final piece. As well as this, blue symbolises peace and calm and could symbolise the mind's serenity of being able to let go of all emotions at the end of the day, so will also try to incorporate this into my project.
SURREALISM
The first artistic movement to directly accredit Sigmund Freud for his discoveries was Surrealism. Surrealism was an avant-garde movement founded in Paris in 1924 and it aspired to reunite the modern man and woman with the forces of the unconscious. It was the successor of the earlier “anti-art” movement, Dada, that strived for viewers to question the state of art, politics and society. e.g. Salvador Dali
AUTOMATISM
Automatism was the process of making art without control, to reveal the workings of the unconscious. It uses Freud’s method of free association, where the analysand would lie on the couch and speak without censoring their thoughts.
Surrealism and Automatism are intrinsic with one another, as the movement strived to reunite the modern man and woman with the forces of the unconscious.
