being + doubt
I am inspired and motivated by the experience of centredness and the belief, influenced by Advaita Vedanta philosophy (and Eastern esoteric concepts generally) that this experience closely equates to the true basis of human existence. While passionate about these bodies of knowledge that propose final reality as an infinite, blissful field of nondual consciousness that is realisable by the individual, at the same time I live almost entirely in the common experience of continual flux and doubt.
How can the everyday experience of life, love, fear, attachments and prejudices simultaneously be a single undifferentiated substance that although beyond any discernable attribute or limit is yet also knowable and blissful?
This dichotomy of personal experience resides firmly in the long tradition of examining faith. In post-Enlightenment Western culture, how can anyone rationally believe in a thesis on the nature of reality that is completely unprovable? In the age of quantum science and depth psychology how can anyone legitimate personal experience that appears to corroborate a thesis on the final nature of non-physical reality when the individual’s desire to believe in it colours all perception and may alter their entire body of experience? And yet the final arbiter for truth and reality for the average human being tends to be personal experience and inner knowledge. This is Being and Doubt.
I want to explore the unanswerable enigma of existence on the basis of personal experience and faith, with the questionable justification that if it is meaningful to me it will somehow be valuable to others.
The challenge of such a project is how to translate this into visual language. It is clear to me that experimentation and exploration are core to the concept, and also that classical figuration is not a suitable form. I think whether traditional or contemporary media is used is up for examination, although I am innately curious about unexpected fusions of old and new media.
March 2007