Featured Artist; Jessica Swank

Review

Featured artist: Jessica Swank

Presenting her concept, artist Jessica Swank included some stirring words: skin, bone, blood, brains. These words sent my stomach into shivers. And yet the reality of her concept drew on my sense of wonder because already we live in a technologically intertwined world. Do I not feel this shiver continuously: the technological requirement of an uncontrollable unknown? Does the existence of the technological environment around my society not reverberate like a continuous humming? And these words she exhibits through art, will they doubly increase the shiver into a quake? These words are all substances meant to be hidden. And through art they are exposed. And with the exposure there is vulnerability.  Equally important, these words are structures of life. Are these foundational structures meant to be so poignantly visible? Is that the question she is asking? I listened for a question to be asked.  

As I listened, I noticed something unique from this artist; she did not speak a guiding question. Guiding questions so often function as the pavement on which an artist expects an audience to traverse through the exhibition. She asked no questions. Instead, she made statements:

“This is metal and this is bone.” 

“There is tension…”

“This is skin…”

“This is a photo of…”

These statements describe what exists. Her art exists. It is here. And within the negative space between the objects of her creation, where questions could create paths from one to the next, they each remain separate, one from the next.

At the conclusion of her lecture, Ms. Swank invited the audience to ask her questions. I had none for the artist. My questions were reserved for the art. I wanted to know from the art, “Are you asking me something? Are you telling something? Are you creating an experience, here and now, for me to feel? What do you have to tell me? Will I learn? Will I gain insight? Will previously held perceptions, attitudes, or comforts be altered because of what you speak?”

I walked from the lecture hall to the gallery with a sensation of curiosity mixed with apprehension because I wondered what sort of confrontation with technology and individual existence awaited me. Would it hurt? Would I resist the confrontation? 

I asked of the art. I listened. 

Astonishingly, the art also replied only in statements, saying:

“This is…” 

“It feels like…” 

“Here is…” 

“This is what it is…” 

Without additional commentary as to morality, without presentation of a choice, without an offer of ethical management, the pieces simply exist. Individually, they are. 

They sit. They lean. They drape. They suspend. Quietly, each one exists as a statement. 

And juxtaposing each piece against the context of the concept, a quiet environment seems exposed. And the statement persists, “This is.” 

My conclusion from listening to the lecture and the statements of each art piece, I hear a gentle reverberation of a fact: technology already exists and without moral debate we already participate. We feel this environment. We feel just as the art pieces express. And technology simply is.

I appreciate artist Jessica Swank for her acknowledged experiential exposure through each art piece because for a moment I got to feel a cancellation of the ever-present reverberation of technology. The comradery of experiences equated to peace. I walked away from the exhibit with a clarity in my mind, saying in agreement:

“Yes, it feels like that.”

And by me hearing the experiences of Jessica Swank as she processes technology and society and individuality and exposure and thought and what is made additional to society, I feel seen, too. Yes, I live in a complex world. But I live in it with many others. And it is as she said:

“It is.”

The Power of Regret

Logic & Reason

The power of Regret

Here’s an idea to consider: If you’re feeling regret, I wonder… does that mean you are examining a moment in your past where you can imagine a way that an event could have played out better? I ask because if you are, consider this lens. Before, was there hope in you to imagine better within your circumstances? Likely, you didn’t have the imagination for better. And that shaped the ideas, which became responses to the circumstances.

Now, however your imagination has grown to increase in the belief of better circumstances. From that growth, your mind can now imagine a scenario including what could have been better. That is growth in belief.

That is very, very good. It is, possibly, a small blessing from God known as a miracle. What a wonder!

So now, in your today, is your imagination helping you to imagine good possibilities? No? Take another look at your regrets, look and examine them for the beauty that you’re imagining.

And love that beautiful scene. Let the joy blossom and become hope in the possibilities because what you have is belief: belief in beautiful and joyful circumstances.

Love the joy that could have been. Now, wonder, “Could it be, that this time there could be something just as good around the corner? What would be different if I welcomed it? Could my future be so beautiful as my regret’s imagination? What if joy is real? How can I be ready to live in beauty, relationships, and joy?”

Let hope happen.

Although you can’t imagine now becoming better, you can imagine what went wrong being better because suddenly, without your knowing it, your heart believed in joy and in goodness existing in this life! And so, already you have increased in good things. You have more than you had, last time.

Now you have belief. Let that wonder grow a little bit of hope from knowing that you have seen something somewhere that has changed your mind from the belief in total brokenness to a belief that in this life joy is possible. Relish in your growth and let that belief be watered.

Somewhere along the way, you saw something that changed you. Look again at that regret: you’re imaging goodness in this life with belief in the exitance of it. You believe! It wasn’t impossible to believe, before. And perhaps, it still doesn’t make sense, with all the cumulative data from most of your life. But consider, how impossible was that hope, before?

I posit that something real impacted you. And that is a remarkable data point. It stands alone as an event for being a consequence; it is more real than all the dread that has come, so far. An anomaly in the data occurred.

Maybe if you could find out what you’d seen that caused this belief to happen within you, you’d be able to kill it. But what if whatever you’d seen was so real that it changed you in a place, consciously unchangeable? It is that an impact of profound significance. Belief in goodness being possible to live and experience in the land of the living. Isn’t that profound?

If you can believe that joy is possible to experience, even once (and you can feel it when examining that regret) then how much joy can be felt? Would life be worth living if the reward as joy, deep and wide joy, once a month? Would that me more than you’ve had, so far? Once a week? What if when you feel joy, because you’re growing (and having joy within your imagination is new ground, thus a symptom of growth to feel joy) how much joy is feelable at one time? Maybe in life there will be a limit to how many days of the any month a person has the impact of joyfulness upon their psychological being. But what if the growth to feel an amount of joy is ever increasing? You’ve already grown, a bit (evidenced by the sudden addition of belief in joy taking root in your imagination.)

Joy is real. Growth in joy is real. Maybe growth in joy can increase both in frequency as well as amount, all at once.

If joy is available for a season, an entire season, as your regret seems to believe, how much joy would you feel living in a season like that? Although you can’t imagine how it would feel to live in joy, you’re suddenly able to believe in the existence of joy. Astounding!

Before you fear that the scheming toward joy will fail, consider that you did not cause this belief to happen to yourself. Perhaps then, the repeatable part is just a much a sudden happening. Suddenly, joy is within you, alive within your imagination, swirling in an impactful dream of possibilities. How beautiful is this dream? Astounding!

Does fear boast against your hope? I wonder, do you know about suffering and sorrow? Have you learned that the bottom of the barrel has a basement, and the basement has a bunker, and the bunker has a hovel, so on and so forth, deeper and tighter. Pain has no end and neither is emptying real; but in fact, being human in already engrafted into being eternal. Whatever else this mystery implies about human souls, have you seen that there is infinity within the darkness and pain is ever increasing and sorrow ever taking of an energy within the being of self? This is a fact of the nature of evil. So, what of goodness? Have you not known that joy is increase? Have you not known that we are eternal and righteousness is available to us, just as much as evil? Have you not know? I testify to you now, that yes, we grow to receive from goodness in much a mirrored principle of eternity that evil is ever taking, more and more; goodness is ever giving, and we grow to receive more, in the mirrored way we grow in the ability to experience more pain, when treated with goodness by goodness, we grow to hold and keep and feel more goodness.

You are eternal. Your energy will always be with you. In an evil place, there will always be more of you to be taken. But in a good place, you will grow in the goodness of life. And there will more of you that can receive and keep and feel goodness. And it’s already impacted you; you’ve imagined in an impossibly way, with goodness. included in a dream about life. You’ve already increased. I posit, you will increase, again.

In your regret you have knowledge: imaginable joy. 

There was so much good that could have been. What can I not, yet, imagine but that God can add to me? What if it’s possible? I wonder, what if there’s so much more goodness to experience?