Join us for a talk with Karen Morris, psychoanalyst, poet and social dreaming facilitator on Friday, February 21 from 6:30-8pm here at the Narrowsburg Union.
Dark Beauty, Duende and Art as a Social Dream explores the problem of “value” that artists have faced throughout history and is now, more than ever, in evidence in contemporary art and society. Inner experience and personal values are ever in conflict with social, political and economic pressures, under which artist’s must create, either original or conventional, commercially accessible work in order to survive. This, in stark contrast to “Thrive.” Tendencies toward repetition and imitation render creativity inert. When artists suffer society also suffers.
Morris draws from depth psychology, also known as C. G. Jung’s Analytical Psychology and Existential Psychoanalysis. She will provide an introduction to social dreaming practice. Guiding principles will be garnered from the work of E. E. Cummings, as crusader for Life that cannot be diminished, and Gabriel Garcia Lorca’s treatise “Theory and Play of The Duende” written in 1933, the advent of Surrealism in Spain. Lorca invokes the indescribably dark motivators of beauty, inseparable from our Life/Death. Through exploration comes the discovery of inherent energies that our psychically and emotionally connected relational lives depend upon. These aspects of our lives either spark and support or block and divert creativity and development in art practices. Through skillful means gold is discovered, following dark passages.
“That poets, painters and novelists are beginning to feel their arts unworthy (and economics much more important), you can see any day by looking….” -G. Seles in his foreword to E. E. Cummings’ 1932 essay on the state of the arts
Karen Morris, LP, NCPsyA, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Narrowsburg, NY. She is an award-winning author and poet and has been facilitating social dreaming matrixes in conferences, workshops and retreats throughout The United States and internationally. www.karenmorristherapist.com
Drawing by R. Crumb
