POPc Participant Melissa’s Post:
Hi. I am writing per the meeting/discussion I had with Dena this past Saturday which was about our ancestral inheritance that relates to how we perceive/express. I believe in the Jungian idea that we inherit systems of logic that cannot be expressed purely in language form. I hesitate to say “systems of logic” actually because I don’t think that there is any “system” at play, it is much more organic network, as we artists say when we all find ourselves all talking/working in a similar vein that it is, “in the air”. (I’ll take this opportunity to write a disclaimer: I’m an artist and not a philosopher) Language creates strong barriers that confuse the life of the subject (or for a lack of words, the “thing”). Language is a structure that creates a prefabricated theme, unlike the subject itself which carries an infinite amount of information including a history that perhaps is being “blocked” willfully by a consensus-driven society, meaning: we are aware of the natural history of the thing/subject but choose structure over organic or even more portent meaning. Art is a way to move around this blockage, it may articulate a subject/thing that includes a history well known but somehow suppressed either by language or some other cultural barrier (I believe language is the first form to manipulate an idea to a cultural standard but obviously there are many other ways in which we streamline hegemonic standards in society.) I believe our notion of things include limitless definitions, some of which is carried through a generational inheritance of experience and can only be expressed in the nonverbal like the cultural practices of art, music, etc.