04 Mar Totem: Manifesto

Totem Manifesto

I wasn’t sure what the Totem was in the beginning.

It started with a photo of a grassy field in west Iceland. The picturesque Snaefellsnes Pennisula along Route 54. The Totem stood, bathed in a soft, yellowy afternoon light, with only faint mountains skirting along the horizon behind it. It captured everyone’s interest, mine too. I wasn’t sure what it was or what it represented.

Anyway, it started from there. As the series went along the art community I was part of gave their feedback. I enjoyed all their varied interpretations, as with each the Totem grew.

So, it was a collective effort in the beginning, drawing together people from around the world. Here was its backbone.

But far more than bones, underneath the surface was something more fundamental to it. Echoing beyond the physical. It felt more like memory.

Conventionally, memories are thought to be stored in the brain. And so science endeavours to detect them as electric signals. But they always find difficulty in this regard.

This suggests that the brain is not a storehouse and that memories are not independently detectable entities, but something else. They may be signals of a different nature we are unaware of, to which the brain is an antenna tuned to pick up them up. Could it be that the collective past experiences of humanity echo toghter in some strange void that knowledge cannot penetrate?

This question flows through the series, taking inspiration from Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis of memory called ‘Morphic Resonance.’ 

The question arises, if not localized in brain tissue, where are our memories? If they are outside the brain, could we tune into other people’s memories? Rupert thinks we do. He calls this ‘collective memory.’ In this case, besides an individual’s personal memory, there would also be a generalized background of human experience that we draw upon. Similar to Carl Jung’s collective unconscious.

How does this relate to the Totem?

Since its beginning, the Totem felt like this. A collective unconscious, physically manifested. A member told me that it was a ‘thought-form.’ I imagined it both receiving and transmitting ‘collective memory,’ resonating with the lineage of human experience, transcending mind and matter.

So, this was the concept. Now wrapped in an artistic series. In a sense going beyond mere abstraction. If fact it pushes simple aesthetic appreciation into something else. Elevating it to a dynamic force. Art with psychic action.

Here, the Totem is a point of connection between minds. And so it rises, in communion with the human collective. It ‘lives’ with imbued psychic energy driven by its audience. This raises art to a whole new level of cultural activity.

With special significance, considering this age where computer learning encroaches into our human sphere, trying to stake its own claims in creativity. This pushes it out again, and moves us forward into the future.