More recently eminent dream and brain researchers like Allan Hobson and Karl Friston (Waking & dreaming consciousness: Neurobiological and functional considerations 2012 ) have come to consider the dreaming brain as an amazingly powerful virtual reality machine, and the dream state as our most creative experience. The deeper researchers explore the dream state the more they uncover its role in the self-organizing process of our psyche.

When in the hypnogogic state, the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, we experience a random kaleidoscope of fleeting images. The waking structure of our identity breaks down while the surface of our ordinary reality de-constructs, fragments, distorts and dislocates itself.

I see the dream state as a de-construction of our waking experience, a fragmentation into a psychic chaos that eventually rebuild itself in some random novel structure in the making of a dream.

In the dream our inner fragments are re-organized in an unexpected irrational order, into a new version of our self/reality that may allow us “to make fresh links between our de-constructed parts”. Here I am referring to Shaun McNif’s definition of imagination to underline the parallel between dreams’ “re-construction” and imagination. As James Hillman stated (Dreams and the underworld 1979) “Dreams call from the imagination to the imagination and can be answered only by the imagination.”

Being an adept of dream journaling, dream work and using the dream world as a source of creative inspiration, I am looking for ways to re-inject some of that dream like high creativity in our awaken artistic process. I am also fascinated in how these experiences foster shift of consciousness and alter our self-perception as well as our perception of what is reality.

I am struck by the liminal commonality of surrealism, dream state and deconstruction. Liminal because they all stand as intermediary /in between/ states where ordinary waking consciousness is being challenged, transformed and extended.

Now how to practically apply this tools to our artistic process?
What I am looking for is to transcend my habitual behavioural patterns/gestures, to break through my artistic identity/norms and likes, to stretch my artistic vocabulary, to uncover unexpected narratives, to inject new life within my creative process.

Here is a sequence of steps you can explore in your art making:

• Defining a frame: art form, format, tools, art materials.
• Cultivating a surrealist attitude: letting go of control, opening to chance accidents, play, irrational gesture and free association.
• Deconstructing: breaking down surface and structures, fragmenting images and narratives, distorting forms and perceptions. This is a phase where we can experiment with new tools, to cut, rip, cover, uncover, scratch, distressed …
• Reconstructing: creating new links, experimenting with ways of rebuilding, re-organizing the parts.
• Recognizing and following the emergence of new forms/shapes/directions, being guided by the work while exercising the skills of seeing and shaping to co-create with the unknown. In this phase the new emergent might be helped in more details to reach its full potential.
• Phases of deconstructing and reconstructing might repeat themselves, in fragments, facets and layers.
• Write list of words that spontaneously come up  looking at the surface work (colors, shapes & forms, textures, composition, use of tools) and observing your process (physical, emotional, mental, inspirational)
• Locate emergences on the surface as well as during the process. What happen that is new? What surprised you, inspired you or challenged you?
  To harvest we use the phenomenological frame of the aesthetic analysis  from the Expressive Arts.

I observe in my exploration the difference of temporality between hands on and digital practices. When using digital tools there is a time acceleration of possibilities and discoveries. The deconstruction reconstruction process can be repeated again and again, parts can be moved around and combined very fast, we can try out so many different possibilities. The virtuality of the process becomes even closer to the dream state where the collapse and break down of the constructs of reality seam to happen in a split second.

And what is emerging from this wild “cut and paste” /or “death and rebirth”/ process? 
A melting down of my certitudes, a vertiginous realization of the unreliable slipperiness of my perceptions, the exiting pulse of discovery and the slight vertigo of not knowing as I am stepping on the edge of unexplored territory …

And hopefully as a side product of this humbling and yet exhilarating shaping, I might be blessed with the emergence of a few good art works standing out; no guaranty, just show up again and again in the art space and keep exploring.

To be continued …

Below you can read a short process description of the art works I present on this page to illustrate my explorations.