The art object is a complex derivative of the maternal face. - Winnicot
That Which Transpires Behind that which Appears (Transpires) is a cine-art installation that simulates the ecological integrity of reciprocal mother-infant communication, prior to rational concept formation.
The purpose is to facilitate the sensitive filming of resilient vulnerability in a manner that empowers: to reveal the unselfconscious, open-hearted vitality of human beings to each other in a potent form that is as unmediated as we can enable it to be.
The movies in the installation are immersive and consequently scale-dependent. Ideally, they require a cinema-size screen for viewing - certainly a desktop computer or flat screen TV as minimum.
Sadly, the immersive dimension of the artwork remains latent when viewed on small screens such as phones or tablets. This online iteration is therefore a presentation of components, not a simulation of entering transpirational space.
The physical installation itself, is a room whose walls consist of multiple projection-mapped cinema screens. The 4-dimensional cinema space is filled with the subtle surround-sound of soft breathing.
Origins
We, humans are interdependent beings. Existing in isolation is not an option for our species. Fluency of social co-regulation is a matter of life and death for each of us.
At least 95% of our interpersonal communication is pre-verbal. A helpful term for pre-verbal interaction coined by developmental psychologist Daniel Stern is affective attunement.
Affective attunement is a primary form of transpersonal metabolic cognition that operates prior to alphabetical concept narratives - which rely on secondary intermediate images / subjective symbolic objects.
We develop our primacy of affective attunement from prenatal mother-infant immersive interaconnectivity and during the first 18 months of childhood prior to separation from the mother to form a discrete psychological identity.
Unlike the sluggish processing of discursive rationality, affective attunement is characterized by lightning cognitive immediacy. It can be posited as a kind of unthought known that has much in common with meditative absorption.
In order to enable participants to somatically merge with one another on the resonant level of feeling tones that occur prior to concept-formation, Transpires sets out to simulate the rapport of mother-infant relational interconnectedness as an ecological base.
