Internal Sourcing/ The Uncanny

Sourcing from one’s own dreams, inner feelings and emotions can become either a quite daunting task or a rather liberating experience for an artist. Freud’s The Uncanny brings rise to an interesting psychological concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet at the same time, resulting in something quite uncomfortably strange. This concept accompanying the “Internal Sources of Inspiration” excerpts creates a connection of ideas that highlight the conflicts between one’s mind/imagination and reality.

            “Jan Harrison undertakes a comparable journey into deep imagination during the creative process. Hers is an active quest for a source of vitality and wisdom that has been usurped by the authority of bureaucracies, institutions, laboratories, classrooms, and other such constructions of civilization”. This passage from our reading of “Internal Sources of Inspiration” describes Jan Harrison as an artist who uses her everyday conscious to create creatures whose images are not confined to the influences, ideals, and standards of society. Freud’s concept of “the uncanny” can be applied to Harrison’s familiar but warped aquatic winged creature, Tendril Birdfish. There is something recognizable within the fin-like attributes of this sculpture to make one relate it to a fish, but it’s disconcerting facial expression and drooping appendages turn familiarity into the uncanny.

            Personal experiences of an artist can affect his or her own work directly and indirectly. In the case of Pipilotto Rist, her failed relationships with men and the internal conflicts that arise within her during these events help produce personal and meaningful works of art. I believe this concept and process of art making is a great example of an artist’s decision to become vulnerable in exporting her/his private thoughts into a public atmosphere. In a way, the feeling of “the uncanny” might arise within Rist every time she might view her video projections. Her works are about her past, thus she relives these familiar events but only through her own recreations that are altered by her personal perceptions and emotion.

            Internal sourcing for an artist in relation to Freud’s concept of “the uncanny” becomes an experience in which he or she is challenged with the task of making something that will successfully capture and express an informal image or idea within his or her head, into a format that will be accessible for others to experience.