Between Signs and Symbols, 2012

A collaboration between Seoyoung Bae and Amritha Berger

This project evolved from a shared interest in the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung's, theories on the dual realities of the individual. His belief in the power of the unconscious and it's influence over the contents of one's waking self led Jung to teach the importance of awareness and recognition of this hidden aspect of our reality, seeing it as the starting point from which all psychic, or human, experiences generate. To ignore this sense of origin creates an imbalance in one's self, which Jung believes is reflected in the imbalance of society, and the modern world.

Our project is an experimental exploration of the human mind as imagined by Carl Jung, where we have fabricated the psyche through film, installation, painting, writing and dream. The room itself is mapped out as a creative geography of the brain, where its dual nature is expressed on two opposing walls through the representations of signs and symbols. Signs, subscribing to the modern lexicon of our digitized culture, are something we are all familiar with. Symbols, often expressed in dreams, are spontaneous and natural, are primitive in form and often relate to our ancestral histories, hinting at something on the threshold of consciousness. Symbols carry an emotional and powerful energy that signs lack, and so often, being surrounded by a multitude of signs, we lack in our daily lives.

A passage from The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung

What our age thinks of as the "shadow" and inferior part of the psyche contains more than something merely negative. The very fact that through self-knowledge, i.e., by exploring our own souls, we come upon the instincts and their world of imagery, should throw some light on the powers slumbering in the psyche, of which we are seldom aware so long as all goes well. They are potentialities of the greatest dynamic, and it depends entirely on the preparedness and attitude of the conscious mind whether the irruption of these forces and the images and ideas associated with them will tend towards construction or catastrophe. The effect on all individuals, which one would like to see realized, may not set in for hundreds of years, for the spiritual transformation of mankind follows the slow tread of the centuries and cannot be hurried or held up by any rational process of reflection, let alone brought to fruition in one generation. What does lie within our reach, however, is the change in individuals who have, or create, an opportunity to influence others of like mind in their circle of acquaintance. I do not mean by persuading or preaching, I am thinking of the well known fact that anyone who has insight into their own actions, and has thus found access to the unconscious, involuntarily exercises an influence on their environment.

Great art til now has always derived its fruitfulness from the myth, from the unconscious process of symbolization which continues through our ages and which, as the primordial manifestation of the human spirit, will continue to be the root of all creation in the future. The development of modern art with its seemingly nihilistic trend towards disintegration must be understood as the symptom and symbol of a mood of world destruction and world renewal that has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially and philosophically. 

The peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science. As at the beginning of the Christian Era, so again today we are faced with the problem of the moral backwardness with has failed to keep pace with our scientific, technical and social developments. So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of modern man.