'The Undefinable Self’ is an exhibition that aims to explore theories that dwell in both the conscious and unconscious mind, using conceptual and experimental design alongside interactive aspects that encourage the audience to engage with ideas as well as think more about who they are.
Rather than simply just an exhibition, whilst inside, visitors are encouraged to collect materials as they move through. At the end, these are combined and bound together becoming their own personal document of the self. This amalgamates theory with elements personal to them, in the form of a somewhat self-published document.
This material includes mini books on theorists, key word cards, post cards and artworks. These elements will be placed around the exhibition within the sections that they are concerned with. Visitors can take them off of table tops and pull them away from walls. Alongside this, there will be interactive elements to the exhibition that fully immerse visitors in the experience in order for them to fully engage with their own ‘self’.
Everything available to the visitors is printed on different coloured paper which then may influence the audience’s choices when selecting the material they do, making the document they produce at the end even more person-able to them. There should be a randomised feeling to the designs of the advertising materials as they com-bine all the elements of the self which would not seem to link but represent how ideas of the self are so broad that it is undefinable.
The following post cards are further material that can be collected by visitors on their way around the exhibition. The idea behind this is the psychology and the history of self portraiture. A self portrait is an entirety unique view from only their perspective and although analysed can never be fully understood through their eyes. The warped imagery of infamous artworks represents this distorted perspective. Each card has the same copy on the back aside from a statement or quote that relates to that specific artist. This aspect gives a further dimension to the self which adds to the psychology and sociology found in the exhibition.
Sigmund Freud: The Unconscious Mind Zine
Freud’s theory famously centres around the ideas of the unconscious mind that we ourselves are supposedly unaware of. Each of the three mini books included within the available exhibition material visualise the work of different theorists of the self. The books include artworks which are comprised of collages of found, manipulated images in order to create conceptual, literal or visual analogies of each element of the theory.
Erving Goffman: Presentation of The Self
The second mini book for the undefinable self is based on Erving Goffman, a sociologist who believes there is in fact no true self and that every social interaction is in fact a performance. This is what the imagery of masks on the cover symbolises.
Carl Jung: Collective Unconscious Zine
Like Freud, Jung too believed in the presence of a subconscious, however Jung unlike Freud believed that all beings of the same species share a collective unconscious. This book continues to follow the aesthetic of the other books, with and amalgamation of artworks, found imagery and collages to represent aspects specific to the theorists ideas.
The Posters
The way that this exhibition would be promoted would be by posters such as this, following the aesthetic of the exhibition, the random assortment of elements links directly to the idea of the self being just this. Each element in the collages is from a feature within the exhibition, although each thing may seem completely unrelated, they are in fact linked through different theories of the self.
Object and The Self
Another way that the self is defined, is by the objects to which people surround themselves. Theory has suggested that humans personify objects as well as associating them with luck and wanting to keep them. This deliverable consists of a concertina which explains ideas surrounding this which then opens up into a poster displaying many random objects. The quantity of the objects on the poster represents the amount of inanimate objects we collect over the course of our lifetimes.
Exhibition Spaces/Features
This exhibition could be held somewhere such as The Welcome Collection London, as the institute holds small, interactive exhibitions that focus on combining science, healthcare and art – allowing me to transform my theoretical content into an exploitative, informative and interactive experience.
As an object, the calling card pre-dated social media in the sense that it was a way that a person could present themselves. Within the exhibition, there is a machine that generates an instant card for the visitor which creatively displays a word that they would chose to describe themselves. Words are an important element of the self as they are the way we describe ourselves.
As well as the theoretical background of the self, perhaps the most obvious definition of the self is that of a persons aesthetics. The camera produces an instant photograph of the visitor in order for them to add to their pack representing the surface level of the definition of the self. The exhibition layout will consist of areas dedicated to different theories and ideas explored, there will be video projections on the walls, floor and ceiling – fully immersing visitors in the experience. As visitors walk into the exhibition, lights will be bright and the floor raised, as they move through the ideas and towards the unconscious theory, the floor will subtly slope and the lights dim representing delving deeper into the human psyche. The illustration above shows an inside view of the exhibition space where visitors can be seen taking materials from the walls as well as engaging with elements such as the ‘card generator’.Whilst in the 'unconscious' area of the exhibition, one of the experiences the visitors can engage with is the Freudian Dream Analysis experience. This consists of a fully immersive, audio visual experience which makes the participant feel as if they are in a psychoanalysis session with Sigmund Freud.
