Autotelic (autos, ‘self’ and telos, ‘goal’) can refer to activity that has an end or purpose in and of itself.1 Autotelic activity exhibits a sense of intrinsic meaning or curiosity – that is internal to it, emerging through it – where the sense of its worth or value is not established or measured according to external criteria, use or necessity. In one sense the call towards flow states, towards autotelic activity, might be conceived as an exuberant, joyful counterpart to (or perhaps even version of) ‘doing deceleration’ and ‘slow practices’. Both the practice of deceleration and of flow (in different ways) can be considered antidotes – even modes of resistance or subversion – in relation to the increasingly instrumentalised, achievement-oriented or outcome-driven tendencies of contemporary culture – including the art world, the art school and academia more broadly. Both ‘slowing down’ and ‘autotelic activity’ reconfigure the relationship between process and product, or more specifically both approaches to practice invite us to shift from an extrinsic telos- or goal-driven mode of productivity towards one that opens up space for exploration, for speculation, for the unexpected. You can witness this in practices that privilege meandering, tarrying, waiting and deviation above finding the quickest path; that favour opening things up rather than reaching a conclusion. Autotelic activities also refuse the reward-driven, outcome-motivated tendencies of contemporary culture, however, they are not pitched in antagonistic relation to the idea of a goal or end: they are not against telos as such.
Autotelic activity2 can be understood in relation to the ‘flow states’ of ‘being in the zone’ where action and awareness merge, conceptualised by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi as a state of ‘total involvement’ in the process of an activity, where the individual stops ‘being aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing’. For Csíkszentmihályi, flow states effect a transformation of time, the distortion of temporal experience where one’s subjective awareness of duration becomes altered: ‘during the flow experience the sense of time bears little relation to the passage of time as measured by the absolute convention of the clock’.3 Here, states Csíkszentmihályi, ‘Life is justified in the present, instead of being held hostage to a hypothetical future gain’.4 Flow involves states of heightened concentration and temporal disorientation, where an intrinsic value is placed on the process in-and-of-itself. Within the experience of flow, the process of an unfolding activity becomes intrinsically rather than extrinsically meaningful, the motivation for one’s action is not focuses on a given goal or telos but rather is autotelic: the experience becomes the ‘end in itself’.5 The intrinsic motivation associated with flow states (with heightened value on the process and its challenges) operates in an entirely different register to that of extrinsic motivation, which is dependent on external factors including the ‘success’ of one’s ‘work’ specifically as it is measured by the normative criteria of economy, status, reputation or other forms of exchange value (or else through performance-based systems of threat or reward). Csíkszentmihályi argues that although ‘flow experience appears to be effortless, it is far from being so. It often requires strenuous physical exertion, or highly disciplined mental activity. It does not happen without the application of skilled performance. Any lapse in concentration will erase it’.6 Accordingly, the optimal experience of flow depends on achieving the ‘sweet spot’ of desirable difficulty between the nature of the challenge and one’s available skill, between one’s intention and capacity.
Alternatively, you could think of autotelic activity in relation to play, for play has no end or purpose other than itself. Play is radically wasteful — in Roger Caillois’ definition, “Play is an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often money.”7 For Caillois, play is inherently “uncertain activity. […] An outcome known in advance, with no possibility of error or surprise, clearly leading to an inescapable result, is incompatible with the nature of play.”8 Indeed, as Caillois observes, “A characteristic of play, in fact, is that it creates no wealth or goods … At the end of the game, all can and must start over again at the same point.”9 Within play, the pleasure is in the playing rather than simply attaining an outcome, often known or predicted in advance.
For philosopher Paolo Virno, the virtuoso activity of performing, of the performing artist is “an activity which finds its own fulfillment (that is, its own purpose) in itself, without objectifying itself into an end product … the purpose of their activity coincides entirely with its own execution.”10 However, he goes on to stress that performing is “an activity which requires the presence of others, which exists only in the presence of an audience.”11 He argues that, “Lacking a specific extrinsic product, the virtuoso has to rely on witnesses.”12
How might the private ‘flow states’ of the individual absorbed in activity relate to the autotelic activity described by Virno, dependent on the presence of witnesses? How might this shed light on what is at stake in ‘performing process’? What happens when we perform our ‘processes’ in the company of others, rather than in the privacy of our own studio spaces? What happens through witnessing the performing processes of others? What is the nature of the community that arises in and through the sharing of processes and of practising together? Rather than the utilitarian (arguably extrinsically motivated) idea of a social ‘network’ (virtual or otherwise), what emerges from a community that is itself autotelic – whose value cannot be extracted or measured but is in and of itself?
So rather than choosing between outcome or open-ended activity, between process and product, our focus on autotelic activity seeks to playfully navigate the spaces in-between, refusing the binary of either/or. The invitation is to reflect on both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations at play, whilst considering how we might strike a balance between working towards resolution whilst still leaving things open. How can we further cultivate understanding of the intrinsic value of our practices and indeed of our communities of practice? How can we set up the conditions for performing process, towards the autotelic states of flow?
Still, how to create the conditions (of uninterrupted, undisturbed time and space) for states of deep absorption and creative flow? How can we (re)claim the time-space for open-ended play and exploration – How might we advocate for its value? What might we need to let go? What is at stake in the “politics of making space and finding time.”13
1. The focus Autotelic - Towards Flow extends from questions, issues, and conversations emerging within the Summer Lodge symposium, Autotelic - Towards Play (2018), which explored ideas around playfulness and experimentation, alongside immersion and absorption. Parts of this text above are drawn from Emma Cocker’s "Introduction" to this symposium, as well as from her framing text for the publication No Telos! (eds.) Emma Cocker and Danica Maier (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2019).
2. This section outlining Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's concept of flow draws on the section “Kairotic Improvisation and flow states” in Emma Cocker, ‘What now, what next – kairotic coding and the unfolding future seized’, in Digital Creativity, Special Issue on Improvisational Creativity, 29:1, 2018), pp. 82-95. See here.
3. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow: the classic work on how to achieve happiness, (London, Sydney: Rider, 2002), p. 66.
4. Csíkszentmihályi, 2022, p. 69.
5. Csíkszentmihályi, 2002, p. 67.
6. Csíkszentmihályi, 2002, p. 54.
7. Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, 1958/2001, pp. 5 — 6.
8. Caillois, 1958/2001, pp. 5 – 6.
9. Caillois, 1958/2001, p. 5.
10. Paolo Virno, When the word becomes flesh: language and human nature. South Pasadena, California: Semiotext(e), 2015, p. 22. This section on Virno draws on Emma Cocker, "Performing Thinking in Action: The Meletē of Live Coding" - see here.
11. Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude, (MIT, 2004), p. 52.
12. Virno, 2004, p. 52.
13. bell hooks, ‘Women Artists: The Creative Process’, in Art on My Mind (New York: The New Press, 1995), p. 126.
Bibliography/links
Hannah Arendt, ‘Labor, Work, Action’, in Bernauer, S.J.J.W. (eds), Amor Mundi: Explorations in the Faith and Thought of Hannah Arendt, (Boston College Studies in Philosophy, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht, 1987), pp. 29–42.
David Bohm, ‘On Creativity’, in Leonardo, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr., 1968), pp. 137-149, (The MIT Press)
Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, (University of Illinois Press, 2001, Reprint edition). Originally published in 1958.
bell hooks, ‘Women Artists: The Creative Process’, in Art on My Mind (New York: The New Press, 1995).
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, ‘The Flow of Creativity’ in Creativity:
Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention, (New York: Harper/Collins) pp. 107- 126
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow: the classic work on how to achieve happiness, (London, Sydney: Rider, 2002).
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, ‘The Autotelic Personality’ in Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, (Basic Books, 1997), pp.116 – 131.
Henk Slager, ‘Temporary Autonomous Research’ in The Pleasure of Research, (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2015), pp. 7 – 14.
Paolo Virno, When the word becomes flesh: language and human nature, (South Pasadena, California: Semiotext(e), 2015).
Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude, (MIT, 2004).
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, First published in 1929.
Reading Group
Autotelic – Towards Flow (28.04.2022)
During this reading group we engaged with two texts as a way of opening up a conversation around the creative and critical potential of ‘autotelic’ activity within practice, and ways for nurturing the conditions for absorption and immersion within our own practices and lives.
Readings (in reverse alphabetical order, since hooks' text raises some questions/challenges in relation to what might be taken-for-granted in Csíkszentmihályi's formulation of 'creative flow').
The first text was Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi’s, ‘The Flow of Creativity’ from Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention, (New York: Harper/Collins) pp. 107- 126, one of the many publications in which Csíkszentmihályi outlines his conceptualisation of ‘flow states’. In this text, he explores ‘flow’ or even the sense of being ‘programmed for creativity’ in relation to the evolutionary dynamic of two forces: (1) The urge to create and discover the new: the pleasure of the process of discovery and creation, of exploring and inventing; (2) The force of entropy: the pleasure experienced in comfort, when not expending energy, the least-effort imperative. In this text Csíkszentmihályi argues that ‘flow states’ are intricately bound to an experience of enjoyment, identifying several criteria or conditions for ‘flow’: (1) There are goals every step of the way; (2) There is immediate feedback to one’s actions; (3) There is a balance between challenges and skills; (4) Action and awareness are merged; (5) Distractions are excluded from consciousness; (6) There is no worry of failure; (7) Self-consciousness disappears; (8) The sense of time becomes distorted; (9) The activity is autotelic (pp.111- 113).
The second text was bell hooks’ ‘Women Artists: The Creative Process’, in Art on My Mind (New York: The New Press, 1995): 125-132. In this text, hooks identifies some of the conditions for the ‘creative process’: time-space for contemplation and for reverie, for leisure, for lingering, undisturbed, uninterrupted time, moments of solitude, stillness and quietude. However, she goes on to identify some of the many challenges experienced in achieving such conditions – engagement with which she situates as a feminist and political struggle, and interrogates from a feminist standpoint. She highlights the perceived “threat” or suspicion activated by this need for uninterrupted space of preparation and devotion – asking why one would need to justify such a requirement, and how it might often seem ‘guiltily seized’. Emphasising the time pressures of work, especially women’s work, she observed how the creative process cannot thrive when one is weary, overworked or stressed out. She asks: How can we “transform both this culture and everyday lives so that our creativity can be nurtured in a sustained manner” (p.128).
Reading Group Attendees
Lesley Beale
Emma Cocker
Laura Cooper
David Eckersley
Tom Fisher
Danica Maier
George Miles
Darren O'Brien
Gathering of questions arising through discussion
How does the focus on autotelic practice and ‘flow states’ relate to questions of privilege and access? How are these experiences and states met through the lens of gender, race and class?
Who has space to take time? Who is excluded from this opportunity?
Who enables and who is enabled? How is this relation? How might the relation become more mutually affirmative, more reciprocal? How might those who enable in turn become enabled? What power and privilege dynamics need to be addressed? What values and systems need to be questioned or challenged?
How do the contemporary conditions of increased precarity impinge on our individual and collective capacity for ‘taking time’ and for practices that might be autotelic?
How do we reconcile or hold in relation the widespread experience of increased precarity and loss of any surplus time, without reducing, collapsing or diminishing the sense of specific challenges faced by particular communities or individuals whether based on race, class, gender, socio-economic background etc?
Are autotelic practices and ‘flow states’ predicated on the necessity of ‘time away’, beyond the influence and impingement of other pressures, commitments and responsibilities? How to create conditions for flow whilst still remaining open to and in relation to the world and to others?
Does might the rhetoric of ‘flow’ and even ‘autotelic practice’ risk become appropriated by the imperative of neoliberal over-productivity, where the sense of ‘loving/enjoying the work that what one does’ risks becoming mobilised as a means of exploitation?
What is at stake in making life/work more joyful as a conscious practice?
How might we experience ‘flow’ from more of our lived experiences?
How do we negotiate this potential tension between the promise/potential of making life more joyful and loving what we do, and the capacity for this to become co-opted by a neoliberal agenda/framework?
Considering bell hooks' invitation towards world-building or world-fashioning, what new worlds might we individually and collectively inaugurate through attending to the potential of flow and increasing our capacity for autotelic (perhaps even altruistic) activity?
Is the notion of a “sacrifice” made for a creative life outmoded? Is this a gendered concept? What sacrifices are indeed made? Is sacrifice always to be conceived as a negative renunciation or letting go?
How do we hold in relation the desire/need for more time/space and the matter of sacrifice – what are we willing (individually and collectively) to let go of or renounce?
What would enable the ‘simple living’ described by bell hooks as necessary conditions for creative practice? Why might one not wait for the ‘right conditions’? How is the relation between these two modes – changing one’s conditions, working with one’s conditions?
How is the relation between the enjoyment of spaciousness, contemplation, reverie and the struggle of creative work? How are these two modes interwoven, perhaps even interdependent?
bell hooks identifies two phases within creative process: (1) a phase of contemplation and reverie conceived as ‘preparation’, and (2) the creative working itself. Why is the first phase viewed with such suspicion or even undervalued? How can it be better advocated for?
Does the correlation between flow and happiness feel adequate – what alternative terms might be activated rather than ‘happiness’ – Fulfilment? Meaning?
Does the correlation between flow and ‘fun’ feel adequate – what alternative terms might be activated rather than ‘fun’ – Absorption? Immersion? Full attention?
How might we create/find time for contemplation (conceived as a necessary prerequisite for creative action) when available time is felt to be more and more lacking in our experiences? How do we create this time-space for creativity and its preparation – what tactics, strategies, devices do we engage? Can these be shared?
Does contemplation have to lead somewhere or can it be without telos?
How is the role of “struggle” within creative activity – where is the struggle, where is the sense of positive or affirmative struggle? Do we need a more nuanced language for articulating the different variations of struggle within creative practice, much as some cultures have many words for “snow”?
Csíkszentmihályi describes the desirable struggle or challenge between one’s skill/capacity and intention, arguing that flow emerges as a sweet spot between these two forces – how might we account for those flow states when we feel ‘out of our comfort zone’ or ‘at a loss for what to do’ when our existing skills and experience are challenged or we need are forced to develop a new way of operating? For example, consider the experience of creative collaboration and challenges therein?
How do we negotiate the insufficiencies and limitations of language for articulating the nuance of process and practice?
How is the relation between the limits of language and the limits of language usage? How else can we use language in more creative ways for getting closer to the lived experience of our practices? How might language help to nuance our understandings of process?
How is the relation between process and product? Csíkszentmihályi begins by placing emphasis on the doing (verb) of action and not the done (resulting outcome) – still, autotelic practices are not necessarily focused only on the process and can indeed result in outcomes – what differentiates the outcome of an autotelic practice from that which is extrinsically motivated?
How to resist instrumentalization and commodification? What tactics, strategies, devices do we engage for resisting these forces?
How can the characteristics of ‘flow’ become fleshed out or nuanced from the perspectives of our own (artistic) practices?
Csíkszentmihályi offers a general framework for understanding creative flow which arguably lacks particularity – how might we collectively contribute to /expand/question/reimagine this framework through a more nuanced perspective? How might we enrich this vocabulary through the specificity of our own perspectives? Whose perspective is still missing and how can this be addressed?
How might we speak of/from/with the situatedness and specificities of our individual and collective practices?
How can the act of production, of producing, retain the texture of autotelic flow?
Are there different qualities and characteristics that differentiate the living of a ‘creative life’ or of undertaking everyday activity creatively, from creative practice as such? Are the characteristics of struggle, challenge, not knowing specific to certain kinds of creative practice? What is at stake in relation to the necessary inclusion of these attributes or characteristics – why does (or indeed does) struggle and not knowing matter for practice?
How is the interplay of struggle and ease within creative process – is their relation reciprocal and mutually interwoven?
What role does fallow time and space have in creative process?
How is the relation of ‘putting the hours in’ (rehearsal, preparation, repetition etc.) and the potential for ease and fluidity within our practices? How might this relate to ideas around ‘know how’ and tacit knowledge and wider issues of embodied knowledge? How might this relate to ‘slow practices’?
What do we need to forget in order to enter flow? How is this forgetting activated in practice?
Csíkszentmihályi seems to present ‘ease’ and ‘relaxation’ in opposition to creative discovery – yet, in previous readings (e.g. Han's, Scent of Time) and in hooks' text, leisure is argued as a necessary precondition for creativity. How do we navigate these two different positions?
What do recognise in Csíkszentmihályi’s description of flow from our own practices? What aspects of our practices feel vindicated and affirmed? Where are the points of dissonance or even irritation/annoyance?
How might we resist the sense of codification and regularisation that is perhaps at work in Csíkszentmihályi’s attempts to systematise and even ‘pin down’ the process of ‘creative flow’?
Does this point to a potential risk/challenge in relation to the thematic “Performing Process” – how to resist the temptation of an over-codification and conceptualisation of ‘process’? How to allow for the specificities, singularities and particularities of process and practice, rather than necessarily seeking the generalisable?
How might we individually and collectively shed light on and advocate for the value of ‘process’ and ‘creative flow’, whilst at the same time avoid codifying, categorising and fixing the fluidity and particularity of process into hardened formula?
How do we navigate the sense that time taken for creative practice is “guiltily seized” in hooks' terms? Why is this so for us within our practices?
How might Csíkszentmihályi’s observation of the ‘force’ of ‘new discovery’ within creative process relate to the research imperative for new knowledge or new insights? What kinds of new discovery is he foregrounding (a frontier knowledge of new discovery, the joy of insight and deepening understanding, openings made by the unexpected etc)?
How is the relation between “knowing” and “not knowing” within Csíkszentmihályi’s model – his articulation of ‘flow’ seems to be predicated on a certain knowing what one is doing. Still how might ‘not knowing’ operate affirmatively within flow states?
Csíkszentmihályi argues that within flow states there is “no worry of failure” (in part because one knows what one is doing). How is “no worry of failure” different from “no fear of failure”, and how might failure play an important role within creative process?
Csíkszentmihályi situates flow beyond the push and pull of both frustration and boredom – yet how might boredom play an important role within creative process?
How is the relation between positive and negative distractions within the creative process?
How is the relation between being ‘in the flow’ and critical disruption or rupture, the interplay between the forces of continuity and discontinuity within practice?
Is the ‘no pain, no gain’ mantra of “push, push, push” (mentioned by Csíkszentmihályi) past its sell by date? How might this be reconciled with or challenged by the discourse of sustainability and taking care?
Are flow states necessarily individual? How might flow be conceived as a collective, relational experience?
How do we create conditions for others? Is there an altruistic or other-regarding dimension to creative practice, enabling or opening up conditions for others’ creative practices?
How do we negotiate the relation between our own needs (self-regarding) and creating conditions for others (other-regarding)? How is the relation between taking time away (being apart) and being with others? How might these two modes become more mutually symbiotic, mutually constitutive?
What happens if we shift towards consideration of research cultures and ecologies – how do we create conditions for individual and collective creative process? What conditions are required?
How might artworks (the outcomes of creative action) affect transformation for self and others? Might this offer a different way of conceiving a more complex relation between taking time for oneself (for creative process) and the capacity for wider connection and transformation? How might the results of our own absorbed creative activity create ‘ripples’ of affect capable of touching others, even effecting transformation? How do we ever know the effects of our own practices for activating wider questions, connections, even transformations – does recognition of this potential feel resonant or live within our own practising?
How do ethics interplay with these questions and debates?