I created ProjectMorpheo’s main idea based on these experiences, as a participatory event that offers a safe space and time for entering into a more intimate and equal relationship with your dreams through something that is very much the opposite of dreams: physical, tactile materials like clay, soil, wood, and so on…
REFLECTIONS
As I already mentioned in the beginning, Taming Amorphalia is a supplementary text for ProjectMorpheo. Both of these creations are part of a bigger ‘research project’, if I may call it that.
What I try to explore in these two projects that are presented to you, more or less, in this Research Catalogue exposition are the fragile connections between our dreams and the material(s of the) reality that surrounds us.
If ProjectMorpheo was the intuitive part of this research, I would say that the creation of Taming Amorphalia was the very conscious and reflective part of the process. I was trying to explore and discover the lands of my dreams, the passages between them, and how symbols can mean different things. I was mapping and organizing all my dreams as scientifically as a geolographer might detail a completely new island discovered in the sea.
Or maybe as a detective trying to figure out the modus operandi of the murderer, which, in my case, happened to be my subconscious Self.
I was lucky enough that at the same time as I was investigating my dreams, I was introduced using Tarot cards.
Before that, I was never really into spirituality or esoteric stuff, but for some reason Tarot reading got me.
When I mention that I do Tarot meditations, people usually ask me if I can ‘tell their fortune by reading the cards...’The question makes me smile because, as I see it, Tarot is not really about the future but more about how you look at the present moment and your situation in it. You ask a question that you have already been thinking about for a while, and the cards you choose offer you a system of symbols and, by that, another perspective on the same problem.
They’re simple symbols, actually, that we all have in the back of our minds, but for each individual, they have a different meaning.
DREAMS, SYMBOLS, TAROT, RITUALS AND PLAYING
How it all came together and what I mean by ‘fragile connections between our dreams and the material(s of the) reality that surrounds us.’
I come from a professional puppeteering background. I think I can say that my relationship with objects is quite unique because of this. My playfulness and imagination are inspired by objects’ shapes, textures, or other characteristics. As a performer, I find it easier to express myself with a performing object and maybe with my body in relation to it than only by classical theatre acting. For me, tactility is very comforting, and engaging with an object often helps me calm down from panic or anxiety attacks. This is the thought that brought ProjectMorpheo to life. How can I turn the intensity of my nightmares into creative energy, transforming the thing that consumes me by not letting me sleep into something else, something that might be helpful for my mental health and self-awareness?
I have to admit that I don’t like the overuse of certain words in the context of artistic research, such as ‘post-colonial’ or ‘feminist’ or ‘sustainability’. It’s not that I don’t find these concepts very important; I just have a feeling that they are often being used in order to ride a trend wave, so I tend to bypass them instead. But now I am going to use one of these words to define this research project:
this is an ‘anti-capitalist’ work.
I see this research project as a tiny act of resistance.
If I look at the theatre discipline as it is – not on the level of Eugenio Barba, but you know, smaller cities’ theatres – I honestly want to throw up. It’s a production-centered, people-pleasing industry that doesn’t take any responsibility for shaping the thinking of its viewers because it fears the loss of profit. People don’t like thinking, but they do like clapping and shiny costumes. Let's have that Csárdásfürstin for the hundredth time, with the same rotting scenery and the same shitty direction. Fuck that.
We don’t even need to chew our food; everything is so ready-to-digest. I wanted to create something against this shallowness. Something that requires active participation. Make decisions. Think. And don’t you try to ignore the problems you come across!
The other thing I couldn’t completely agree with was academia and artistic research.
I never understood why we try to present artistic practice as if it were something that could be scientifically proven? Would my thoughts be more relevant if I put them like this:
‘Quote by someone highly regarded in the scene, that is vaguely similar to the point I am trying to make’ (Name of this Highly Regarded Person; year, publisher.) And now, on to what I wanted to say.
?
With all due respect, I had my 30 pages in 12-point Times New Roman when I graduated, and I never intend to repeat that. I don’t think that would explain anything about how I work or how I think.
But I do believe that there is a layer of existence that can not be understood with our intellect, and that it is worth trying to explore.
Using dreams, Tarot cards and meditation techniques combined with earthly materials is an experiment to see if I can share my thoughts on another level. No, not thoughts. My intuition. At this point in my life, I value intuition more. I find it unexplainable and intriguing. It is something too frequently left out of the three-hour long presentations of artistic research.
One part of me certainly wants to bring order to the chaos in my inner world. She is the one who makes maps of my dreams and categorizes them. The other half… well, he just embraces it. Chaosmos. I guess this is what I can present.
They are symbols that happened to appear in my dreams as well… Sometimes with the same meaning they have in classical tarot interpretation, sometimes reflecting on completely different things than those. This realization made me so enthusiastic that I started to read up on the psychology behind these symbols, and I very quickly arrived at Jung’s writings on the materials of the collective unconscious.
As I was developing ProjectMorpheo’s final form, I was thinking about the Jungian theory of archaic symbols that exist in everybody’s unconscious… This led me to conclude that everyone, then, must have a ‘personal mythology’. This mythology is made up of memories, stories that we’ve heard, things we’ve seen and learned, and also something that is beyond our understanding. Something that came with us from before.
And I wanted to know more about my personal mythology. I wanted to know it as well as I know Greek or Christian mythology; after all, that is my authentic inner world.
ABOUT MY CONCLUSIONS
Now, looking back at both ProjectMorpheo and Taming Amorphalia I think I was looking for… my own authentic artistic voice?
In a theoretical sense: why am I using the symbols and expressions that I do? And how can a better understanding of these things help me to express my thoughts and feelings better?
And in a practical sense, how can I combine the things that are most important to me: the complexity of the human psyche, the active participation to be able to internalize works of art, and connection between things and human beings? Psychology, participation and puppetry, in other words.
Talking to those who have played ProjectMorpheo and walked through Taming Amorphalia, it became clear to me that people need the time to think about intrapersonal happenings and matters of the soul, but finding such opportunities is difficult in this world in a rush. I have also discovered that for some people, there is a kind of shame attached to talking about dreams and taking part in ‘spiritual activities’. Embedding these things in a play situation is very helpful for getting over these boundaries and opening up the gates that we are keeping closed in our everyday lives. And I also discovered that it’s a very interesting and inspiring form of... performative... or participatory art... or... meditation...or play?
’A PILGRIM'S SONG
I turn off the lamp in my head,
light a candle in my heart for the light
if the world says I am scandalous
I know I am headed in the right direction
There’s no outside, we live inside, alone
Our beds are strewn with light
Our dreams hold us captives
We are not soaked; we wear the rain
There is heaven and iris at the grave
the sun comes and shines on me everyday
the bird sings a hymn
and flies further inside day by day
the bird sings a hymn
and flies further inside day by day
As I started paying more and more attention to my dreams in my waking hours, I started recognizing recurring patterns in them, so I set up a huge piece of paper on my wall where I could record these interrelations. This became the Map of Morpheo.
These recurring things were like:
ProjectMorpheo and Taming Amorphalia are my weapons to protect myself from being oppressed and abused.
‘Oh, another escapist’ – you might say. But boy, you would be wrong about that. 19K
SO, WHAT IS THE MOTIVATION BEHIND THESE PROJECTS?
For the past few years I struggled with sleeping disorders and experienced sensory overload quite frequently. I think it started at the age of 17 or 18. I felt like I had to do everything, and I had to do it immediately.
I just had to be the best.
No pressure.
sure…
What I had to do was transform the piles of recordings of my dreams into a world of space and time. Or what I wanted to do.
I positioned my dreams visually and linked them with a pencil line. After doing this, I figured: I can’t present this in a ‘ready-to-consume’ form, as an essay with a linear narrative. It’s not that simple. Presenting the feeling of being lost and trying to find the meaning behind all these chaotic dreams requires work on the reader’s part as well.
At that moment, I smiled and said to myself:
‘Sis’, you know what you got to do. You’re a DM. You’ve been doing this for a while now: creating other worlds full of unexplainable magical things and offering different choices for your players. This time, you just have to create the world from your own dreams and trust that the players can go with it and find the conclusion in their own way.’
I journaled my dreams for a long time to preserve their unsettling atmosphere in order to be able to understand them.
I am leaving Zsófi’s flat. She is living with Máté. The staircase is full of bugs and insects. They are made of gummy candy. It’s disgusting
After a while, I also started drawing and painting them because I started to have more vivid memories of their visuals…
I categorized my dreams and assigned them to the cards of the Major Arcana. Sometimes this was based on the symbols that appear in them, sometimes on my interpretation or just the atmosphere of the dream.
I tried combining the one-card Tarot meditation with object- and material animation and tried to interpret… or much more to interact with my dreams in this form.
For example, grabbing a pile of rocks and pebbles with the XVI card of the Crowley Tarot’s Major Arcana (The Tower) in my mind and a dream of someone demanding a turtle shell from me in exchange for their forgiveness.
During these kinds of experiments, I realized that the more I want to create something figural, something resembling my dream, the less satisfied I was with the ‘result’. So I needed a different approach. I had to let go of control. I was no longer aiming for creation. I let myself and the movements of my hands be driven by intuition and curiosity. And what I got now as a result was not a piece of art but somehow… the realization of the actual tension behind the dream. Embodying this inner happening of my psyche with physically existing materials helped me to feel like I was actively interacting with the stress. It helped me release the tension.