The relationship between “madness and creation” has long elicited curiosity. Traditionally approached in a far too general way, the interest for this issue has recently been renewed due to several articles in the fields of psychiatry and neuroscience.We are now aware that great works, great inventions by artists and thinkers, were made after deep trauma. However, few significant studies on the subject have been produced so far. This shortcoming derives not only from the difficulty in defining essential notions (such as “pathology” and “creation”), but also in articulating fields of knowledge which are apparently irreducible (like psychiatry and aesthetics). The Symposium “BIGGER THAN LIFE” aims to probe and explore these difficulties, contributing to a more rigorous and precise approach to these questions – so important to the criticism and thought concerning art.
The purpose is to highlight the intricacy of the problems and its relevance to the understanding of the creative process in particular. By displaying specific cases, i.e. works and authors (such as a Van Gogh or an Artaud), from multiple artistic domains, we will seek to formulate precise problems. A panel will therefore be devoted to the examination of the mechanisms and events that cut across the diversity of the processes of creation. Why is it that so many artists feel a kind of necessary attraction for chaos? What chaos is it, exactly – in a specific work - literary, pictorial or choreographic? Such are the type of questions that can be raised.
We believe the topic suggested by the title of the Symposium doesn’t restrict the debate to the psychosis/creation relationship, but rather opens it to all sorts of artistic invention. At this point, other problems arise, concerning the legitimacy of extending the pathological processes to the sphere of the so called “normality”. In this regard, to what extent does the judgment of the public opinion (or the spectator's) contribute to a certain work being deemed “absurd” or “senseless”, meaning “mad”, at a certain moment and being accepted and integrated at another, to the point of reinforcing the established order?
Lastly, what point of view does one adopt when these questions are approached? Can psychiatry, psychoanalysis or neuroscience account for the aesthetic work? Is it the Oedipus complex that enlightens Sophocles’ tragedies or do the latter allow us to understand the meaning of the complex? And the same applies to neuroscience.
The Symposium clears the ground for communication and debate about all these topics, organizing corresponding panels. The goal is to draw a bigger interest for an old question, so ancient and neglected, showing its up-to-dateness and pertinence in these times when the general proliferation of trauma keeps pace with the “difficulty of art”.
José Gil
[Philosopher and writer. Curator of the Symposium “Bigger than Life”]