After the presentation in week6, I received many suggestions from teachers and classmates about my personal curatorial project. Therefore, I have started to think deeply about several aspects of the exhibition that are lacking at present.
The first is the exhibits. Although this project does not need to be realized, I still have to consider everything as an emerging curator during the planning, so some works by well-known artists that I envisioned at the beginning need to be excluded from consideration (such as some works by Dali and Yayoi Kusama). I need to find some emerging artists who are waiting for exhibition opportunities to fill my exhibition. Secondly, the exhibition is mainly for the group. Since the exhibition could not be directed by very well-known artists, I needed to focus on the groups who were more easily attracted by the publicity information, such as local students and art lovers. There is also the issue of venue and funding allocation. As an emerging curator, I do not have a large exhibition budget, so I should pay more attention to cost performance and fit with exhibitions when choosing venues, rather than blindly pursuing some well-known venues. I will go into more detail about all aspects of the exhibition planning in the following blog posts.

As art theories with far-reaching influence in modern and contemporary times, relational aesthetics theory and surrealism respectively focus on social interaction and subconscious liberation, attempting to subvert traditional art paradigms. However, these two theories still expose many limitations in the new contemporary cultural context.

In the theory of relational aesthetics, Boucheux argues that art should construct “social gap” through temporary communities, but this vision is too idealistic and ignores the hidden authority behind participatory art. Even if the audience is invited to “co-create” the work, the curators and artists still control the space rules and the allocation of resources; Some participatory art may be commercially funded, which makes the emotional sharing in its connotation a marketable commodity; Some marginalized groups are often excluded from participatory art because of technical barriers or cultural barriers (for example, people with disabilities may not be able to experience some participatory art that requires vision). The trend towards commodification also appears in surrealism. With the rise of consumerism, the subversive aesthetic presented by surrealism was labeled a “niche aesthetic,” and the melting clock in Dali’s painting was printed on handbags by luxury brands. Surrealism, on the other hand, pursued irrational beauty. But when modern academic institutions included surrealism in the classic school of art history, the rebellious spirit contained in it was domesticated by the “white box” space of the museum, and it became an empty and seemingly empty avant-garde art.

Do we still dream when our dreams are data, goods, weapons, or other things? There is no standard answer to this question. But through this exhibition, I want to lead the audience to think about this question and give their own answers. By stripping away the romanticized illusion of the “dream” created by power and capital, we can approach the true dream self.

Similarly, Lacan’s mirror stage theory exposes a limitation similar to Jung’s collective unconscious theory, that is, it ignores the subjectivity of non-Western cultures. Lacan emphasized the discipline of language on individuals in his theory, which regarded language as a neutral system and ignored the cultural discourse power represented by language itself. In non-Western contexts, native languages are forcibly replaced with colonial languages, such as African Frenchification and Indian Anglicization, and the universality of this symbol is actually the result of colonial violence. On the other hand, the Western patriarchal family structure presupposes in Lacan’s theory does not actually apply to the symbolic order of matriarchal societies in some regions. In addition to the continuation of colonial violence mentioned above, Lacan’s theory overemphasized the role of external symbols such as language and words, and ignored the possibility of body resistance field. For example, some chronic pain patients often use language to describe their pain experience. Lacan’s mirror stage theory reveals the underlying logic of an individual disciplined by a symbolic order, but in today’s digitally permeated life, this discipline has become more secretive. Therefore, we need to deconstruct the basic framework of his theory in the new cultural context. Only after realizing the limitations of Lacan’s theory can we open up the path to resist the symbolic hegemony.

Limitations also exist in Jung’s theory. Jung tried to give cross-cultural universality to the meaning of dreams, but his archetypal system was still essentially based on Eurocentric cognition. In the process of understanding the collective unconscious theory, I gradually feel that some aspects of Jung’s collective unconscious theory are actually a reproduction of cultural hegemony. It is undeniable that his theory provides a larger narrative dimension for understanding the deep structure of human psychology, but the problems of cultural hegemony, gender essentialism and scientific legitimacy hidden in the core of the theory become more and more obvious in the new cultural context of modern and contemporary multicultural integration and the development of science and technology. The first is its roots in Eurocentrism. On the pretext of “collective unconsciousness”, Jung stripped the cultural symbols of Asia, Africa, America and other non-European regions from their original cultural context and forcibly incorporated them into the European system centered on Greek mythology and Christianity. For example, the power of destruction and rebirth of the goddess Kali in Hinduism was classified by Jung as the prototype of the “Great Mother”. Dispelling the connotation of its original radical resistance to patriarchal oppression. Second, Jung often engaged in “academic picking” when constructing his theories, perfecting them by analyzing the dreams and art forms of non-European patients without realizing the subjectivity of these cultures. This is, in effect, a continuation of the intellectual looting of the colonial era, in which indigenous peoples’ experiences are transformed into European academic capital, while indigenous peoples remain excluded from the discourse. It seems to me that Jung’s theory is like a fine, old map of the world, on which Jung tried to condense the vast expanse of the human spirit into a finite island. However, this set is obviously not applicable in the modern and contemporary society with cultural integration, gender flow and technological breakthrough. What we need is not a new map, but a subversion of the old map and the right to draw. The individual unconscious should not be colonized by theory, we need to decolonize Jung’s theory and reconstruct it so that the collective unconscious becomes a spiritual Commons shared by multicultural subjects, rather than a cognitive tower standing in the European theoretical system.

As Breton says, “Beauty must be shocking, or it will be nothing.” I think surrealism is not only an artistic movement, but also a spiritual revolution, whose core idea inspires us to keep thinking: when reason rules the world, have we become prisoners of order? Are there more real possibilities beyond the edge of human dreams and irrationality? Based on this, I have a new idea about the core topic of the exhibition.

In the initial conception, I planned to capture and reproduce dreams through the effect of the five senses presented to the audience by art works, answering the question “What is a dream?” However, it ignores that the essence of dreams is ineffable that cannot be symbolized, and the deconstruction and reconstruction of dreams is like capturing ethereal ghosts with a large net of image symbols. Hence the paradox at the heart of the original exhibition discussion: the more we try to interpret dreams, the more we misinterpret their origin. In the theoretical system of dreams and the unconscious mind, the aforementioned theories and other theories in the system together form a complex cognitive matrix. However, due to the historical background and social form, the continuous development of digital technology and the cultural context that advocates rationality, all the above-mentioned theories have limitations in various aspects.

In his theory, Freud defined human dreams as “the disguise and satisfaction of repressed desires,” a definition itself rooted in the complex social environment of Vienna at the end of the 19th century. Politically, at that time, the liberal political forces in Austria were suppressed by conservatives, and the social control over individual internalized morality and the suppression of individual desires were strengthened. Economically, the Industrial revolution not only accelerated the urbanization of Vienna, but also led to the instability of the economic situation. The ensuing changes in the family structure (men’s authority in the family was strengthened, but women were confined to the family field) affected the competition and fear of the father’s authority in Freud’s theory. Culturally, in 19th century Europe, strict sexual repression (especially for women) prevailed, and the theories of scientific rationality, such as Darwinian evolution and the physics revolution, shook the original religious worldview. In summary, I think Freud tried to study the subconscious with the “scientific” method representing rationality at that time, trying to reveal the hidden surge of irrational power under the trend of advocating rationality at that time and the spiritual tearing of people due to a series of changes at that time. However, in a society where gender fluidity is enhanced and individual desires are infinitely amplified by the prevalent consumerism, the form of “repression” has changed, people’s “libido” is transformed into user preferences by algorithms, and the platform predicts individual desires by tracking the number of clicks, externalizing the subconscious into the label and slide matching of data flow. In addition, Freud presupposes a continuous individual self in his theory, but the modern identity split (social media personality, game role, workplace personality, etc.) makes the dream no longer belong to a single individual, but a tangle of multiple identities. When a person’s dream identity is also a delivery rider, a virtual idol, and a bank teller, it is obvious that the individual psychological framework of Freudian psychoanalysis cannot be applied directly, which also reflects the paradox mentioned earlier: the more we try to interpret dreams, the more we misinterpret the origin of dreams.