Ordinary Aura

kevin,
i'm not sure i'm about to answer your questions, but i had a few thoughts. i like your definitions of aura. i think about benjamin, too, and the aura derived from ritual and authenticity. presence. how does an object become embedded with ritual, can something be given an aura?
also in terms of the phenomenological question, i am struck by the notion that faith is so rooted in experience. when i first became a christian, a believer, i made a decision that became reinforced, or authenticated by experience, the indwelling of the spirit, relationships, worship. the sensory was key. but what is the sense that interprets the holy spirit? i have real knowlege of G-d's presence. taste and see.
i think the first thoughts toward the name ordinary aura came from jered's aura paintings and a common interest in the everyday. also the idea that faith does not have to be compartmentalized.
what does this mean for our audience, all of this?
what is their experience relative to ours?
wolpa

I don't think senses are the only source of real knowledge, quantifiable knowledge perhaps, but we've got the whole history of mysticism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam to point to other ways of receiving, or knowing.

I don't think of aura as essence so much as the fingerprint or the trace of that essence. When people go around seeing people's auras, they're not seeing the real you, they're seeing the external extrusion of the real you, which is an inner reality, or an other reality. "Essence," or form, is something else. For Aristotle, the form of a thing was inherent in the thing; for Plato, the form was removed to another plane, of which this world is an imperfect shadow. Temperamentally I'm drawn more to the Aristotelian model.

About the evidence of the senses as the source for real knowledge: if we're talkign about sensory evidence as material reality, we have to acknowledge that there's a lot to material reality that we can't actually sense on our own. For instance, visible light is a tiny fraction of the entire energy spectrum; there's a lot of energy coming in that we're not directly sensitive to.

A friend of mine has a theory, or maybe not a full-blown theory but a thing that would be neat if it were true, about the way babies see. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that babies can recognized individuals quite early, before their eyes can focus. So what are they seeing? My friend's theory is that when we're born, our eyes are sensitive to a slightly different part of the energy spectrum, lower down; that is, we're seeing a little into the infra-red. So when babies look at people, they're seeing not just shapes but heat signatures, which are unique to the individual.

When I think about aura, in relation to this show, I think of the line from Origen about "finding traces of the invisible within the visible." The traces are there, but they're not immediately apparent; you have to hunt them out, or be in a special state to sense them. So I'm thinking about the investigation of ordinary objects, an awareness of their presence, as becoming aware of their "aura," which can be a glimpse into their true nature, or the source of that true nature. To relate it to science a bit, astronomers use spectroscopy to read the signatures of stars, and deduce their inner workings; but what process do we have for reading the objects around us, which are made of the same atoms, and perhaps participate in the same mystery?

from your comments seth it sounds like the perception of aura has more to do with the decision to look, to examine, than with the object itself - blades of grass acquire aura through examination of them through the lens of Van Eyck.

am i right about that?

taste and see, adam says. the communion sacrament emphasizes the importance of sensory experience in revelation, salvation. thomas was not entirely scorned for his need to touch and feel christ's wounds. the senses are crucial, to be celebrated, and yet apparently not to be isolated - there are many sources of knowledge, many more than enlightenment/modern science can measure. and yet so often the mystics fall into reliance on gnosis, secret knowledge unavailable to the senses or to the un-initiated. gnosticism chooses plato over aristotle, and locates form in the invisible world.

when we talk about the invisible, aren't we still talking about the divine? or maybe about some remnant of a pre-fallen world in the present world?

lately I've been thinking more about how Christ's language about God's kingdom so often uses the present tense in addition to future tense - the kingdom of God (by this I mean the world without evil, the world as intended) seems to be present, and yet not wholly revealed, not wholly realized. This distinction is key though - "revealed" or "realized." Gnostics/platonists seek the REVELATION of the eternal in the temporal (as did Baudelaire and a whole slew of modernists). Christ pointed more to the REALIZATION of the eternal in the present. The format of the beattitudes is apparently contradictory - "Blessed ARE the ___ for they WILL ____"

This realization is so often framed in terms of action, action to others or on behalf of others. The presence of the divine in the ordinary is not discovered alone by disembodied seers, but in company by people working, interacting, serving.

I'm wandering here and not backing things up with texts, but I wonder if it sounds right to anyone else. I think there are ramifications here for our relationship to the long history of artists examining perception and cognition.

Kevin sez, the perception of aura more to do with the decision to look, to examine, than with the object itself -- sort of. Certainly the perception of aura is determined by the decision to look, I think. This doesn't mean that aura exists independent of the thing itself. If a thing has an aura, I should think it has a unique aura, dependent on that thing's particular nature.

Whether that aura itself is a product of the act of seeing, or exists inherently in the object itself, or is being projected through the object from a higher plane, I don't know. That's what makes me a skeptic.

I've been reading this Schopenhauer's greatest hits collection I picked up at a church sale a few weeks ago, and in it he talks about the "will to live," meaning the mental act whereby we perceive and participate in the world. "The world is my idea," begins his most famous book. To Schopenhauer, who was influenced by Buddhism and who wasn't a big fan of the world, the will to live is a bad thing, and we should let it go to be set free of this world. He talks a fair amount about the more ascetic versions of Christianity as well.

I'm not sure I participate in S's pessimism about the material world, but the idea of the will to live points towards my big open question about aura, or about spirituality in general. I don't know where the spiritual element within the world originates.

In Kevin's next post he talks about In Kevin's next post he says, The presence of the divine in the ordinary is not discovered alone by disembodied seers, but in company by people working, interacting, serving. That really brings up the question of what we mean by "presence." Until recently, I've always thought of "divine presence" as being a personal experience of divinity, Blake seeing angels in the treetops and revivalists speaking in tongues and so forth. It seems to me that this kind of experience of presence has to happen individually, because the nature of human experience makes it impossible to share. Somebody reminded me recently of Paul's experience of the great light, and the voice saying "I am here;" others heard the voice, but only Paul saw the light.

But if presence is discovered by individuals, maybe it's revealed in company. The interaction of a community is what makes it possible for individuals within that community, or outsiders observing it, to perhaps achieve a state of perception. Also, maybe an individual experience of "presence" means that that individual is looking beyond the ordinary, beyond this world, into the presence, whereas locating that kind of presence here in the ordinary, or making it active in the world, can only happen in company.

i was just reading an essay about thomas kinkade
from In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art by linda weintraub
she was talking about how a kinkade lithograph acquires an aura once it is touched by a highlighter or master highlighter or kinkade himself
how does this human touch constitute aura, how does the human touch relate to themes of divinity and otherworldlyness?
does the kinkade-altered litho have a different aura than the highlighter-altered litho?
i keep coming back to the notion of presence, that it was touched in time by a present individual
i think of presence in relation to prayer, meditation, scripture, worship, artmaking, community
anyways this essay is really interesting
i especially love the part about the kinkade dna encoded ink
totally authentic
why is he so special anyways?

yikes. that's the kind of aura I can do without. i'm gonna blurt here for a minute - please don't hesitate to blurt back.

kinkade has created an industry out of a cynical and jubilant application of something duchamp and warhol were more ambivalent about - that in our world, where art is expected to provide us with encounters of "the good, the true, and the beautiful," the artist holds the position of priest and bearer of the holy.

museums become temples, the forms of our arts are writ as revelation, the institutions become unquestionable, and morality is something we get poured into us by what we buy and consume, instead of something we practice and argue about.

I find Kinkade's conflation of a certain kind of beauty and moral goodness frightening. i'll have none of it, or of any approach to art that seeks to instruct and form us as viewers into better individuals. my argument is not solely with his aesthetic choices, but with his rampant and hollow subscription to the oldest and most fascist definitions of art.

kinkade's product is truly significant for how it makes commercially and materially accessible what has dwelled in the temples of the museums and concert halls for centuries. when i visited a kinkade gallery, the gallerist touched all the paintings with her hand, even the "painted" works. the vicarious thrill was stirring.

surely someone has written about kinkade and benjamin - if not, you should, adam. there's an article there. maybe weintraub did this?

how does adam's identification of presence with the hand, the mark, relate to consumption in a globalized world? the fetishization of the presence of the hand (Ab-Ex?) drives whole sectors of our industry - in Urban Outfitters, a "punk" hand, in Anthropologie, a "craft" hand. neither one is any different than the anonymous and invisible hands that sewed my old navy shorts.

this is what i think of when i hear the word aura:

aura photography

concerning the 'touch'. i watched 15 mins of a movie called 'the cooler' [i think] before going to bed last night. it's about a guy whose luck is so bad that a casino has hired him to ruin games for 'hot' players. so the scenario goes like this, our hero gets a message from the higher ups to grace the following tables with his presence. he casually strolls by the roullette table, sliding his fingers across the wood panelled side, and the gambler loses his streak. he brushes up against the poker player and his bluff is called. on an on. there is this great sense of the power he has. his mere presence changes the fate of anyone that crosses his path, which in a way, is something we all want, or at least feel we should possess. and yet, he's so cursed. i turned off the TV right as he was trying to hit on the cocktail waitress-- you see where it's going.
i'm skeptical of the notion of an aura, or more so, that i would be able to see one. Christ was ugly enough that people turned their faces away from him. i can't think of any passages about a sense of enchantment from the onlooker, unless it has to do about the faith or belief of that individual. they have faith, so they see. does that mean they see an aura? maybe, but i'd think it'd more to do with seeing truth embodied.
when i think of objects having auras [when artists point it out], i think of the affirmation of an aesthetic preoccupation found in the natural world; where a set of colors or pattern in form are repeated or perfected by a natural or accidental event. that we recognize something familiar in the unfamiliar or uncontrollable and therefore consider it sacred or valid.
i've been reading about eastern orthodoxy lately. as i understand it, they don't believe in an instant conversion, but a long process of salvation, or divinization. the convert essentially reads, prays, goes to church, takes communion, and eventually becomes saved [somewhere along the line?]. hence the monastic communities that are still alive and well today. the notion of discipline and hard work in order to become more full of faith is really appealing to me right now.
if i'd expect anyone to see a true aura [a trace of the sacred] it'd be the monk, or whomever God choses.

but shit, aren't we in the aura business?

I am finally catching up with the dialogue--Chris and I have spent the last couple days moving our home of ordinary, auraless belongings into a storage space.

I am skeptical of the notion of aura as well, mostly because I think it is often forced to carry too much, and secondly because of its association with the photos Rowley posted. I am glad for all the dialogue.

In relation to this show, the linkage of the word
aura with ordinary has been key to all my thinking as the pairing reigns "aura" in, immediately truncating its want to spin off into disembodied oversimplification of what it is to live in this world as a Christian. I am glad Kevin brought into the conversation the notion that God's kingdom is not only a distant, pined for future but is rather, present. Introducing this point means everything if we want to talk about "ordinary aura."

For me, framing my view of God's kingdom in the present tense makes faith an active, not historicized, dusty belief. Secondly, viewing the kingdom of God in the present tense necessitates us thinking about our belief in relation to community--buoyed by, revealed by, complicated by, challenged by, killed by...as presumably God's kingdom isn't now just residing in my head as I sit wondering in my closet; it's surrounding me, as well as the guy sitting next to me in the computer lab. I write this matter-of-factly, but don't let this fool you into thinking I've pretended to pat this all down in my thoughts.

And yeah, I am interested in the mystical history of Christianity personally, as reading the desert fathers,The Cloud of Unkowing, as well as more contemporay people like the Trappists Merton and Keating have helped me give faith its vastness--in a way that the contemporary church language
often has not. I also think the mystics have figured ways of acribing language to unnameable experience--accurate or not, full or not, their attempts are of interest to the artist in me.

I also have found more recent Trappist writing (people who are of course obviously interested in the contemplative/mystical experience of religion) to be heavily interested in the communal dimension of faith. These people are
not saying one has to move to the mountaintop or sit on top of pole for eons in order to have a mystical experience of God. For instance,
I recently heard Thomas Keating, a Trappist residing in Snowmass, CO, speak. Keating is a part of a network of people who, for the last 20-25 years, have been interested and actively working to make contemplation (previously and historically the province of the monkish elite) accessible to laity primarily through a practice called centering prayer. One aspect of centering prayer relevant here is the fact that Keating says CP is an exercise whereby one prays for all people--past, present and future. Thomas Merton often responded to the accusation that the monk was irresponsibly opting out of society by chartacterizing prayer in much the same way--but also by inhabiting an understanding of prayer much more powerful and far-reaching than I, at least, often think of prayer. Lastly, Keating has said he believes the most active practitioners of contemplation will eventually not be found in the monasteries, but rather amidst those engaged in "ordinary" life, out in the world, married or not, working a 9-5 or not, living in surburbia or not. I think he's pointing to the fact that the process of sanctification isn't just going to happen on a mountaintop, but rather,
for most of us, through our life-long
interraction with each other, in our jobs, churches, supermarkets, houses, marriages, schools, etc. It's all so terribly and fascinatingly ordinary--but still hugely complicated...much to Thomas Kinkade's chagrin.

Related to Adam's earlier comment about Kinkade and touch... acquiring an aura over time...

I don't pretend to know a lot about this, but a lecture I saw once about a man's time in India struck me. (Alan, maybe you remember this lecture.. actually, you rented the studio from this anthropology professor in Iowa City! His name escapes me) During his talk he showed many pictures- there were images of roadside or streetside statues that, over time were covered with this orange "paste" It actually looked like honey or something.. a goopy mixture that people, in passing and in homage to the god/dess would smear over the statue's body. Over time, the statues lost any sense of physical definition and became this blob of orange human touch. Transformed by worship.