Artistic Experience as Phase Shift: Repetition, Embodiment, and Reprocessing in the Aesthetician Mother Project
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to examine how artistic experience opens up possibilities for transformation in the face of the blocked subject structure in contemporary Japan, focusing on the Aesthetician Mother project. In particular, I will re-examine the 'experience of love' proposed by Aesthetician Mother—that is, the experience in which the present is disrupted by a self arriving from the future—while traversing multiple theoretical frameworks, including Heidegger's 'repetition' (Wiederholung), Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of embodiment, Simmel's theory of visibility, and Foucault's techniques of subjectivation.
Furthermore, this paper presents a methodology for understanding artistic experience not as 'what it represents,' but as
how the phase of the subject is transformed (phase shift).
This phase shift is characterized by the de-fixation of the past, the disruption of present embodiment, and the intervention of future possibilities into the present.
This structure is formally similar to the 'reprocessing' process of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), a clinical technique; however, art should not be reduced to a therapeutic technique, but rather must be analyzed as an aesthetic and ontological experience that reconstructs the relationship between the world and the self.
This paper theoretically clarifies that, amidst the stagnation of contemporary Japan, the Aesthetician Mother project can serve as an opportunity to open up 'new possibilities for the self.'
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Methodology: Phased Aesthetics
In this paper, I adopt a unique methodology that views artistic experience as a 'phase shift.' A phase is the totality of the relationship between figure and ground, the relationship between body and space, and the relationship between past, present, and future; artistic experience is understood as an event in which this phase is transferred.
1. Phenomenological Analysis (Heidegger/Merleau-Ponty)
• Heidegger's 'repetition' is treated as a movement that creatively retakes the past and opens up future possibilities.
• Merleau-Ponty's embodiment is used as a framework to analyze the subject's openness to the perceptual world.
2. Simmel's Theory of Visibility
Art modulates the forms of the world and reorganizes the subject's position by increasing the intensity of meaning.
3. Foucault's Techniques of Subjectivation
The subject is not a fixed entity, but a form that transforms through practice. Art can become a technique for that transformation.
4. The Unique Structure of the Aesthetician Mother Project
• Connection between digital space and physical space
• Evocation of memory and resonance with impersonal archives
• Invisibility of the author
• The experience of the 'self coming from the future' that visits the viewer
I will analyze these as phase shifts.
5. Implications from the Structural Model of EMDR
Referring to the EMDR format of bilateral stimulation, reprocessing, and integration into the present, I will model the process by which the viewer's memory phase is aesthetically reorganized.
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Analysis: Phase Shift in the Aesthetician Mother Project
1. The Stagnation of Contemporary Japan and the Rigidification of the Subject
In the social environment of contemporary Japan, an individual's self-image is often trapped within the codes of social norms, and the temporality of the subject has fallen into a 'stagnation of the present.'
In Foucauldian terms, this is the operation of normalizing power, and in Merleau-Pontian terms, it is the solidification of the 'habitual body.' The subject is severed from both the past and the future, becoming an 'existence stuck in the present.'
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2. Aesthetician Mother as Repetition: Creative Retaking of the Past
The works of Aesthetician Mother superimpose the viewer's personal memories with countless anonymous archives. However, the goal is not a reenactment of the past, but the recovery of unrealized possibilities lurking in the past.
This is the same structure as Heidegger's repetition, where:
• The past is not 'reproduced'
• It is 'repeated' as a possibility of the future
The viewer does not 'remember,' but is 'opened up.'
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3. Bodily Phase Reversal: Reorganization of Perception
The space of Aesthetician Mother shakes up the habitual arrangement of the body, including gaze, walking, touch, temperature, and the rhythm of light.
The viewer's body is transformed from a 'body that perceives the usual world' into a body that attempts to adapt to an unknown world.
At this moment, the phase shift works most strongly.
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4. Analogy with the EMDR Reprocessing Structure
Aesthetician Mother encourages the de-fixation of memory by duplicating the viewer's perception.
1. Present bodily sensations
2. Stimuli that touch upon past memories and emotions
3. The rhythm that travels between them (light, movement paths, sound)
This is not a clinical, but an aesthetic process, yet it has a structure that can be called 'phasic reprocessing of memory.'
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5. The Experience of Love: The Temporal Structure of the Self Arriving from the Future
What Aesthetician Mother calls 'love' is neither emotional dependence nor sentimentality.
It is the experience in which
the future self arrives in the present and illuminates and transforms the present self.
• Illuminated by the light of the future
• The past is rearranged
• The present is deformed
This 'arrival of the future' is the ultimate trigger for the phase shift, leading the artistic experience to self-transformation.
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Conclusion
This paper has theorized the Aesthetician Mother project as a node of artistic experience as phase shift: repetition, embodiment, reprocessing, and future-oriented subjectivation.
Art is an ontological practice that reconstructs the temporality of the subject in a stagnant Japanese society and makes possible the 'experience of the self arriving from the future = love.'