Ville Kansanen // The Procession of Spectres
The Procession of Spectres
“...the permanent-seeming self is actually an endless procession of disjointed moments.”
- Jonah Lehrer, Proust was a Neuroscientist
The Procession of Spectres engages with vast landscapes to examine the fragmentary nature of the
human condition and the emergence of self.
The images are from a period where I experienced an awakening from a psychological
disappearance due to a long period of depression. I had forgotten the very basics of who I was,
which was reinforced by a strong sense of isolation. Instead of becoming emotionally paralyzed I
was able to transform the experience into an investigation into the transitional nature of the
experiential self. My interest in neuroscience — particularly theories on the self, the mind and
consciousness — strongly informed my approach.
I think of the photograph as a liminal space for consciousness, natural evolution and emotions — an
inscape* in an infinite state of transformation.
*Inscape is a concept derived by Gerard Manley Hopkins from the ideas of the medieval philosopher
Duns Scotus . Hopkins felt that everything in the universe was characterized by what he called inscape,
the distinctive design that constitutes a dynamic individual identity . For Roberto Matta , 20th century
Chilean surrealist , inscape meant expressing internal experiences within landscape.
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