Saturated Phenomena

Saturated phenomenon are experiences of givenness that philosopher Jean Luc Marion says exceed the senses, that flood, overrun– indeed saturate otherwise ordinary events. Saturating phenomenon surpass the sum of their parts; an experience of overflowing fulfillment, saturated phenomenon exceed the intentional act that generates them and is incommensurable–not measureable in any ordinary way.

My material practice is rooted in embodiment and I have always been curious about liminal, saturated or otherwise inexplicable but ordinary experiences. But attention to even ordinary embodied sensory perception is a vital and neglected aspect of living fully and flourishing. It is part of one’s essential subjectivity makes it possible to know one’s own voice, creating rather than consuming culture. In the process of paying attention to ordinary and extraordinary phenomena, and most especially in the practice of self-emptying, subjectivity becomes productive. Through cultivating habits of attention that give an experience of unselfconscious self-emptying, through decreation, loneliness and scrutiny unseat the ego, dualisms dissolve and energy is released to fuel the process of art-making itself. As Wittgenstein knew: ethics and aesthetics indeed are one.