Anastasia Degtyar - “Facets of the personal”
“Facets of the personal” is an open experiment on the collective unconscious, during which fourteen people who do not know each other, whose direction of activity is connected with bodily practices, in a few hours outside the urban environment and verbal communication, managed to run wild.”
Anastasia Degtyar’s photo project “Facets of the personal” is an open experiment exploring the field of the collective unconscious. It exposes current issues of interaction between mind and feelings, social and individual, wilderness and urbanism. The result of this creative research is simultaneously reflected in three forms: performance made by artists, film and digital photography of the process and an essay made by each participant.
Members of the focus group were people whose life is in varying degrees connected with bodily practices: actors, dancers, performers. The group was placed in a limited piece of land that had no traces of technogenic impact. By using meditative and breathing techniques, the group was trying to experience its primeval and unstrained nature, to connect with its feelings and then with the objects around.
Although many expected chaos caused by total immersion in unconscious and unpredictable states, each participant found the very intuitive tactile and eye contact that was able to express their individuality and inner needs. The dance turned out to be much more gentle and subtle than conscious and sensible everyday dialogue which is based on the verbal, symbols, and terminology.
During the performance the specificity of the problem of the average modern man revealed itself especially acutely, that is, the lack of connection with nature. Without feeling it permanently, he suddenly and unconsciously seeks to fulfill it in the first place.
Two aspects were noticed in the behavior of each invited participant: careful attitude to other participants as well as strong striving for harmony be it form or content.
Text author: Elizaveta Nikolaeva
Project and photo author: Anastasia Degtyar
Choreographer of the experiment and co-author: Ekaterina Radchenko
All participants of the project: Aurika Kazarian, Irina Litvinova, Dilorom Madzhitova, Olga Omelianenko, Pavel Stupak, Seraphina Kordochkina, Ekaterina Radchenko, Anastasia Degtyar, Yulia Ivashko, Elizaveta Nikolaeva, Sofia Pershina, Denis Medvedev, Anna Savchenko, Ekaterina Tarabtseva.