Towards a Feelosophy of Art
An Open Invitation
Dear Fellow Feelosophers,
Feelosophy is a (in)determinate study of emotions. It is an experiential research activity you undertake when you notice your emotional existence and seek to understand fundamental questions about yourself. It is to research through the process of selfreflection in attempts to feel into the seemingly irrational dimensions of life and death. It is to research with a fluid positionality that has the imaginative elasticity to reshape truths about yourselves and your relationship to the world in which you inhabit. It is to research the love of emotion (feelosophia), in which meaning materializes, expands and deepens when you attune to your psycho-physiological sensations without judgement. It is to research all changes in your affective states as a form of felt-knowledge to achieve self-communication and self-realization. It is to research by means of perceiving yourself as an agent of change and not a victim of circumstance. It is to research by means of collaborating with your inner life force to find purpose in mobilizing societal transformation and making kin with the world.
To study feelosophy is to experience the connection between complex (in)tangible felt senses and to delineate that connection by means of creative expression. How do you translate a specific feeling to another person when words fail to touch upon the experience of the feeling itself? In collaboration with a myriad of disciplines, feelosophers research in the gaps of words and emotion that critically muddle logic and reason.
The Journey
It is impossible to conjure a lucid image of a feelosopher.
This is my asynchronous journey as a feelosopher.
Feelosophy starts from the tenderness of feeling alive: being able to feel beyond myself with compassion.
Feelosophy starts from not taking any emotional experiences as granted or as a given,respecting all aspects of birth, life and death.
Feelosophy starts from sitting with all spectrums of moods: observing changes in how I feel and being vulnerable with myself when necessary, without prioritizing one mood over another.
Feelosophy starts from challenging voices that condition my emotion and reclaiming agency in how I feel: trusting my emotional resilience, overcoming numbness, and not running away from emotions associated to memories of trauma and pain.
Feelosophy starts from consciously experiencing the depths of my emotions: not judging myself based on how I feel and releasing the desire to control.
Feelosophy starts from returning to my body and trusting felt-knowledge: making-sense of my emotions and sharing that process of discovery with other feelosophers.
The pathway to feelosophy starts here: saying something when I feel something.
Dear Fellow Feelosophers,
Feelosophy is a (in)determinate study of emotions. It is an experiential research activity you undertake when you notice your emotional existence and seek to understand fundamental questions about yourself. It is to research through the process of selfreflection in attempts to feel into the seemingly irrational dimensions of life and death. It is to research with a fluid positionality that has the imaginative elasticity to reshape truths about yourselves and your relationship to the world in which you inhabit. It is to research the love of emotion (feelosophia), in which meaning materializes, expands and deepens when you attune to your psycho-physiological sensations without judgement. It is to research all changes in your affective states as a form of felt-knowledge to achieve self-communication and self-realization. It is to research by means of perceiving yourself as an agent of change and not a victim of circumstance. It is to research by means of collaborating with your inner life force to find purpose in mobilizing societal transformation and making kin with the world.
To study feelosophy is to experience the connection between complex (in)tangible felt senses and to delineate that connection by means of creative expression. How do you translate a specific feeling to another person when words fail to touch upon the experience of the feeling itself? In collaboration with a myriad of disciplines, feelosophers research in the gaps of words and emotion that critically muddle logic and reason.
The Journey
It is impossible to conjure a lucid image of a feelosopher.
This is my asynchronous journey as a feelosopher.
Feelosophy starts from the tenderness of feeling alive: being able to feel beyond myself with compassion.
Feelosophy starts from not taking any emotional experiences as granted or as a given,respecting all aspects of birth, life and death.
Feelosophy starts from sitting with all spectrums of moods: observing changes in how I feel and being vulnerable with myself when necessary, without prioritizing one mood over another.
Feelosophy starts from challenging voices that condition my emotion and reclaiming agency in how I feel: trusting my emotional resilience, overcoming numbness, and not running away from emotions associated to memories of trauma and pain.
Feelosophy starts from consciously experiencing the depths of my emotions: not judging myself based on how I feel and releasing the desire to control.
Feelosophy starts from returning to my body and trusting felt-knowledge: making-sense of my emotions and sharing that process of discovery with other feelosophers.
The pathway to feelosophy starts here: saying something when I feel something.
Assumptions of Shaping Feelosophic Research
• Feelosophers use the body as a meta-instrument to aggregate and analyze qualitative somatic information, including (meta)physical experiences that cannot be quantified into numeric values.
• Feelosophers take a pluralist approach when assessing the severity of mood swings and identifying possible causes, rather than focusing on symptom-oriented treatments that are based on singulinear events and narratives.
• Feelosophers take a holistic approach to research—emphasizing on the process of felt-knowledge production and making-sense through the sense-makings of time, environment, and coexistent structures of the world.
• Feelosophic research is critically descriptive: feelosophers theorize and hypothesize conceptual ponderings and speculative inklings inducted from detailed and abstract embodied experiences.
• Feelosophic research involves raw emotional data processing of birth, life and death experiences that utilizes high intensity psycho-physiological filters and felt-senses that cannot be simulated.
• Feelosophic research requires an imaginative language that pushes the perceptual boundaries of (non)human interaction—involving active transdisciplinary fieldwork and posthuman collaboration with (non)living and (other)worldly cohabitants.
• Feelosophers use the body as a meta-instrument to aggregate and analyze qualitative somatic information, including (meta)physical experiences that cannot be quantified into numeric values.
• Feelosophers take a pluralist approach when assessing the severity of mood swings and identifying possible causes, rather than focusing on symptom-oriented treatments that are based on singulinear events and narratives.
• Feelosophers take a holistic approach to research—emphasizing on the process of felt-knowledge production and making-sense through the sense-makings of time, environment, and coexistent structures of the world.
• Feelosophic research is critically descriptive: feelosophers theorize and hypothesize conceptual ponderings and speculative inklings inducted from detailed and abstract embodied experiences.
• Feelosophic research involves raw emotional data processing of birth, life and death experiences that utilizes high intensity psycho-physiological filters and felt-senses that cannot be simulated.
• Feelosophic research requires an imaginative language that pushes the perceptual boundaries of (non)human interaction—involving active transdisciplinary fieldwork and posthuman collaboration with (non)living and (other)worldly cohabitants.
Dear Fellow Feelosopher,
[I] in the [now]
perform moments of incomprehension:
when language loses its coherence,
necessitates absurd leaps in logic,
and reroutes into intuitive and improvisational sense-making forms of expression.
[I] in the [now]
perform moments of incomprehension:
when language loses its coherence,
necessitates absurd leaps in logic,
and reroutes into intuitive and improvisational sense-making forms of expression.
0. Rebirth
Abrasions glistening on the cheek.
Gravity forcefully kissing the shoulder.
Ribs chucking off course.
Soft flesh searing on hot summer asphalt.
Teeth grazing on concrete.
Head out of focus.
Born again.
All too real.
Today.
I started writing about my experience as a feelosopher while recovering from a near-death experience. In other words, my feelosophy was conceived during a time when my sensations were heightened, and inner tolerance was low. Everything around me was unnerving and intimidatingly loud. My worldview was skewed and the precarious relationship I had with myself affected my relationship with the world.
"No words can articulate the pain I am enduring. I cannot translate the level of discomfort I am feeling. What is your level of pain today on a scale of 1-10, they ask? To express how I feel is no longer about how I actually feel, but how it would help me receive the medical attention I need. I think I am learning how to dissociate my body from myself. To feel into my body is to feel into the pain and re-live the “oh shit” moment on loop. I would numb myself rather than feel hurt."
A plea to feel is a plea to feel safe.
"No words can articulate the pain I am enduring. I cannot translate the level of discomfort I am feeling. What is your level of pain today on a scale of 1-10, they ask? To express how I feel is no longer about how I actually feel, but how it would help me receive the medical attention I need. I think I am learning how to dissociate my body from myself. To feel into my body is to feel into the pain and re-live the “oh shit” moment on loop. I would numb myself rather than feel hurt."
A plea to feel is a plea to feel safe.
The Institute for Post-Technological Stress Diagnostic Procedures and Artefacts - Phase 1/n: Artefacts
(Drawing + Sculpture w/ paper, pen, fly, spam, comprehensive medical records, silicon, red dye, petri dish,
foam, faux fur, mannequin head, steel pipe, 2019-2020)
(Drawing + Sculpture w/ paper, pen, fly, spam, comprehensive medical records, silicon, red dye, petri dish,
foam, faux fur, mannequin head, steel pipe, 2019-2020)
"My body looks better, and the trauma is less visible (closer to what could be perceived as being “normal,” to whatever extent that means). Strangers I pass on the streets do not know my story and I do not know theirs. I am feeling oddly humbled, and I think I may have become a more unassuming and compassionate human than before. I want to help others with what I do best. Community is important to me."
Realizing myself as a feelosopher helped me reclaim agency over my body again—to feel safe again.
Writing about my feelosophy made me feel safe to feel again.
My emotions no longer feel foreign to me.
I am totally adequate of all situations
I release the desire to control
I accept things as they are
I am resilient
I am soft
I am not okay, but I will be
Radical Discomfort
11. Synchronicity
11:11
Portal of consciousness is open for visitors.
Hug oneself to hug another.
Talk to oneself to talk to another.
Noticing the circulation of each breath as a key to return to the body.
Noticing love for a life-ing body.
Noticing a corporeal conversation with a stagnant self.
Noticing being alive is not the same as feeling alive.
Noticing spiritual and emotional shifts in spaces of discomfort.
Noticing growth in a continuum of feelosophically discomforting instants.
Noticing comfort within discomfort.
Noticing discomfort to (de)normalize what is considered comfort(able).
Noticing discomfort as a cue to put words into action.
Noticing discomfort to realign and readjust imaginations.
Noticing discomfort to make change and transform reality.
∞. Reprise
Writing with feelings without names and emotions without faces, I layer words from a failed dictionary to puzzle the past and reexamine the weird, the strange, the messy swaying pendulum of emotions I have personally experienced.
To transform with the stages of (dis)comfort is to move closer to one’s own feelosophy—embracing every facet and matter of emotional existence.
Writing about my feelosophy made me feel safe to feel again.
My emotions no longer feel foreign to me.
I am totally adequate of all situations
I release the desire to control
I accept things as they are
I am resilient
I am soft
I am not okay, but I will be
Radical Discomfort
11. Synchronicity
11:11
Portal of consciousness is open for visitors.
Hug oneself to hug another.
Talk to oneself to talk to another.
Noticing the circulation of each breath as a key to return to the body.
Noticing love for a life-ing body.
Noticing a corporeal conversation with a stagnant self.
Noticing being alive is not the same as feeling alive.
Noticing spiritual and emotional shifts in spaces of discomfort.
Noticing growth in a continuum of feelosophically discomforting instants.
Noticing comfort within discomfort.
Noticing discomfort to (de)normalize what is considered comfort(able).
Noticing discomfort as a cue to put words into action.
Noticing discomfort to realign and readjust imaginations.
Noticing discomfort to make change and transform reality.
∞. Reprise
Writing with feelings without names and emotions without faces, I layer words from a failed dictionary to puzzle the past and reexamine the weird, the strange, the messy swaying pendulum of emotions I have personally experienced.
To transform with the stages of (dis)comfort is to move closer to one’s own feelosophy—embracing every facet and matter of emotional existence.
Thank you, body.
Feelosophy is a realtime (re)negotiation with the body as a site of inscription, a feelosophic medium for reading and writing all aspects of life, death, everything in between and beyond.
Shape
Score
Wisdom
Survival
Practice
Feelosophy is a daily practice: a reminder to not discriminate nor categorize certain felt senses as either ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ All feelings are worthy of examination.
Feelosophy is a realtime (re)negotiation with the body as a site of inscription, a feelosophic medium for reading and writing all aspects of life, death, everything in between and beyond.
Shape
Score
Wisdom
Survival
Practice
Feelosophy is a daily practice: a reminder to not discriminate nor categorize certain felt senses as either ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ All feelings are worthy of examination.
