The project proposes taking the established psychoanalytic form of the ninety-minute talk therapy session and using it to produce a work of art, in itself. Molding and shaping ‘the self’ in the context of our real lived lives, the therapeutic dialogue produced between the two participants is the work, supported by a conceptual framework that synthesizes Theatre and Sculpture in the modern sense.
The principle is inspired by the philosophy of artist Joseph Beuys who coined the phrase “social sculpture,” which transformed the idea of sculpture as an art form into a social activity. While Beuys was primarily concerned with structuring and shaping society and environment, this project proposes expanding the notions of the social sculpture to include the personal, structuring and shaping the self. Contemporary American artist Ben Kinmont proposes a similar expansion of Social Sculpture; he discusses a malleable space that exists between the self and the other, a space where we shape our lives through communication. Kinmont calls this area, the Third Sculpture, the Thinking Sculpture, the Social Sculpture.
Requiring only two participants, the given time of each, and a space within a space, a stage is created that opens up and liberates imagination and memory, stimulates knowledge and discovery and promotes cognition and recognition. A stage is created between the self and the other to experience the theater of life, a malleable space to shape and sculpt our existence.