>>> Seminars on Observing and Studying Art
Lecture
Of all our sense organs, the one we have developed most in our society of visual images is undoubtedly the eye. We therefore tend to believe that images are exclusively visual. Yet in the Humanist Psychology of Silo, on which our work is based, we find a new concept of the image: it is not only visual, but is formed through impulses coming from all the senses. Silo places every image—including auditory, olfactory and kinaesthetic images—within a space: a space of registration, perception and visualisation. One of the most fascinating aspects of this interpretation, which we will experience through simple exercises, is that every image performs a function necessary for life in relation to the position it occupies in inner space, or the Space of Representation. The great revelation is that not only do inner images perform functions in the evolution of life, but a statue, a painting or any other external form also acts upon our psyche when, through perception, it becomes an inner image.
Seminar
The seminar has a specific purpose: through a series of lessons, to explain how the psyche works; to describe and experience the mechanisms of consciousness and the Space of Representation; and finally to propose a new concept of the image. Forms are classified as symbols, allegories and signs, which can also be understood as mental behaviours that can take shape in the production of objects or in bodily movement. By studying the workings of the psyche and the mechanisms of consciousness in depth, we aim to awaken our creativity, disseminate a revolutionary concept of the image, improve self-understanding, develop our critical faculties and provide tools for greater inner balance and personal development.
Seminar topics
Who can attend
The seminar includes extensive graphic material—photographs, diagrams and drawings—and is intended for people working in the visual arts or interested in interpretations and applications of the psychology of form and visual communication. Maximum 30 participants.
Duration
The seminar comprises 16 hours over Saturday and Sunday, plus a two-hour lecture on Friday evening.
Fee
The fee for each seminar is agreed upon with those interested.
Download workshop information sheet (PDF, Italian)
Lecture preview
La funzione dell’immaginazione per l’evoluzione della vita
In this seminar we will not treat images as objective entities endowed with their own specific and independent qualities. Instead, we will consider images as subjective phenomena. Our attention will focus above all on our inner images and on the images expressed in our creations.
This does not mean that there are no common, shared structural elements. Rather, our interest is in helping people understand their own creations and the mechanisms that lead them to develop one type of image rather than another. Images have often been underestimated, as though they were merely a secondary mechanism of perception through which the mind mechanically reproduces all the data memorised during the day. This is not the case: imagination is the most powerful instrument our psyche possesses for evolving. Without imagination—the ability to develop images actively rather than mechanically, as an automatic response to external or internal stimuli—there would be no creativity and therefore no art; most probably, our evolution would have remained at the level of the apes.
Images activate many vital and indispensable functions, such as moving the body towards goals or compensating for the imbalance between expectations and reality.
What fascinates us most as artists is that these functions and mechanisms of imagination within the psyche can be expressed in the world and fixed in works of art, becoming independent of their creator. Art is therefore not merely a means or form of expression: it is an essential manifestation of our humanity, of our divine essence, and an extraordinary form of ever-growing humanisation.