Process Work, Art and Politics

S tudying Process Work, like studying any system which shifts the way we look at the world, has in my own case changed my thinking about many different things. I have noticed different stages in my ability to integrate Process Work with other disciplines, areas which I have studied from other perspectives. At first I tended to impose Process Work as a prescriptive model on the world. Then I went through a rather long period of splitting off everything I had ever known, more or less rejecting previous knowledge and experience as somehow irrelevant to the work of the moment. Just now I am rather hesitantly attempting to integrate some of my previous interests and skills with what I have learned from Process Work, and I am doing so by studying my own interactions with people, things, and events. In this way I am repeating the discovery I made in the early '70s under the influence of the women's movement, that it was my own interaction with the books and movies I was studying and teaching which could most effectively constitute the area of my critical interest.

The areas which have most interested me in the past are art and politics, especially as they appear in movies, performance arts, comic strips, and the news. Similar to the discovery that the political is personal, my integration of these areas has shown me the common ground of art and politics, as well as some sensory-grounded differences.

Communications

One area which has been developed in recent years, the understanding of how people perceive and communicate individually and in groups, adds a great deal to the understanding of art in relationship to the spectator or participant.

For instance, there is a concept in process-oriented communications theory called "information float," which refers to information which is not picked up, and which therefore floats between would-be communicants, obscuring other signals and generally polluting the atmosphere. According to Amy Mindell, there are several reasons for not picking up information: one is xenophobia, or fear of the unknown; another is that the information is being transmitted through an unfamiliar channel; a third is inability to relate to the source of the information sufficiently. Both artists and politicians are interested in overcoming information float and getting their messages through in one way or another. However, some artists and some politicians

seem primarily to produce information float and everyone suffers from the resulting smog. An excellent example of this in politics is the current U.S. presidential campaign being conducted during the summer of 1992. At this point in the campaign both sides are raising what they call "the trust issue," meaning, do you trust this man to lead the country? However, the feelings and events which underlie this issue are, for the most part, not discussed. If there is lack of trust, there must be someone who doesn't trust, and someone who is not trustworthy. Since no one is entirely trustworthy, the rare person who can acknowledge ways in which s/he is untrustworthy, and work with those traits, would certainly win a large measure of my trust But no one is willing to take up that role. The result is that the feelings about trust cycle and create a national fog of infonnation float.

An example of information float in art (which at its best is extraordinarily successful in picking up and processing the most minimal signals), is a film such as Michael Apted's Incident at Oglala, which provides abundant and shocking information about the plight of progressive Indians on a particular reservation, but then abandons that information to focus on the more conventionally fascinating story of a single man's trial and incarceration. In so doing, the film commits the same act of repression for which it attacks the U.S. government. It relegates to the margins of its own discourse the testimony of a number of people, mainly women, about a complex story of repression by other Indians in league with the FBI, to favor a dramatic plotline focused on a single, heroic (male) figure. The film's failure to relate to the more complex story made me begin to find the film overlong and not sufficiently focused. This is information float.

Primary and Secondary Process

Process theory of groups and communication uses concepts of primary and secondary process which differ from Freud's use of those terms. Evolved in response to the lack of precision or usefulness of the terms conscious and unconscious, primary process refers to that which is closest to the identity in a given moment or over time; and secondary process refers to that which is perceived as a disturbance or a problem, the not-me, or the not-we. In an individual, group or culture the secondary process may be disavowed or repressed. Bringing awareness to both primary and secondary processes is in very large part the function of the successful artist and of the politician. Neither will survive without enlisting the cooperation of the primary process, or identity of the public; neither will succeed without recognizing the emerging secondary process and helping it to unfold. What is necessary in both cases for survival and success is the ability to detach from identification with one part of the whole and to observe the whole in its workings, communicating about what is happening and not just getting lost in the happening. This metacommunica-tionf while essential, is difficult and not always possible-most artists and politicians, along with most of the population, are unable to metacommunicate a good deal of the time. Their temporary one-sidedness is actually a necessary aspect of the passion

1 The Year 1, Global Process Work, (London & NY 1989), p. 30ff.

for what they are doing. But extended inability to metacommunicate is part of the definition of an extreme state, or something like insanity, a state from which some very talented artists and politicians have been known to suffer, from time to time.

Channels

It's not unusual to think that we look to art to extend or deepen awareness of the many aspects of ourselves and our world. Debate in aesthetic theory tends to focus on how art does this, and here the Process Work concept of sensory-grounded awareness seems useful. Thinking of the different ways in which we receive sensory information as "channels," the more channels of information a work of art gives us access to while increasing awareness, the more satisfied we feel, even while we may also feel challenged to go further. If we become aware of a given experience in terms of movement, body feeling, visual perception and hearing; and we additionally notice qualities to do with relationships and patterns in the world, we will be deeply satisfied. On the other hand, something may be missing, for instance, feeling, a common lack in many contemporary art pieces, which are characterized by a certain flatness of affect. But what about music, or visual art? Am I suggesting that music is inadequate without a visual counterpart? Or that paintings should be surrounded by sound in art museums? I think not, that music or painting can go so deep in one channel of information that no absence is perceived, or, that by going so deep, other channels are evoked. Perhaps the deep saturation of experience in one channel creates an experience of overflow into other channels, a phenomenon which applies to pain as well as to pleasure. (Sergei Eisenstein, the Russian film director, suggested something like this in his theory of synaesthesia.) But also, I notice that contemporary art is increasingly multidimensional, so that some musicians pay attention to the visual aspects of their compositions, and some visual artists include sounds in their installations, as well as movement. To understand this we need to consider another phenomenon, the edge.

The Edge

If we hold as a major criterion for art that it extend or deepen awareness, we must notice that at certain points awareness tends to stop. These points are like boundary marks of the known, and most of us are reluctant to venture into the unknown without a map. At these boundaries, or edges of awareness, there is a tendency to become confused, change the subject, giggle, become uncomfortable or fall asleep. If the edge is missed, then information will cycle, and we have all been at dance performances or conceits where a certain movement or phrase repeats to what feels like infinity, because it is unable to complete itself. Comedy is often a matter of picking up on a common edge and exploring it thoroughly. For example, Charlie Chaplin, in his early comic short films often explored a cultural edge in detail, such as defiance

Sergei Eisenstein, The Film Sense, (New York, 1942); Peter Wollen, Signs and Meanings in the Cinema, 3rd ed. (London, 1972).

of an authority figure. One way of working around an edge is to switch channels, and explore the same content or energy in a different mode of perception. (Chaplin was a master of channel switching, especially in his hilarious chase sequences, which utilized lightning changes from visual to kinesthetic to relational to crowd effects.)

There is a paradox inherent in these ideas: on the one hand art and politics suffer from a normal human tendency to avoid the edge, tending to cycle and producing reactions of frustration or boredom. On the other hand jumping over the edge and into the mysterious unknown on the other side, while exciting in both art and politics, can produce an extreme state from which it is difficult to access a metacommunica-tor, and the result, while stimulating, can be destructive. The ideal course would then be to work around the fascinating territory of the edge, exploring unknown areas but keeping communication open with the known. Easy enough to prescribe, almost impossible to perform with any continuity. This paradox-ridden behavior of following the edge is the normal challenge of all who work with human creativity on a daily basis.

What does it mean to extend or deepen awareness in many channels? The answer will vary according to individual experience, but one general idea has to do with noticing and working around edges. There is a concept, recently named in Process Work theory, which Amy Mindell calls "deep democracy.' According to this, a system will become wise and self-fulfilling when all its parts are fully represented. One of the implicit requirements here is that reactions to strong actions be brought out and acknowledged, rather than suppressed. When I think of this concept in relation to art, I am amazed at how applicable it seems, that in each art form, there is some concept of reaction, or perhaps it will be called balance, or harmony, which simply means that any strong or energetic gesture, brush stroke, word, or musical phrase is addressed to something, and requires a reaction of some kind. When the reaction is lacking, an edge has been missed, and the art work seems flat, or repetitive, even inhuman. For instance, how much violence and horror in the movies is escalation in the wake of insufficient reaction? This may shed some light on the question of art which works mainly in one channel. If the strength of the piece is balanced within a single channel, as, for instance, in Beethoven's quartets by the musical composition, there is no need to switch channels. Sometimes the only way to respond adequately to an experience in one channel is by switching to another, and perhaps the complexity of modern times is best expressed artistically by the use of different channels of communication.

Insufficient Reaction

Thinking along these lines leads me to think of how often we suffer, in our politics, from insufficient reaction, for instance to the phenomenon of the homeless in our cities, to hunger and other forms of poverty, or to the deaths and suffering caused by war. I remember something Gandhi said when asked how non-violence could be used in the case of Hitler and Nazi Germany. Gandhi replied that it would

The Leader As Martial Artist, (San Francisco, 1992).

require a great deal of suffering, probably no more than already was being exacted, but that the main thing was to draw attention to what was being done, and to how people suffered, reacting to the suffering by taking non-violent action. Perhaps, and this is a rather strange thought, some small percentage of the present right-wing tendency to censor art in the U.S. can be traced back to the art itself, which tends to censor or repress reactions to its own shock value, for instance, by valorizing a "cool" stance and/or ridiculing emotional engagement. A little awareness might go a long way here, especially towards understanding and working with the current concern with "family values." So, for instance, the artist who shows images of violent sex relations might consider including in the art the reaction of fear or dismay which such images are bound to provoke somewhere. If the reaction is not included in the art it will, and has tended to, show up later.

Casablanca

How would a criticism utilizing Process Work concepts as well as more traditional aspects of cultural theory look? The following is a brief sample analysis of the popular movie Casablanca, directed in 1942 by the Hungarian filmmaker in Hollywood, Michael Curtiz, released a week before the wartime Casablanca conference.

Casablanca uses a romantic triangle in the context of war to entertain and rally the spirits of its American audience. The American protagonist is the character played by Humphrey Bogart: Rick, a hard-boiled bar owner who can't return to America for unspecified reasons, who has fought against the fascists in Spain, but now claims, "I stick my neck out for nobody." Rick is nursing a broken heart caused by his inexplicable abandonment by his sweetheart in Paris, Ilse (Ingrid Bergman), on the day the Nazis marched into the city. Now in Casablanca, Rick comes into possession of valuable exit documents, which could save the lives of Ilse and her husband, Czech patriot Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). Will Rick help his ex-sweetheart and her husband to escape from the Nazis? According to film scholar Georges Sadoul, this "incisive, witty, and enchanting film . . is certainly Curtiz' best. It represents the ultimate in the Bogart myth: his Rick Blaine is cynical and tough, hardened by life's misfortunes, yet still sentimental and idealistic." Of Michael Curtiz Sadoul says, "he was the industry's most consistently commercially successful director." I was struck, on seeing a newly-released print of the original film recently, with how much I still like and feel moved by Casablanca, this so very popular film I've seen so often in the past. One of the keys for me to the film's enduring quality is the way it works in multiple channels of perception to support the different parts it represents, to explore its central edge, and to balance its own strong actions with adequate reaction. In this way it provides a way of thinking about current events, which are now uncomfortably reminiscent of the '40s.

Mahatma Gandhi, For Pacifists, (Ahmedabad, 1949).

Dictionary of Films transl. and edited by Peter Morris, (Berkeley, 1972), p. 55. Dictionary of

Film Makers, p. 54.

The film has its own primary and secondary processes, which are very close to Rick's, but not quite identical, as there is a quality of metacommunication, or commentary which is detached from Rick as from the other characters. This can be best described with the French term, mise-en-scene, for which there is no precise English equivalent, but which includes art direction, cinematography, blocking of the actors, all that contributes to the look of the film. The primary process, then, is "objective" according to the journalistic style of the day, which is to say, representing the Allied side in the war. It is represented by the newsreel-like commentary at the beginning of the film, which describes the trail of refugees from the Nazis which leads to and often ends in Casablanca. Even at the beginning, though, this commentary has a trace of comic irony which becomes more pronounced and eventually is a signature for the film. (This is the source of the fine lines for which the film is remembered, such as: "What's your nationality? I'm a drunkard." Most of these lines come from Rick, whose primary process is hard-boiled realism, summed up when he says, "I stick my neck out for nobody.") The opening map of Europe, followed by scenes of arrests and a shooting in the marketplace of Casablanca are visual counterparts to this primary realism, soon undercut by another style altogether. Once the film enters the dramatically condensed world of Rick's nightclub, the visual style emphasizes rounded Moorish arches, soft lighting, rounded shapes in most of the frames, against which the angular marching style of the Nazi officers and their rifles form a strong contrast. This soft visual style, highly romantic and stylized, is soon associated with the character of Ilse, but also with her patriot husband, Victor Laszlo,6 and with the softer side of Rick, his more secondary side, which he struggles against, using alcohol and repression. Ironically, Rick the cynic attempts to keep reminders of the outside world out of the fantasy world he has created in his nightclub. But once Rick learns the story of why Ilse left him, he makes and carries out a difficult and dangerous decision to help both Ilse and Laszlo leave Casablanca. This decision takes him and the film out of the nightclub world and into the world of war and resistance, which is also the world of romance and heroism.

The process by which Rick moves from angry rejected lover to heroic generosity is mapped carefully in the movie-it consists of his ability to pick up the qualities of the woman, beginning with Rick following Ilse's willingness to listen to "their" song, the famous one she orders Sam to play; moving through a side plot in which Rick befriends a young couple fleeing the Nazis after listening grudgingly to the appeal of the wife; and culminating in Rick telling Ilse that their little lives are unimportant in the larger picture, a message she first gave him in pleading with him to help her husband because of the importance of his work. Finally, Ilse asks Rick to think for her, for both of them, a line hard for contemporary audiences to swallow whole, but in fact it is excellent strategy, for Rick does then think for all of them, having had his secondary process tapped so profoundly by a woman he still loves. He is then

Paul Henreid, the actor who plays Laszlo, is reported to have initially turned down the role because it was so unrealistic for a Czech patriot to appear openly in a nightclub and speak with Nazis who were after him. Henreid was himself a refugee from the Nazis, a fact which must have made it difficult for him to appreciate the fairytale abstractions of the film.

able to use his primary qualities of courage and boldness in the service of his own more secondary idealism.

It is nothing new, in narrative art, to see a woman representing a man's secondary process, in a way very similar to what Jung described as the anima projection. This is in fact the normal pattern of Western art which perpetuates the values of patriarchy. Ilse identifies herself as a loyal and courageous wife, and her passion for Rick and desperation about the war is more secondary. Her edge is to let Rick know how she cares for and is vulnerable to him, which she does only after her most desperate ploy has failed. The movie, like the war it is about, makes no distinction between women and men in terms of courage and danger, and unlike other American films of the forties it does not equate softness with fragility or any lack. Those rounded arches hold up the buildings they support!

From a Process Work perspective, the interest of Casablanca lies in the way it seizes and explores the central edge of Rick's development, using verbal and non-verbal auditory cues, visual imagery, attention to relationship and to world issues, and an ability to balance strong affect with irrepressible humor and wit. That Casablanca can laugh at itself is probably the key to its enduring appeal. The message about the need for compassion in a suffering world is delivered with grace and a sense of its own paradoxical nature, as Rick walks off with the French police captain Renault (Claude Rains) on their way to join the Resistance.

Sara Halprin is a Process Worker living in Portland who has a private practice, teaches communications at Marylhurst College, has had several careers as university and college teacher, film maker, and video producer, and has written about film for many publications. She is currently producing a television documentary called "Women War and Peace" and is writing a book about appearance.

Final note: a next step in this process would be to undertake an analysis of more contemporary work, for instance, two films recendy made on similar subjects: Europa, Europa, by Agnieska Holland, about a young Jewish boy who survives the war in Poland and Germany by passing as a German; and Zentropa, by Lars von Triers, about the railroad which carried Jews to concentration camps during the war and American officers in its first-class cars after the war. Both films raise questions about primary and secondary processes and the tendency to project what is secondary and shadowy onto another; both show characters pushed to confront their own deepest edges; both use techniques of multiple-channel perception to work with their disturbing material.

Bibliography

1. Eisenstein, Sergei. The Film Sense, New York, 1942. Gandhi, Mahatma. For Pacifists, Ahmedabad, 1949. Mindell, Arnold. The Year 1, Global Process Work, London & NY, 1989.
2. . The Leader As Martial Artist, San Francisco, 1992. Sadoul, Georges Dictionary of Film Makers, transl. and ed ited by Peter Morris, Berkeley, 1972.
3. . Dictionary of Films, transl. and edited by Peter Morris, Berkeley, 1972.
4. Wollen, Peter. Signs and Meanings in the Cinema, 3rd ed., London, 1972.