Rasa and resilience: where to from here

Abstract

ABSTRACT Situated within rasa, an Indian aesthetic philosophy, and drawing on Kasulis’s philosophical model that compares integrity with intimacy in understanding the world, this paper will aim to explore and expand on levels of resilience so that as I analyse buffeting in my creative projects, I access the energies that allow me to return to equilibrium, to balance, to wholeness and to Oneness. The notion of resilience requires the pursuit of a solution to a problem. The integrity approach fosters the artist as being “outside” the problem and solution, employing strategic tactics in the pursuit of meaning. The intimacy model fosters an immersion process, and I draw on the dynamics of rasa and the underlying, interwoven principles of integration. The understanding of the integrity model focuses on the notion of art-artist and the problem of strategic separation, whilst rasa looks at the embodiment and subject formation from the body/mind intimacy perspective. My creative practice offers a stance as the intermediary between conceptualisation, creation, understanding and methodology between the embodied self and resilience.