Portalen

Free cours (master) thesis – 2019

Stockholms Dramatiska Högskola

Abstract

Can the rite and the play affect feelings, needs and decisions?

Our perception is to a greater extent individual and subjective, our affective reactions have links to the various tools the experiences have equipped us with. Our sensory system makes selection in the references that the body’s memories have been stored. I am interested in resilience: the capacity to repair the traumatic or injured in natures,  both  people and environments. The energy that we can release during the resilience process, in my own experience, can be compared to the act of ”crossing a portal” with uncomfortable or dangerous sockets, the other side allways holds promises.

The term ”portal” in my exempel is in relation to energies and state of min. But in that association we most include an important part in any portal : the embrasure (in architecture the external part of a portal)

In my hypothesis, It figuratively correspond to the direct and indirect experiences we carry with us, and how we use it in the construction of shields and/or ornaments,  to attract / isolate the surroundings during our existence.

What a function it ”emotional embrasure will fill is  individual and depends on a lot of aspects: expectations, desire, interest, purpose, knowledge, genetic components, including beliefs and ideologies. Different stimuli can increase the level of attention through intensity, change, movement, repetition and emotional content among others. In my portal figure, I can see some resemblance with the ”liminal phase” that the French-German ethnographer Arnold Van Gennep has studied in his research on Les rites de passage (transitional rituals) and the British anthropologist Victor W. Turner later developed in the book The ritual process.

Photo: Héctor J. Álvarez-Ana Maria Almada