FIXATION
The appearance of freedom after trauma
David Hayne
2022
[…]
What is life
after so much death?
the guilt of innocence?the counter-guilt that weighs
as heavy
as the guilt of the slayer as the blood-guilt
of the forgiventhe blame-shifters
[…]
The Survivor
Erich Fried
1986
Introduction
After the Seventh of March 2021, I found out that I have been fixated by the power of others.
The other had influenced my well-being. How easy: all my trust was gone as quick as it appeared. That which was strong, has weakened. Naivety now wisdom. Soft is hard.
Now I am free, but what do the consequences look like? And what beauty can I still find in it?
Mattresses made of hair are left
soaps made of hands are left
children’s dolls
What happened with their suffering?
The Museum; Lack of Exhibit
Elżbiety Zechenter-Spławińskiej
1935
Exhibiting fixation
When Freud talks about fixation in psychology, he writes about the theory of psychosexual development: an individual can get stuck in an earlier psychosexual stadium due to conflict, and stay ‘stuck’ until there is conflict resolution (Cherry, 2020). Within psychiatry, fixation is used to “limit someone in their freedom of movement and behavior, with or without their approval” (Tergooi, 2022). The American Copyright Commission explains fixation as a phenomenon that is being put in a stable form (Stephens, 2020). To conclude, fixation is being used to explain something is fastened, held or made unmovable (Etymologiebank, 2022).
We can conclude from this that fixation stands for the limitation, freezing, stabilisation, or immobilizing of a different party.
As an artist, I am interest in two forms of fixation that I define as follows:
Material fixation, as seen in Anselm Kiefer’s Sternlager IV. A work made of sand, ash and charcoal, fixated with glue and varnish - decontextualising the materials by doing so. Also think about plaster and paint, which are fixated by drying and retain their form that way.
Situational fixation, which I find mostly in music, photography and film.