A Sync at the Psychiatrist’s

David Cajthaml’s daily published images included poetic texts subtitled “at the psychiatrist’s”. The character of the psychiatrist is a kind of a catalyst (some times in the position of the subject, another times of the object), that enables us to fully – immensely perform the tragic comedy of all of our life projections, transferences, big and small traumas, desires, feelings and emotions, whether fulfilled, unfulfilled or lost. Buddy Ungrad’s comments enriched them with wit and another layer of meaning. At the time, he was also in the process of publishing his poetry that reflected upon grief, losses, destroyed or unfulfilled loves.

All of the experiences, creative work and observation took place in the tear of time where there was no space, time, nor causality. Especially while looking back, there are three main focal points that stand out in front of the bottomless and widespread darkness. They are linked with invisible threads that can be used to sew wounded souls. The three points consist of the images, poetry and the psychiatrist. What used to be just an echo of a lifelong and professional interest of the curator (the inseparable link between art, therapy and other things that helped her to choose her unfocused perception above everything else) resulted not just into a therapy method, but also into a creative output which is this very exhibition.

The fictional space that encompasses the freely and gratuitously clustering poems, texts and images is the Ship of Fools. The allegorical image was originally used by Plato in regard to state government and it can now be referred to as archetypal. It is no longer just a description of Plato’s twisted society, but also a metaphor of life, shaken by sea currents, waves, storms and deep waters of the unconsciousness. And suddenly, in your liminal [1] state, after the loss of your loved ones, health and job, you realise you have spent almost a year looking poetically at David Cajthaml’s tales of fools and psychiatrists in the virtual space of the social network, while in the real life you kept attending the psychiatrist’s office-gallery where you spent your time looking at the drawings of rope knots, lighthouses and seashells, until you realised that the psychiatrist was also a sea captain…

I agree with David Cajthaml that reality usually takes over fantasy. And what looks like a metaphor or allegory does actually happen. It can knock us down, heal us, make us happy or kill us. And that is life. Nobody can escape it. Only art gives us the opportunity to reorder and restock reality and use it to explore the usually hidden – like the synchronicities [2], and give it a new meaning in order to survive.

[1]  Liminality is a term introduced by Victor Turner in 1977 in order to describe the spacetime that is used to recreate the identity of a person who just lost a loved one or loved ones. Just like in this case, death is not necessarily the cause of the loss.

[2] Synchronicity is a term described by C. G. Jung that specifies a tear in time, invalidates spacetime, time, causality and is similar to numinous states of spiritual experience. It describes two or more events happening at the same time that do not share causation, but rather have the same or similar meaning.