My MA project is about Myths. Firstly I wanted it to be about Modern Myths, but now I am about to change that. I got the original idea from the Mythologies by Roland Barthes (1957). I like the way he approached the subject and called almost anything a Myth. In my turn I tried to rationalize and analyze it. And, I have to admit, I failed in this attempt. I ended up thinking about consumer culture and celebrities as a Modern Mythology, while these subjects are not in my main area of interest and it has been explored before by artists like Andy Warhol (which I adore, but wouldn’t like to follow).
Now I’ve realized that cold and rational way of working is against my nature and I would have to find another one: mere personal and based on intuition and feeling. However, I am not ready to give up on my subject: I still find it fascinating. I am trying to realize why originally I liked it. And now I tend to think that it is because a Myth is not really “real”, but it, exists (not in a “real” world but in an imaginary space). Moreover, it has reasons to its existence. It reflects some objective reality in a metaphoric way! And It is so close to what art actually does. It is not obvious, it has more than one meaning, layers of meaning. I am attracted to this layered structure. More I think of it more I realize that I particularly like a multitude of possible explanations. Not sure if I fully realize the difficulty of working this way.
For now “Myth” would be an umbrella subject for my work. And I guess it would last for a while (more than this MA year). As a result of my MA project I would like to see a complete and beautiful piece of work reflecting one side of the “Mythology” as I see it.
My latest idea is to work with Personal Mythology or Everyday Mythology, revealing invisible personal aspects, (like fears and desires) which could drive, inspire or ruin people’s lives. On one hand, mythological creatures represent superpowers (Heracles), but on the other hand they serve as examples of great sins or heroic deeds (like Narcissus or Prometheus). If heroic superpowers are desirable but unachievable, sins, on the contrary, are very common.
Written all this I come beck to the definition of a word MYTH. I personally define it as a collective subconscious belief which reflect objective reality in a metaphoric way. Most often we use this word to talk about something false (or unproven) or about legends of ancient Greece (Rome, Egypt etc.). At their time (for example in Greece) myth would not appear for no reason, they had to reflect something important. Nowadays those phenomenons are cultural items of another kind. Some aspects they used to reflect are no longer valid but some did not change. Moreover, our time is creating new heroes and Myths. They are shaped differently and would not be easily recognized as such. All this mix of historic and modern terms would form my area of interest and investigation.
