What is the role of disorientation in self-identification and awareness? In places and situations most novel, most out-of-body, the self is loudest -- or an unnameable sense of "soul" or "being". Rothko gets at this and the big Eliasson light room, but why do we relate to the mentally alienating environment so physically? Richard Serra talking about his bent steel sculptures you walk into that have the sensation of moving around you, and why they're successful: "People are surprised. They cannot locate themselves."
Louise Bourgeois, talking about sculpture made from her own hands: "Something that has been lived is real, the emotion is real, it's not made-up." Sculptures of two sets of hands in varying frailties, her own included: "These say we are not ashamed of our own helplessness. That you could say helplessness could be a charm. I may not believe that or I may, I don't know. It could be true, that helplessness could be a charm because it makes you feel good to help someone who is helpless. Even though that's very arrogant to say."
And Shahzia Sikader, "I work mainly in divine circles. ... You go, you experience something, then you come back right where you started."
