Author: Spectator Jonze

Creative Mornings Brisbane

Had the pleasure of being invited to be a speaker for Creative Mornings Brisbane February event at The Lushington. Sold out with over 180 attendees, I spoke on the theme of ‘Symmetry’ and used it to discuss the importance of being open about mental health, the necessity of creative outlets and my own journey with my PTSD. With an audience of creatives in attendance, I focused on the importance of conversation – to find the time to share the conversation with people, find the time to start that conversation with people and to find the time to have the conversation with yourself. Put it into your everyday practise of art, music, dance, words, knitting, woodworking, whatever it may be.
I found it difficult being that open and vulnerable to 180 people but I knew I wouldn’t have even be able to write it onto paper 6 months prior, and 6 months before that, I wouldn’t have even been able to talk about it with trusted friends. It’s a progress of baby steps we all should be taking.

The irony to the taboo and structure of feeling like you’re alone when struggling with your mental health is that every single person has a shade of trauma, anxiety, depression, illness, vices, inclinations, quirks, doubts, pain, suffering and demons etc. We need to start accepting that mental health is just as important as your physical health and just as the body will shut down here and there in sickness, the mind will too.

Let’s talk. Let’s talk often and open.

Watch it here:

HOHE LUFT MAGAZIN UNSERE NUMMER 1/2019

I had the amazing opportunity this month with Hohe Luft Magazin a philosophy magazine based in Germany who commissioned this piece for their article on Nikolaus Von Kues.
Von Kues was a philosopher, astronomer, theologian and inventor who lived between 1401 to 1464, which posed a problem for my Spectator Jonze project – I couldn’t interview him. I wouldn’t be able to get into his head. So I spent hours reading articles, journals and his writings to learn his thoughts, his conflicts, his contributions and his theories. I really enjoyed trying to understand his inner workings and put together the many aspects of his life into one portrait.

Although they were separate studies in his life, I ended up anchoring his portrait on simplifying his contradictions and commitments between religion (Peace of Faith), humanity (Learned Ignorance) and then astronomy (Infinity of the Universe). And to add an extra thing into the pile, he was also the inventor of the concave lens, so I threw a fancy pair of spectacles on him.

The main thing I derived from Cusa’s writings is that we have to learn to live with an absence of certainty, as it is this very absence of certainty which is the source of our creativity. It fuels the desire to attain knowledge and gives room for freedom. And it is this very notion of his, that allowed me to explore with his portrait and my creativity, for I was unable to personally speak with him in an interview to be certain of his thoughts and I had to sift through different Renaissance paintings and sculptures of him to attain the knowledge of his facial features. But look, he’s a smart man because, I did get creative and I had a lot of freedom.