Multisensory meanderings
Extracts from Unpsychology Imaginings 9.1
“What is special about this magazine is it is multisensory -- Written text in various formats (poem, fiction, non-fiction), Art-- vivid art teasing words into new territories, Music-- another way to access what was never a property of the deliberate cognitive, Animation-- swirl of colours and forms.
This magazine isn't meant to be read piece-by-piece. It is meant to be sensed side-by-side. Like how we live with each other on this Earth. To read it relationally.
To read to Earth. It is a most beautiful offering.”
Bhavana Nissima, Facebook post, 10/8/23
Introduction
The latest Unpsychology Magazine: Imaginings is, as Bhavana Nissima writes, a multisensory relationality. As editors, we wanted to find ways of flowing art, video, words and music in a online/offline offering.
Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting pieces from the magazine and profiling our wonderful contributors. Telling stories from their imaginations. Getting imaginal. Weaving imaginings.
In this post we highlight three multimedia pieces in the magazine, also posted on Unpsychology Voices. Here you can get the full experience of these creative imaginings with their commentary, music and video. You can find links to the full pieces, as well as reading them in context in the full magazine which you can download FREE from HERE.
Julia, Lesley, Patrick and Steve
A print version of Unpsychology 9.1 will be available soon, and the second volume of Imaginings (9.2) will be out in the Autumn. Sign up to this Substack to get up to date news.
1. Rachel Hentsch’s Animated art around imaginings
This set of video pieces were produced by Rachel Hentsch from a variety of contexts with friends, collaborators and workshop participants.
Rachel writes: “This is a selection of visual mementos which today are re-coalescing into a new possible configuration that responds to the call for imagining ‘what else might be possible’ . They may be seen as invitations to start from the sticky, stinky, tangled messiness of where we find ourselves. Singly and together, they conjure alternative, interdependent, diverse ‘nows’ and ‘thens’. They are humble, sometimes very intimate, gestures towards newly imagined psyches. These tiny trails of exploration might be a glimpse towards the healing that is buried so deeply inside relationship and context. Perhaps through artistic exploration (and surrender) we will be able to pop the big and small bubbles of quiet trouble that lull us into habituated apathy, and let the emerging gurgles take us to new places.”
2. The Unpsychology MthR Trilogy performance by Sophie McKeand
This remarkable improvised spoken-word performance by Sophie McKeand was recorded on 17th May 2023 in the beautiful gardens of Sarah Jewell’s Velindre House in Drefach Felindre, Wales. Her performance was accompanied musically by Unpsychology sound editor, Patrick Carpenter. Sophie’s performance was based around her MthR Trilogy of sci-fi novels, the third of which, Rematriation, was published in 2023 (and is available HERE).
It was a hot and breezy day in early summer, and there was blossom, birdsong and breezes, and a good sprinkling of magic. The samples, words and music (and the blossom, birdsong and breezes) were captured on film and soundfiles, and are linked to in the full piece HERE.
3. Improvising Imaginings: The Imaginings Ensemble session
Patrick Carpenter and an ensemble of musicians met one Saturday in May 2023 to improvise around the theme of Imaginings. The session resulted in a selection of evocative tracks that are scattered through the latest issue of Unpsychology Magazine (issue 9.1, Imaginings), accessed by QR codes and links.
Patrick writes: “The remit was simple :- get together in a room, my room, my glorious, tumultuous, extraordinary, tiny room, crammed with everything and play. We'd done it before. Many times, actually – brought together by a vagabond blind man who wrote astonishing music. But this was a little way different. We were to make it up – channel the thoughts and feelings that arose – whatever arose – and record it. Bare naked. Ania, Donna, Emilio and I.”