Phantomic experience [01 definition]

I think of phantomic experience as the delicate aspect of memory, that is connected  with traces or echo of sensations and movement, and how they coexist with the present moment.

Sensations of touch and weight.

         The touch of the other but also the touch of attention.

          Weight as it shifts and swings within own body, or is normally distributed through some constellations of it,  but also weight that one gives towards certain things (value).

Movement as a term mostly understood as a physical action experienced by the performer (and/or reflected by the spectator via mirror neurons), but also movement of the thinking process and the question which is not pursued by the answer (even though question awaits the answer, the answer does not appease the question, it can only stop the movement of  it), is a self stirred movement of going to the bottom, uprooting, coming to the surface, opening, hiding again, turning, steeling away[1]

I call it phantomic experiences because though in many ways the nature of these traces is ungraspable, the studies in phantom sensations show how very much the subjective experience of a phantom sensation can be objectified or shared with the other via the image of brain activity. Though in medicine phantom studies are mostly occupied with developing ways of treatment, thanks to which patient who undergo amputation or stroke would develop the “better match” between the feeling and the body, some scientist propose that the demystification of the current-day concepts of “the self” will be amongst the foremost future prospects of phantomology.” (Balnke, Matzinger 2009, Brugger 2012)

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[1] Maurice Blanchot, Most Profound Question pp 11-25, In The Infinite Conversation

From the history of phantom limb sensations:

(form Hallucinations O. Sacks, and Phantoms in the brain V. S. Ramachandran).

Two Double Nudes (1959) by Joseph Beuys 

Reflecting upon the nature and origin of phantom limb sensations may give a specific insight to the body mind relation. One can trace changes in the interpretations of this phenomena throughout the history - from more spiritual ones to entirely scientific...  

Descartes was reflecting on the problem in Meditations on First Philosophy, placing in the fact that some people whose arm or leg have been amputated still occasionally feel pain in the missing limb, the basic distrust towards the body: “this lead me to think that I could not be quite certain even that any one of my members was affected when I felt pain”

Phantom limbs as bodily hallucinations appear very late in the literature (unlike visual or auditory hallucination). In 1870 Silas Weir Mitchell first gave them the name – but introduces the issue initially in form of a fiction story (“The case of George Dedlow”) published anonymously. It’s a story about a man who loses his legs in the war, and then through the help of an eclectic doctor and a medium rejoins the spirit of his missing legs for one session – in which he can even walk on them. Later  in “Injuries of nerves” (1872) Mitchell writes in the still quite “spiritual style” about the topic: “Nearly every man who loses a limb carries about with him a constant or inconstant phantom of the missing member , a sensory ghost of that much of himself. “

Lord Nelson would also write about his phantom sensations of arm that he lost in the battle of Santa Cruz (1942) as a “direct evidence for the existence of the soul” “For if arm can exist after it is removed why can’t the whole person survive physical annihilation of the body”.

Olivier Sacks after explaining neurological mechanisms of phantom limbs sensations provides kind of intriguing reflection on the subject:  phantoms are already in place, "revealed so to speak by the act of amputation".  

This lead me to questions: How can a complete body understand the phenomenon of phantom sensation? How can one reveal the phantom body?

Sth about us

Gaja Karolczak

Currently working as freelancing researcher/ writer in the field of dance being supported by Institute of Music and Dance (Poland) and Flemish government.  She is unfolding her project on phantom sensations in frames of a.pass Brussels and VARP -pa. Her interests circulate around interdisciplinary ventures involving dance /movement  and cognitive neuroscience reflected speculatively and work of experimental dancers like Deborah Hay or Lisa Nelson. She have completed MSc  in  Performative Creativity (University of Malta  UAM, Poznań) and MA in Art History. Wrote On Mirror Neurons  and Kinesthetic Empathy (“Didaskalia” nr 112, 2012) and soon her article On reception of dance improvisation will be published in a book following the exhibition  on dance improvisation at the Museum of Contemporary Art Łódź.

 
Martyna Lorenc
a person curious to work multidisciplinary. Interested in cognition, creation, expression, the topic of mindfulness, somatic and therapeutic techniques, applied both for dance as well as for well-being. Got a master's degree in cognitive science at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland writing on direct action-perception interactions. Has studied contemporary dance and pedagogy at Anton Bruckner University in Linz, Austria. Currently engaged in several companies and projects, e.g. C.O.V. Company Off Verticality Rose Breuss (upcoming project in collaboration with violinist Ernst Kovacic), Editta Braun Company ("planet Luvos"), as well as in own choreographic tries ("Alien drive" a solo in collaboration with music composer Lorenzo Romano). Loves to work with live music and video. 

Marysia Zimpel,
 studied “ Dance, Choreography and Context” at HTZ, at Universitat der Kunste in Berlin. At the University of Poznan, Poland, at the Department of Cultural Studies, she defended her master thesis: “Dance practice  –  mobile space of creating of the self ”. She is an author of several solo works,and one duet with a poet Eric Green Working like a dog, she also performs for others, as well as works in collaboration. In years  2010-2012  she was part of the Vienna  based performance collective  –  “God’s Entertainment”, which gave her a unique experience. In cooperation with Anna Czaban curated an event of choreographic performances – Serendypia, which took place in City Gallery Arsenał, ’10,’11 in Poznań, PL. In May 2012 was invited by Kattrin Deufert and Thomas Plischke for their project “(En)tropical Institute”, Berlin/UferStudios. As a danced she worked with Isabelle Schad in choreographies “Music” and “Experience#1”. Recently was invited by Alexandra Borys to the project Unisono which was premiered  on 22.06.2013 in Komuna Warszawa, PL. 

”Walking and turning around rapidly with a satchel in one hand, a cane in the other”
Animal Locomotion Plate 49, 1887
 Eadweard Muybridge

Yesterday on the way to a.pass, when I went out at the tram stop and headed towards canal, I started to, while keeping attention to my walk, revisit my sensations from the way I went through till the tram stopped.

I was wondering if I can parallelize experience that lasted for some time with the one I am having now, keeping the track of two sensational realities at once.

I only managed to have some short parallelities, some more intentionally driven, some less:

While walking simultaneously dawn the stairs in my house and up the road in Molenbeeck I almost freeze when feel the nervous jump done some 20 minutes ago in the moment when I think that I forgot the keys in the room, and maybe the telephone too.

Carrying my heavy bag on the right arm, walking through zebra crossing, I put it down on the floor of the corridor and bend to look inside. The telephone is there, and I have it here somewhere under my armpit in the bag.

Then sitting in the tram, feeling my back leaning upon sof, but filthy seat, and walking is not so easy. Just giving attention to this parallel is making me turn my pelvis in, bend my knees and give more weight to the back of my body having the legs leading me in a funny way, which is not at all comfortable position to walk.

 It is easier for me to feel the gesture of folding my skirt together after adjusting myself to the new sit in the tram, and looking down on to my feet rhythmically appearing one ahead of the other in front of me, on  the pavement. Do I fell this motion in the tram?

Then looking at the Japanese men in front of me, who suddenly starts to turn his palms, as if giving warm-up to his wrist before a Kung-Fu class, he does it for very long, lifting the hand high,  and I feel my wrist turning too,  a smile on my face,  and suddenly a row of chickens on the roasting spit on my left side, turning too. And then there is a street corner, I jump again, because I think I just missed my stop, and run to the doors when realizing, it’s not really a stop, it’s a fish shop stinking really bad, again on my left.  Then I look  in the book which I hold in the left hand:

“Increase of awareness will help them to find a way out of confusion and free their energies for creative work”[1]…

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[1] Feldenkrais, M. Awareness through movement, Harper One 1990, p 171

Some thoughts on phantomic sensations

Why closed

               In the mentoring Robert Steijn asked me if I do the exercises with the eyes closed, and if so, why? He considers eyes open as a more natural state even in improvisation with proprioceptive basis, and that there is “something strange” happening with the self-experience when the eyes are closed. He told me he prefers to keep them open, when he goes on a journey and meets his ghosts.

 I saw him in performance, and he was closing his eyes many times for extended periods,  and I am wondering now, was he trying to make it more dramatic for the audience or more real for himself.

The thing about the vision is that it’s not as neutral as it seems,  because it simply overrides the other senses. The brain decides to trust it more, maybe because it seems more intersubjective than for example tactile and proprioseptive sensations.

               But even then, vision executes more power over the other senses than just sustained domination. It can include them as part of the synesthetic image created, but mostly if they support the visual assumption.  Generally “proprioceptive signals which overtly disagree with the  visual ones are not used for adaptation, while those which largely agree with visual ones are used to enhance adaptive recalibration “(Pipereit,k. et.at 2006). The use of mirror in Ramashandran’s therapy of phantom limbs pain is very much based on this assumption of the visual overriding  the proprioceptive.

             One man  lost his hand in a violent accident provoked by a machine. The man was operated and did not have phantom sensations afterwards, but when he received a very expensive and good looking prosthesis he started to have terrible nightmares, and could not sleep anymore. He decided to resign from prosthesis and everything went back to “normal”.  

It seems that having the “arm back”, the trauma of losing it so abruptly was back too. I wander if by some proprioceptive exercises with the eyes closed he could actually develop a sufficient distrust in his visual system, which otherwise provokes the traumatic illusion of the prosthesis being a real hand, by using the still active phantom potential of the lost hand. Could it be that through some exercises the man at the same time could see the hand, but not allow his proprioceptive phantom sensation merge with it?

 Second phase of the research.