CHAPTER 23
Claire Schneider and Barbara L. Fredrickson
Abstract
This chapter integrates theory and evidence on the science of positive emotions with recent examples of contemporary visual and social practice art that touch on resonant themes. Focus begins with an emphasis on the individual experience of positive emotions and extends to co-experienced positive emotions, at both relational and communal levels. The artists considered—Janine Antoni, Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, C.S.1 Curatorial Projects, Harrell Fletcher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Sarah Gotowka, Jim Hodges, Emily Jacir, Julia Jamrozik, Miranda July, Coryn Kempster, Felice Koenig, Antonio Vega Macotela, and Kateřina Šedá—as well as the theorists Nicholas Bourraid and Luce Irigaray are all advocating for a more emotional and connected world after decades of highlighting difference. The chapter concludes with specific suggestions for more richly integrating scientific and artistic approaches to understanding and evoking positive human experiences.
Key Words: positive emotion, positivity resonance, love, Broaden-and-Build, collective effervescence, relational aesthetics, social practice, Nick Cave, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kateřina Šedá, Nicholas Bourraid, Luce Irigaray
We are delighted to explore how our two areas of expertise—positive psychology and contemporary visual art—might become more mutually supportive. We met in early 2013 when we discovered our shared interest in the topic of love. One of us had a new general audience book on the science of love (Fredrickson, 2013a) and the other had newly curated a special exhibit More Love: Art, Politics and Sharing since the 1990s (https://ackland.org/exhibition/more-love-art-politics-and-sharing-since-the-1990s/; Schneider, 2013b).
Our early dialogue about how the two perspectives fit together planted the seeds for the current chapter. Our aim is to expand that dialogue to include positive emotions more generally, and to identify timely opportunities for our respective disciplines to support and advance each discipline. The specific aims are twofold. First, we share the latest scientific theory and evidence regarding the unique adaptive value of human experiences of positive emotions. Second, we offer a scientific appreciation of how contemporary visual artists activate and deploy positive emotions in their work and in the varied ways these works impact individual viewers and communities. This interdisciplinary endeavor not only illuminates how certain artistic works have significant community impact, but also how the arts might be leveraged to advance scientific understanding of human nature.
A Scientific Understanding of One Person’s Positive Emotions
More than two decades ago, Fredrickson (1998) introduced a novel scientific theory to explain why the ability to experience and express positive emotions is a ubiquitous feature of human nature. At the time, emotions were just emerging as a rigorous area of focus within psychology, having been swept aside for roughly half a century as behaviorism had its heyday (for a review, see Fredrickson, 2013b). Within this initial scientific renaissance, however, near exclusive focus was devoted to unpleasant emotional states—anger, fear, disgust and the like—with scarcely few pages devoted to joy, serenity, gratitude, interest, and other pleasant emotional states.
This new “Broaden-and-Build Theory” (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001) addressed this imbalance and states that positive emotions had been useful to our human ancestors and preserved over millennia as part of human nature because positive emotions fundamentally alter how the human brain absorbs information in ways that—incrementally over time—made individuals more resourceful. Specifically, the momentary uplift of positive emotions expands awareness (i.e., the broaden effect), creating a form of consciousness within individuals that includes a wider array of thoughts, actions, and percepts than typical. These subtle and unbidden moments of expanded awareness proved useful for developing resources for survival (i.e., the build effect). That is, little by little, moments of positive emotional experience, although fleeting, reshaped individuals by setting them on trajectories of growth and building their enduring resources for survival. In short, the Broaden-and-Build Theory describes the form of positive emotions as to broaden awareness and their function as to build resources.
This meant that negative and positive emotions alike came to be part of our universal human nature through selective pressures related to survival, albeit on vastly different human timescales. Negative emotions carried adaptive significance in the moment that our human ancestors experienced them. Specifically, the action urges associated with negative emotions—e.g., to fight, flee, or spit—called forth behaviors that saved life and limb. Positive emotions, by contrast, carried adaptive significance for our human ancestors over longer stretches of time. Having a momentarily broadened mindset is not a key ingredient in the recipe for any quick survival maneuver. It is, however, in the recipe for discovery, e.g., discovery of new knowledge, new alliances, and new skills. In short, broadened awareness led to the accrual of new resources that might later make the difference between surviving or succumbing to various threats. Resources built through positive emotions also increased the odds that our ancestors would experience subsequent positive emotions, with their attendant broaden-and-build benefits, thus creating an upward spiral toward improved odds for survival, health, and fulfillment. Figure 23.1 provides a graphic summary of this Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions.
Empirical evidence to support both the broaden effect and the build effect of positive emotions has grown significantly in the intervening decades (for a review, see Fredrickson, 2013b). For instance, rigorous and randomized laboratory experiments show that when people are induced to experience even mild positive emotional states (through an unexpected gift of candy, carefully selected excerpts from music or film, or via relived emotional memories), they show expanded peripheral vision and visual search (Rowe, Hirsh, & Anderson, 2007; Wadlinger & Isaacowitz 2006) and an increased ability to take in the big picture rather than getting stuck in small details (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005; Gasper & Clore, 2002; but see Harmon-Jones, Gable, & Price, 2013). Complementing this evidence for the short-term effects of positive emotions, longitudinal randomized controlled trials show that when individuals develop skills to self-generate day-to-day positive emotions more readily, they spur their own development, becoming more socially integrated, more resilient, and even physically healthier in the ensuing months (Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek & Finkel, 2008; Kok et al., 2013). Contemplative practices have been shown to be particularly well-suited for this (Fredrickson et al., 2017, 2019).
Figure 23.1. The Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions.
(adapted from Fredrickson & Cohn, 2008, Figure 48.1).
Appreciating the Way Artists Use Positive Emotions in Art on the Individual Level
Mirroring the earlier aversion in science to studying emotions, visual artists for decades—beginning in the 1960s with pop art, minimalism, and conceptualism—have prioritized ideas over emotions as central drivers of works of art (Baume, 2005). As a result, when a video, piece of language art, performance work, and even a painting did address emotions, it was usually a negative one, such as sadness or anxiety. In addition, much of the art critiqued societal systems—media, gender, race, or institutional power—and hence focused on what was going wrong.
It is important to note that artists work differently than scientists. While many artists want to influence discourse on issues they care about, works of art are rarely created in the manner of a scientific experiment—where one has a thesis and creates a situation as a means of testing an empirical question. Contemporary art is more like a poem or philosophical piece, working to give form to experience.
That said, it is illuminating to take the Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions and retrospectively interpret artists’ works via this lens. Over the last twenty-five plus years, a growing number of artists have purposely created works of art that turn toward positive emotions—joy, gratitude, interest, amusement, and awe. Their strategy, much like the feedback loop of the Broaden-and-Build Theory, is to conceive works that inspire these feelings—either for the viewer or the participant collaborator—so that she will be more open to new ways of thinking. Nevertheless, it is also important to note that the art discussed in this chapter was created for a fine arts context, like a museum, and not developed for an educational or therapeutic setting, where working to support or heal others is the primary starting point. The artists discussed in the following examples are choosing to use positive emotions as a means of articulating larger ideas about the world we live in.
One of the most important artists of the last thirty years (Schneider, 2013a; http://www.cs1projects.org/table-of-contents), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52179b56e4b02837fdbc1732/t/5c9e555e9140b7dac0c38aff/1553880414803/Gonzalez-Torres%2C + Felix+p102-107.pdf) creates works which consist of various “ideal weights” of candy, places these enticing sweets in a pile or carpet configuration, and allows viewers to take a piece and consider enjoying it. Not surprisingly, seeing that much candy anywhere elicits joy in almost anyone, from kids to heart-hardened skeptics. In a pristine gallery, a place where one is cautioned not to touch, much less taste, this offering almost feels illicit and even ecstatic. Central to Gonzalez-Torres is the creation of work that is conceptually open and whose ultimate interpretation would be up to every individual who encountered it. Why would someone create such an offering? What does it evoke in you?
One reading among many is that Gonzalez-Torres created these works, one prime example being “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) https://www.artic.edu/artworks/152961/untitled-portrait-of-ross-in-l-a, to address the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s, which included the death of his partner Ross and ultimately himself (https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr = yhs-iba-1&hsimp = yhs-1&hspart = iba&p = untitled+%28ross + in+la%29 + felix+gonzalez-torres#id = 4&vid = 140ec18740053a4f2456f26f16f8a376&action = click). The weight of the candy, for those works which list the ideal weight as 175 pounds, can represent a human body, perhaps his body or another healthy individual, and as it is consumed, it can slowly disappear, perhaps mirroring the wasting from the disease. (The possibility also exists to replenish the candy at any time.) While Gonzalez-Torres may have wanted to address the grief he experienced watching his lover’s illness progress, he also captures the complete bliss and gratitude he feels for his soulmate and lover. By doing so, he shares this delight with his audience. And, as a result, people who engage with this work may be more likely to approach AIDS and the once vilified topic of homosexuality with a broadened awareness. Her mood may be more open as a result of being given the unexpected gift of a sweet; perhaps she will remember the time when someone she cares deeply for passed away. No longer is the viewer focused primarily on the shameful and visual nature of the disease (as much work about the crisis did), but instead on the common ground all humans face when someone they feel warmly or passionately about passes away.
Like all works of art, the artist’s personal circumstance is just the beginning point for understanding a work. Working to connect with a large, broad audience, who could come to the work in any way they saw fit, was of primary importance to Gonzalez-Torres (https://www.felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/). He said, “Without the public, these works are nothing, nothing; I need the public to complete the work. I ask the public to help me, to take responsibility, to become part of my work, to join in” (Spector, 2007, p. 57). There is something deeply positive about Gonzalez-Torres’s work, which connects with the Broaden-and-Build Theory. Not only in this case, with its offering of edible joy, but in its constant insistence that its meaning remain open, and as a result relevant to everyone who encounters it, previously, in our time, and in the future.
Likewise, Nick Cave (https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s8/nick-cave-in-chicago-segment/) courted broad audiences by inducing joy. He created colorful sculptures of found materials that have the intricacy, sense of uniqueness and awe, and total more-is-more saturation of adornment that mixes tribal regalia, Mardi Gras attire, and high fashion. Known as Soundsuits, these wearable pieces, which occasionally make noise, hide one’s identity, functioning as a kind of armor. Originally created by sewing twigs to a face-covering bodysuit, Cave’s first Soundsuit in 1992 was a response to the Rodney King beating. It allowed him to both embody the monstrous and throw away nature, too often associated with black men, and also to shield himself. As Cave’s materials expanded to include suits of buttons, toys, beaded ball gowns, colored hair, raffia, latch hook rugs, and doilies, the material mood turned more festive and gleeful. As a result, Cave is able to draw a wide public to his work to consider the beauty in what is discarded and the way one can maximize, protect, and reclaim one’s identity.
Czech artist Kateřina Šedá (http://www.katerinaseda.cz/en/) creates scenarios that occur outside of a fine arts setting to build enduring resources for a network of family members and specific Czech communities. With It Doesn’t Matter (2005–2007), Šedá turned around her grandmother’s constant refrain. Jana (1930–2007) had become the family’s main focus when she retired and quit cooking, cleaning, and shopping, and began watching television all day. One of the few things that she often talked about was her thirty-three-year service as a tools stock manager at a hardware store. Šedá convinces her grandmother to draw all of the 650 items she remembers. For three years up until her death, Jana became interested again in what she was doing, created 521 drawings, and the baneful phrase, “It doesn’t matter,” disappeared from her grandmother’s vocabulary. Fearful that these drawings would become routine, Kateřina created three more pieces, What Is it For?, 1x Daily Before Meals, and Travel Diary, all of which engage her grandmother with questionnaires that encourage her to stay interested in life (Fetzer, 2012, p. 29).
A Scientific Understanding of Shared Positive Emotions
Fredrickson’s initial theorizing on the evolved adaptive function of positive emotions centered on emotions as individual experiences that, for the most part, carried benefits for individual survival and well-being. Underemphasized were positive emotions as collective experiences that carry benefits not only for the individual, but also for that individual’s relationships and broader community. Although an emphasis on emotions, more generally, as intra-individual phenomena has long been predominant in Western scholarship, investigations of emotions as inter-individual phenomena are on the rise (Brown & Fredrickson, 2021).
Joining this course correction, Fredrickson (2013b, 2016) introduced a new theory, which has come to be called Positivity Resonance Theory. Drawing together insights and evidence from affective science, relationship science, and developmental science, this theory posits that a core elemental feature of the emotion of love is “positivity resonance,” or micro-moments of co-experienced positive affect that resonates between and among individuals. More specifically, positivity resonance is defined as brief episodes of high-quality interpersonal connectedness characterized by a synthesis of three key features: (a) shared positive affect, (b) caring nonverbal synchrony, and (c) biological synchrony (Brown & Fredrickson, 2021; Fredrickson, 2016). In keeping with the Broaden-and-Build Theory, the holistic experience of positivity resonance transcends self-focus and self-interest and thereby broadens each individual’s momentary awareness to include a focus on others. Additionally, frequent experiences of positivity resonance accumulate over time to build social bonds and other social and collective goods, such as trust, loyalty, commitment, and safe communities.
Empirical evidence to support Positivity Resonance Theory is growing. Fredrickson’s team has introduced a brief, self-report measure of “perceived positivity resonance” which across three studies shows that it is reliably linked to higher levels of flourishing mental health, lower levels of loneliness and depression, and (albeit less reliably) lower levels of illness symptoms (Major, Le Nguyen, Lundberg, & Fredrickson, 2018). Her team has also developed a video coding system to capture behavioral indicators of positivity resonance and shows that this new global coding system outperforms more fine-grained and time-consuming coding systems in predicting relationship satisfaction (Otero et al., 2020). Additional research has also linked shared experiences of positive emotions to physiological synchrony (Chen, Brown, Wells, Rothwell, Otero, Levenson & Fredrickson, 2020), resilience to adversity (Prinzing, Zhou, West, Le Nguyen, Wells & Fredrickson, 2020), and to the day-to-day enactment of caring, prosocial actions that protect public health (West, Le Nguyen, Zhou, Prinzing, Wells & Fredrickson, 2021). Importantly, although individual well-being, health, and longevity have been linked both to positive emotions more generally and to social integration more generally, tests of Positivity Resonance Theory suggest that the intersection of these two broader constructs (i.e., positive emotions experienced within social connection) may be especially beneficial (Major et al., 2018; Prinzing et al., 2020).
Given the right conditions, positivity resonance is relatively easy to cultivate. Fredrickson (2016) describes two primary preconditions for its emergence. The first is perceived safety, which allows individuals to open up to and trust each other, despite the ever-present risks of rejection or exploitation. The second precondition is real-time sensory connection, which is best attained through in-person, face-to-face interaction, although also possible with simultaneously shared voice and/or shared visual access. Real-time sensory connection is vital because positivity resonance is an embodied form of human connection, neither abstract nor symbolic. True synchrony in behavior and biology, for instance, is not possible when human communication is distilled into text only, or even into recorded messages. In as yet unpublished work, Fredrickson’s team has found that simply describing the value of social connectedness to people is sufficient to inspire them to engage with others in ways that cultivate positivity resonance more frequently in daily life, which in turn builds altruism and other prosocial tendencies. We turn next to ways that the arts can foster this high-quality form of human connection in ways that build both individual and relational resources.
Appreciating the Way Artists Document and Influence One to One Human Connection
Schneider’s selection of works for More Love similarly conceptualized love as micro-moments of shared connection, whether with close relations or even strangers. After many decades of celebrating difference, in the 1990s and gaining momentum in the early 2000s, artists and philosophers began paying close attention to human connection (Schneider, 2013a, p. 24). This follows the 1980s where individual experience, by gender, race, sexuality, etc., is emphasized, which is itself a reaction to movements, like feminism of the 1970s, that are criticized for being too white and straight. In fact, attending to love in the 1990s and onward is a re-emergence, but one that focused on the individual, whether one on one or in groups, compared to the 1960s communal ethos (Katz, 2013). In addition, the long-heralded death of the author was giving way to the birth of the viewer. In her 2002 book, The Way of Love, feminist theorist Luce Irigaray (2002) advocated for non-hierarchical wisdom that could emerge from dialogue. She sought a “wisdom of love,” rather than “love of wisdom” (p. 2). At the same time, artists began to investigate ways to allow others, often the viewer, to become collaborators. (Schneider, 2013)
In “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) (1987–1990) (Figure 23.2), Felix Gonzalez-Torres places two standard wall-hanging office clocks side by side. While in part born of both his fear of time running out (although the clocks can be replaced or maintained) and a gratitude for the time, “our time” (Gonzalez-Torres in Ault, p. 155), he and his lover had together, this work literalizes the behavioral synchrony of positivity resonance. Finding a way to celebrate his same-sex lover that evaded the era’s displeasure and censorship of explicit images of homosexuality encouraged Gonzalez-Torres to focus on love’s underlying universality.
Figure 23.2. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), 1987–1990, Wall clocks. Original clock size: 13½ inches diameter, Edition of 3, 1 AP.
Photo: EPW Studio/Maris Hutchinson. Installation view: Felix Gonzalez-Torres. David Zwirner Gallery, New York, NY, April 27–July 14 2017. © Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Courtesy of The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.
In his “Untitled” (1991), a billboard of an empty double bed that appears to have just been vacated, with rumpled sheets and indented pillows, he instinctively captures and evokes the other two aspects of positivity resonance: safety and real-time sensory connection. For Gonzalez-Torres, the work offers the viewer an inviting space upon which she could project her own desires and, in so doing, advocate for love in whatever form it might emerge—gay, straight, monogamous, sexual, maternal, etc.
Because micro-moments of positivity resonance that build bonds are by nature ephemeral, cumulative, difficult to record, and emotionally complex, many of the artists in More Love amass unique collections of these tender and fleeting actions. In Butterfly Kisses (1996–1999), Janine Antoni uses her eyelashes to mark Cover Girl Thick Lash mascara on paper 2,248 times to articulate the inherent flirtation and play, as well as labor, involved in sustained connection. In Love (2000), Louise Bourgeois stacks ascending square red pillows into a totem. In These Arms of Mine (2011), Sarah Gotowka knits her boyfriend’s texted emoticons into body warmers. In Diary of Flowers (In Love) (1996), Jim Hodges creates voluminous collections of flowers doodled on diner napkins.
Other artists have conceived works where the design of the work itself centers around producing nonverbal behavioral and biological synchrony between two people. In Drawing Together (2015) (http://www.cs1projects.org/#/drawingtogether/), Felice Koenig and C.S.1 Curatorial Projects created a platform where seventy members of the public co-create drawings with Koenig on the same piece of paper for ninety minutes. Koenig begins by asking her partner to make the first mark and then mirrors and embellishes his or her gesture. Colorful dots, squiggles, and lines build up a pattern in a jazz-like fashion as the paper is regularly turned; a deep sense of connection is created, a resonant flow. Time stops. The creative self is alive in the joy of making without the care of a final product. The other person’s reciprocal marks feel like gifts. As the drawing builds up, so do positive emotions and sense of possibility. As an initially nervous librarian said, “I think the experience dusted off a part of my brain, because that evening I stopped at my piano, sat down and played—for the first time in ages” (Schneider, 2015).
Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher conceived of Learning to Love You More (http://learningtoloveyoumore.com/) in 2002. This website, in use until 2009, was created as an antidote to the way technology isolates and the art world excludes. Seventy assignments were created to encourage participants to leave their computers, to become more engaged with life and their fellow humans, and then to report back their findings to this new online community, free of a critical gatekeeper. Some of the assignments provoked and then documented brief episodes of high-quality interpersonal connectedness through physical interaction or trust-building exchanges: “Take a picture of strangers holding hands”; “Talk to someone who has experienced war”; “Take a picture of your parents kissing”; “Braid someone’s hair”; “Spend time with someone dying.”
When the embodied human connection necessary for love is not possible, artists will act as surrogates for the imprisoned. Antonio Vega Macotela created Time Divisa (2006–2011), where he completed 356 collaborations with Mexico City prisoners. In exchange for hugging, shaking hands, and visiting the grave of a family member, Macotela asks inmates to document physical actions—diagram a basketball play, dance alone in one’s cell, or sportcast a basketball game, as if it were poetry. In Where We Come From, 2001–03, Emily Jacir offered something similar to those who could not return to Palestine. “Visit my mother, hug and kiss her and tell her that these are from her son.” “Go to Haifa and play soccer with the first Palestinian boy you see on the street.” “Go on a date with a Palestinian girl from East Jerusalem that I have only spoken to on the phone.” These fragile instances of physical intimacy and community connection are the foundation of our individual and collective well-being and as a result these simple acts become intense forms of protest.
Toward a Scientific Understanding of Positive Emotions Shared Across Communities.
Although less frequently the target of study, positive emotions may also be experienced in larger collectives, such as entire communities engaged in shared rituals or other large-scale collective events. Stadiums filled with sports fans sharing their delight in and excitement for their team’s performance provide just one example. Community-level moments have been identified as “collective effervescence” in sociology and “communitas” in anthropology. To the extent that such uplifted communal moments contain elements of caring nonverbal synchrony—and not simply shared positive affect and biological synchrony—they may also be described as positivity resonance en masse. Extending Positivity Resonance Theory to this level of analysis suggests that community-level resources would accrue with recurrent experiences of this sort, such as perceived safety within one’s community and community resilience. With disrespect and arrogant divisiveness on the rise in public discourse, a better understanding of community-level shared positive emotions and how best to cultivate them may be vital to re-establish civility and trust in humanity. Here we explore what can be learned from artists’ attempts to create positive community-level experiences.
Appreciating the Ways Artists Encourage Shared Positive Emotions at a Community Level
Since the early 1990s, a range of artists have been rearranging one’s encounter with art to prioritize relationships over objects. In 1998 Nicholas Bourriaud named this new type of art “relational aesthetics.” “The work of art as social interstice” (Bourriaud, 1998, p. 160), as he named it, often means creating a social situation so that the gallery or museum experience presents not objects to encounter, but rather new conversations and connections. In the seminal example from 1990, Rirkrit Tiravanija invited people to come to a stark white downtown New York gallery, and when they arrived, rather than finding objects to consider, they were served pad thai. The unexpected offer of comfort food shifts the viewer’s experience of the gallery, food, and art.
This type of practice went by a number of names: socially engaged art, participatory art, and social practice. Two large changes affected the rise of this work: digital media and global political and socioeconomic shifts. Bourriaud uses the automated teller machine (ATM) as a symbol of the mechanization of social function. “[These] machines now perform tasks that once represented so many opportunities for exchanges, pleasure or conflict” (Bourriaud, 1998, p. 162). This loss encourages artists to do the inverse and repair this social space. It is through “little gestures,” (what Fredrickson [2013a] calls micro-moments of connection), that the “relational fabric” of society may be “re-stitched” says Bourriaud (Bourriaud, 2002).
Kateřina Šedá rebuilt community after the fall of communism in the Czech Republic. She worked for a year to convince a small village to do the same thing for a day in There Is Nothing There (2003), her first large public project. Everyone went shopping, swept their walks, ate the same lunch, their children rode their bikes, and had a communal drink at the same time. The mundane Saturday routine turned into a joyful and amusing shared activity. Šedá’s positivity resonance en masse restored pride in the community, helping them to see that “everything substantial” does not “take place in cities,” (Fetzer, ed., p. 17) as they had reported on her initial questionnaires.
While Learning to Love You More (LTLYM) prompted caring face-to-face connection, sharing one’s work online with others in a space “predicated on total and instant acceptance and equality” instigated a community (Mangione, 2013, p. 96). Some assignments even built on previous ones: “Get a temporary tattoo of one of Morgan Rozacky’s neighbors”; “Recreate a scene from Laura Lark’s life story” (http://learningtoloveyoumore.com/reports/22/22.php); “Lipsync to [Maurisa’s] shy neighbor’s Garth Brooks cover.” As Fletcher and July have written: “The best art and writing is [sic] almost like an assignment; it is so vibrant that you feel compelled to make something in response…. For a brief moment it seems wonderfully easy to live and love and create breathtaking things” (Fletcher & July, “love” page of website http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/love/index.php). LTLYM does many of the same things as positivity resonance en masse, although it is virtual. It creates a supportive environment. All of the assignments require doing something, which is embodied. And like the way in which positive emotions broaden and build overtime, the website created a cascade of positive interactions that built on one another, creating an enduring community.
With Full Circle (http://www.cs1projects.org/#/full-circle/; 2016), a specially designed structure of seven free-hanging seats in the round is placed on an empty lot. The idea was to alter the linear structure of most swing sets where people sway side by side, and instead place them in a circle, as if everyone is at the same table. As one mom reports, compared to other playgrounds, it was hard not to make a friend, even for the shy among us, as one is swinging and smiling. By providing a communal gathering place, especially on a site surrounded by a diverse neighborhood of various races, classes, and places of origin, that creates joy and places visitors in direct face-to-face interaction, real relationships are built.
The material abundance and joyous movement of Cave’s Soundsuits gave way to orchestrating collaborative art-making as a further means of eliciting positive emotions, this time, en masse. In Shreveport, Louisiana, for AS IS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = wVdIGBSQy78; 2016), Cave created beaded blankets with the residents of five social service agencies (for the homeless, at-risk children, those with HIV/AIDS, mental illness, and developmental disabilities) over six months. These blankets were then the centerpiece for a dynamic theatrical production, built from the city’s poetic, musical, and dance talents. This long-term, shared creative endeavor had the community do something physical and creative over time together. A cascade of supportive and acknowledging conversations ensued: trust built up slowly as a result, and pride accumulated, creating a communal sense of purpose. Compare AS IS to the traditional places where collective effervescence is measured—at concerts, places of worship, or during sporting events. In Shreveport, Cave’s piece has a whole town across communities working to be producers, rather than just congregants or fans, of a unique, joy-filled, affirming work of art designed to celebrate them.
When Cave brought his performance Up Right, as part of his Nick Cave: Feat. Nashville production to Schermerhorn Symphony Center, creative leaders of various cultural institutions were brought together in an unusual collective experience. As “Practitioners,” they dressed the “Initiates”—young African-American men—in Cave’s bejeweled suits of wonder and stature. (Cave, 2018, p. 4) In preparation, they built the kind of` trust that “one does at camp,” said one curator. “I will be that much more likely to call on someone to do something new together or offer support” (Katie Delmez, curator, Frist Art Museum, personal communication, April 19, 2018), explaining how the special bonds created would broaden and build, birthing a new network. These kinds of opportunities are rare, especially across institutions, and so offer an opportunity to bring community together.
Future Possibilities and Summary
While contemporary visual art is produced to both document and foster ideas, rather than produce a specific measurable “impact,” artists do want to create awareness for issues that they care about. Perhaps there would be benefits to creating a matrix with which to assess works of social practice. Some art critics say some of this work looks too much like a party or is doing the work of social service agencies. A standardized way to evaluate various projects would create an alternative and specific language for critique. Part of this could include measures already in use, such as measures of “perceived positivity resonance.”
As many of these projects purport to have positive community impact, such a matrix would help document this for communities and their necessary funders. In addition, it would communicate that the effects of this artwork are not only immediate and momentary, but can also be cumulative and enduring, as cycles of upward momentum and change ensue. Longitudinal studies would be well suited to understand the full life cycle of effects of certain community-level art works.
A data-driven as well as a journalist or oral history approach to collecting the responses of large samples of participants is also needed. Art history, as an intellectual history, gathers the reviews of experts about works of art. If, however, the artwork is about rethinking hierarchies and who the producers of knowledge are, art history about social practice works demands collecting the thoughts, both anecdotally and systematically, from the viewer/collaborators. Perhaps these interviews, like relationship interviews, could be coded for behavioral indicators of positivity resonance.
Additionally, it might be important to better understand how artists (as well as individuals) try to create positivity resonance when they cannot share physical space with others. What do the best virtual communities do? How do artists create experiences to mimic the core features of positivity resonance? Additionally, if humans lived originally in small groups where all contact and art was made face to face, what can positive psychology studies learn from current art-making practices, knowing that the viewer will often not experience the work with the makers in real time?
Historically, artists and scientists have worked together on a variety of topics. Richard Loveless (http://nautil.us/blog/the-man-who-changed-how-artists-and-scientists-work-together), a pioneer of such collaborations, has funded over 200 projects, including work with a psycho-neuro-immunologist and a theatre director. Perhaps, a positive psychologist and a social practice artist could work together to create a new piece and/or a new study. As both disciplines seek to advance their fields, creating projects that are mutually beneficial to both, rather than retroactively evaluating a previous work, would offer a particularly compelling incentive.
Much more research could also be done to evaluate the positivity of art making of all kinds: painting, drawing, crafting, dancing, etc. And what is the effect of doing these art forms collectively? Are they reliable sources of positivity resonance and positivity resonance en masse? If so, do they initiate social and psychological cascades toward improved health and strengthened communities?
What can the science of psychology learn from the way artists build their projects? Artists produce powerful works by addressing the emotional complexity of life: the grief or sadness embedded in joy, for instance. By attending more closely to developments in artistic practice, positive psychologists may gain insights on how best to measure and manipulate positivity and positivity resonance.
In summary, the arts can be leveraged in many ways to advance scientific understanding of human nature. Likewise, scientific understandings of human nature can be leveraged to advance understanding in the humanities concerning the age-old impulse to create and share artistic works.
References
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Further Reading
Bolton, A., Dyangani Ose, E., & Thompson, N. (2014). Nick Cave: Epitome. Munich, Germany: Prestel.
Cave, N. (2016). AS IS. Shreveport, LA: Shreveport Regional Arts Council.