Rainer Schnurre: Artistic Biography-Work 1

A creative approach to learning to read your own biography.

A practical manual for self-learning Volume 1

Human beings today want to do and experience things for themselves, want to strive for authentic self-knowledge, and do not want to be told what to do. A widespread process is happening in the world at large: the emancipation of the human individuality from any external authority. Naturally it would also be possible to describe quite opposite tendencies. Every step in human development is accompanied by an impatient urge to get there too early, as well as a lethargic hanging on to out-dated values for too long.
Here are a few stimulating questions:
– Can I emancipate myself from my usual mode of looking at my own biography?
– Is it even possible for me to practice an extended and indeed creative mode of perceiving my own life through a liberating self-schooling (of myself), no matter what my life circumstances may be?
– And suppose it were even possible that I could manage to actually  scrutinise of my life, which would result in a re-evaluation of my judgments in the manner of the aforementioned emancipation where I would be at once the revolutionary as well as the dictator to be overthrown?
– And could it be that I have submitted myself to unconscious dictates consisting of rigid evaluations, judgments and prejudices in regard to my own life, which I do not recognise and am perhaps even unwilling to acknowledge as such.
– Could it even become possible that I not only conceive of life shaping me but even that I lead my life in a creative manner as well? Would it perhaps even be possible that I in the future, through gaining deeper insights into the connections and conditions of my biography, re-interpret the sense of ‘I must’ as an: ‘I will’ urge – thereby lending my life a underlying creative quality.