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open axis
Sooner or later everything turns, and turning requires an axis, usually invisible. The Earth, the Sun, Jupiter, and people have at least one thing in common—they are bodies that move on an axis, whether axis mundi or spine. When the axis is open—that is, released, not forcefully held in place—things turn freely, subtly moving in and out of balance. Keeping the axis open and aware produces the state I have been calling the axial. For a human being (used to more or less walking “upright” rather than on all fours) to keep her or his own dynamic axis open requires a certain process of awareness, indeed a practice or discipline. There are many body-centered techniques, both Eastern and Western, for observing and preserving the health of the axis. These techniques somehow focus the senses directly on the axis (as spine, inner column, or whatever), toward discovering its role with respect to what may be considered the center. Center as a “dynamism,” or perhaps an intensively contained field of motion with feedback, rather than fixture of control or defense.
Art (broadly defined) has the potential to perform such a sense-based discipline of the axial, which could be thought of as a dynamic self-mentoring through the “medium” of the physical body. I have been interested in the possibility that when an art develops a disciplined awareness of the axial, its stance may be more “naturally” open to continuous change and discovery, perhaps deliberate innovation as well, but without necessarily valorizing innovation as such. Whether or not this is a generally applicable notion, I have found it to be a powerful way to think about art in relation to principle. It seems that the axial sense of art thrives best in an environment that values the unexpected, the unprecedented, and the radically new (which may or may not apply to the “avant-garde” sensibility). Joy, rather than, or at least equal to, fear before the unknown and the unnamable.
(excerpt from Prologue by George Quasha)
Axial Stones: an art of precarious balance
published by North Atlantic Press, 2006
160 pages