The tradition of making and/or viewing art objects is no longer useful for what I do as an artist. My art practice has moved beyond art’s culturally assigned role as signifier of the complex beauties of transcendence and beyond sociocultural modes of understanding.

The universe is a living, intimately interconnected whole. We humans are thus all intimately interconnected with the universe and with each other. I want to activate these deep interconnections.

Instead of communicating my creativity through an art form such as sculpture, painting, or performance, I want to communicate my creativity directly with another person. With the person’s permission, I would establish a direct empathetic communication by manifesting my sensation of creativity in them, so they would immediately feel exactly what I was experiencing throughout their bodily/mental awareness. I have been exploring ways to do this for the past thirteen years through readings in physics such as non-locality, floating in floatation tanks, doing breathwork, practicing reike, studying animals’ and plants’ modes of communication, morphic fields, and more.

What I'm doing could have far-reaching implications for the entire shape and texture of our culture based on the physical movement of materials.

We will be able to conceive new ways of interacting with each other, formulate new social structurings. I'm talking about a vast increase in our capacity to empathize. Empathy is a word which implies a realization of our connectedness, and an intimate understanding of the situations and feelings of others and of our world. People who have empathy for each other and their world will be far less likely to willfully do harm. Violence and hatred would be dramatically reduced. Letting go of dependence on any objects could cause us to become aware of every gesture we make, every kind of movement, every communication. It may even do away with the need for both object and language and lead us to innovative new systems of thought.

As a result of being able to manifest experience directly into another person, our notions and ways of being will evolve, which could help us become more imaginative and initiate enlightenment.

[Arleen Hartman (January 17, 1954, Ohio, USA) is a professional artist whose primary focus is researching and practicing creativity through an exploration of non-locality, manifestation, and morphic fields. Her earlier, object-related artwork has been extensively reviewed, collected, and exhibited nationally. She has taught Studio Art, Art History, Humanities, Urban Studies, Women's Studies, Black Studies, and Literature, at several universities for 22 years. She has lectured widely and led workshops on many art topics. Hartman has been a feminist activist, working for people's rights, since she was sixteen.]