"The knowledge of our own minds can be put to no better use than in understanding our social and political lives. That is why political psychology matters."

-George Lakoff, Berkeley, CA April 2008

•Art for the betterment of life

•Individual psychology & behaviourism

•Psychology affected by outside parameters, such as education, environment, social- political environment of different countries.

•Psychology of the individual affects his/her surroundings, (natural or socio-political environment.)

Man With a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov 1929

Trail of thought: How important are our values and belief systems, towards the

way we see the world?

•Walter Benjamin and his concerns on the “political tendency” movement called “The New Objectivity”, which seemed to estheticise politics, rather than politicising art.

•The juxtaposition of Karl Marx and fascism and its context within art

•Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of phenomenology, being a philosophical method, its aim to put out of action the assumptions we normally make about ourselves and the world for scientific and practical purposes, and to get back to the world as we directly experience it in pre-reflective perception.

•Element of appearances (phenomenology) in Umberto Eco’s novels

Hartmann Schedel's Das Ander Alter Der Welt

Beliefs which influence our perception of the world

Examples: •Racism, •Belief in a just world, •The concept of evil and good •“Syndrome of the Man on Horseback” ( The tendency to follow a person who seems to be in charge, and the need to believe that the people in charge are rightfully there).

Most if not all of our beliefs act as layers upon our sight, and it depends on us to choose which ones are applicable and which ones aren't.

Pierre Huyghe, ‘This is not a time for dreaming,’ 2004

Richard Wentworth from ‘Faux Amis’ 2001

Theory into practice

Our beliefs being represented by maps, and those maps being put in front of our eyes, in order to narrate the world to us, or act as filters to see the world through them.

A man on horseback enlarged, looking and pointing at the viewer. Being placed to a very small scale of the same man on horseback and a figure of a viewer.

Each person sees the world according to their beliefs and ideas (bearing in mind of course that the psyche is influenced by its environment and education).

Is it possible for anyone to see the world adjectively, as it exactly is? Or is the world shaped by what we believe, exactly because we believe in it?

Napoleon on horsebackPiotr MichalowskiBronze, 1832-35, cast 1841 National Museum in Krakow

The Fra Mauro Map

Carta Marina

Is it possible for anyone to see the world adjectively, exactly as it is? Or is the world shaped differently for each person, by what that person believes, exactly because he or she believes in it?