The Anti-Thesis of Development: Hanna Andersson

-Hanna, is your work autobiographical?
-Yes.
-Okay, good. Mine too.

Hanna Andersson's works resonate with me. As I stare at her drawings and paintings chaotically (also orderly) spread out on the floor of her studio I look up at her and notice her Yin- Yang nose ring. Her drawings sift through the contrast and vibrate of the same feeling of reconciliation of shadow and light, both external and within. Duality of life.

Hanna agreed there had been something electric in the air this whole year and for her that something made more sense in abstraction. My own shadows took over this year. Two panic attacks triggered, in short, by work (too much), money (Listen to: Rihanna "Bitch Better Have My Money"), fear of abandonment (or relationships), and lack of sleep (zZz since January zZz). I was basically losing control of my life (major 30s life crisis, I guess?!?). Hanna pointed out in our meeting that thoughts are abstract, but they still govern our physical lives. My panicky thoughts felt physical, not abstract (is this who I am now?).

Charcoal thin and broad anarchic scribbles covering everything that is clean.

My internet consumption is in overdrive and matches the chaos within: articles, job emails (x100000), Facebook, Pirate bay (what to watch? Can't watch anything because I can't focus), hypnosis videos, eeeeh I'll watch a few tarotscopes instead (no doesn't fit, what's my moon sign? Hmmm…yeah that sounds better) (Damn, I've watched too many tarotscope-videos. (I can't decide if I want to see him in my feed or not. Your mannerisms are stuck on me.) Hangovers filled with panic attacks.

Chalk colors in swirling in nonconcrete shapes.

Finally, I can sleep. That's been the hardest thing this year. In the lack of sleep life becomes surreal. Maybe another cigarette (read: a pack of cigarettes) will bring answers. I have to remind myself that I don't smoke (I do a lot of things that I don't do).

"Hanna, did you see that documentary The Secret? You know, law of attraction and manifestation?" Like attracts like. Everything you experience in life shows up in your reality because you have a vibrational match to it.

You create your own destiny

Късмет

State of awareness

Thank god/goddess for pills!

Thoughts influencing reality

Vibrational frequency

Putting things in your vortex, vortex of creation

The lighted up trail

Psycho cybernetics

Sifting through the contrast

I started watching videos of Eckhart Tolle. He's kind of like a German Yoda. With his soothing voice he says to stay in the present and stop thinking. Thoughts of the past makes you depressed, focusing on the future spurs anxiety and neither have any real substance because you can't really change any of it. When you let go of thinking, you become one with the Being.

From deep abstract, nonsensical symbolism faces from past characters come out.

Suddenly, in comes sadness. I'm on a train listening to acid house and crying. And I just want to keep on crying. Tolle's voice sounding in my head "this is your life situation, not your life".

It started to make sense when all those panicky feelings all of a sudden disappeared. Total silence and numbness and I felt detached from my life. My innate response to everything was "I can, but I won't" (pheew, I finally feel like myself). Feeling at ease through feeling nothing.

Pages and pages of subconscious chromatic drawings and sentences form together a divided entity.

"The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace."

Text by Alida Ivanov