The Fantastic Planet

I met a rather interested character in a hostel in San Francisco recently. He was visiting the city for a few days from Stanford and started talking to me in the computer room, looking for some human conversation I think. A Phd student of applied physics, he also taught a music technology class and showed me his website for generating music through computer programming. I didn't understand it much, but he asked me about my area of study and had a surprising interest in Land Art and Andy Goldsworthy in particular. He also told me about this crazy little French animated movie, The Fantastic Planet and insisted we watch it together. Unfortunately the movie room was occupied, and we ended up going out to a bar instead, but a few weeks later I finally got around to watching it by myself, and now I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to see it with him, I would love to know what he had to say about it.

A bizarre, surrealist animated film, it was made in 1973 and directed by Rene Laloux, with animation by the writer and artist Roland Topor. The graphics are more akin to the painting than the animation tradition, with slow movement and sketchy lines, all the colours are subdues browns and the whole landscape is reminiscent of a surrealist Dali dreamscape. The imagery is very dream like, with large moving plants that devour each other and populated with a variety of threatening animals and anamorphic forms.
The story centers around a distopian future, reminiscent of planet of the apes, where human creatures called Oms are the playthings of the large Draags, blue creatures who are a hundred times the size and are an advanced species of meditating aliens.  They keep the Oms as pets, and regularly carry out mass exterminations of the wild Oms living in the forests. The plot follows the life of one Om, Terr, adopted when orphaned by a young female Draag named Tiwa. Tiwa's father is one of the ruling elite, and through Tiwa's daily lessons, Terr learns about the culture and history of the Draag planet. When he eventually escapes to join the wild Oms, he takes this knowledge with him to help build space ships for the Oms. With these ships, Terr travels to the Fantastic Planet, where he destroys the huge grey statues he finds there that allow the Draags to reproduce, thus threatening the whole race and simultaneously preventing a mass extermination of his own species.
The film was produced between France and Czechoslovakia and is an obvious allegory for the Soviet Occupation of Czechoslovakia. With the oppressed rising up to threaten the rule of their oppressors, it has resonances for any master/slave society, and can be read as an allegory for many different historical and political regimes as well as an influence on many more recent science fiction universes, from the Empire and Rebels in Star Wars, to the Naa'vi and soldiers in Avatar.
What is unusual in this portrayal of rulers and ruled, is the sympathetic portrayal of the Draags, particularly Tiwa, Terr's owner. In the beginning of the film we see her play with him like a pet, and we laugh at his antics along with her. Innocent of any wrongdoing, it is difficult to blame her for her treatment of him, as she does appear to be genuinely fond of him. The beginning of the film focuses on the civilization of the Draags, and we view the story from their perspective, it is only when Terr gains an education and becomes self-aware that the point of view shifts and we begin to sympathize with him.  When he escapes to join a colony of Oms in the wild, Tiwa disappears from the story, and we never learn her reaction or opinions to the following events. I found her to be a more sympathetic character than Terr, who plays the role of savior, uniting the warring Om clans to bring them salvation. A rather boring and predicable theme.
Strangely enough, the random scenes of large threatening plant life forms are more terrifying than the scenes of mass extermination of the Oms, possibly because the Oms are never given any personality or likeable qualities. The haunting atmosphere of this world is made all the more by the score by Alain Goraguer. It's experimentally trippy psychedelic sound fits the strange quirky animation and the weird slow pace of the narrative perfectly. The music and animation are the most fascinating parts of this film. I'm not a huge fan of science fiction other-worlds, and the story left me a little cold, particularly the abrupt ending, where the two warring species suddenly are able to live in perfect harmony with no hangover from their previous hierarchical society. I enjoyed it best when it abandoned all plot and focused instead on lengthy close ups of the beautiful painterly faces of the Oms, and the extended scenes of the planets flora and fauna.

Contemporary Korean Art

While contemporary Chinese art has never held much appeal for me; too overhyped and market driven, recently there seems to be an emergence of Korean artists in the west. My attention was first grabbed when in a museum bookshop I came across a beautiful edition of Korean Eye: contemporary Korean Art following the exhibition Korean Eye: Moon Generation,  the first international exhibition of Korean Contemporary art. It features sixty of Korea’s most renowned artists. There were some delightful surprises, fresh innovative stuff that easily challenges the most recent work coming out of America or Britain at the moment. There did seem to be a recurring theme, of bodies and identity, whether due to the bias of the curators or the artists, I’m not certain.

Here are some of my favourites:

Kim Joon

Joon’s work depicts large group portraits of anonymous bodies uniquely tattooed with a variety of patterns and colours.  He uses 3-D animation software to construct the body or bodies he wants, grafting on the type of skin he desires - animal skin, artificial skin, or human skin, even the skin of a leather bag or skin of a shoe. He uses this surface skin and grafts it onto the 3 dimensional image he created. This computer program is called 3-D Studio Max. It is the program used to create animated films. Some of his works include tattoos of logos, a reflection of the inscription of universal brands in our daily lives, perhaps even a wry comment on the trend for tattoos of brand names. The artist sees tattoos as a form of collective identity: “In history, anthropologists will tell you that tattoos were used for different kinds of purposes. Sometimes they were used to define boundaries, or to have your own social groups. Then at other times it was to punish somebody in a negative sense, to reject you. There is a notion of acceptance and rejection- a sense of belongingness and non-belongingness. The tattoo or tattooing doesn’t have just one singular meaning, but has multiple meanings, and conflicting meanings”.

Bae Joonsung

In his series ‘The Costume of the Painter’, he paints onto transparent acrylic films. Using recognizable old master paintings, he inserts young Asian nudes that are only revealed as the viewer walks by as a sort of hologram. The use of photography to update and invade traditional paintings plays on the relationship between the two media, and suggests a way of harmonizing the two, rather than opposing them. The viewer interaction in order to reveal the female nudes also introduces an element of play, creating a sort of peep-show effect. 

Lee Rim

‘The Mess of Emotions’ are large oil paintings originate in artistic performances, drawn from photographs of the artist or a model covered in black and white paint. 

"Our relationships are not decided alone.

Through various experiences and

conversations, thoughts are shared,

learning our differences and similarities.

This is the moment when spirits

combine. This feeling is unique in

forming relationships. As such, based on

the feelings of people, I first perform the

nervousness that only I may feel and

then transfer the image of that feeling

onto a flat surface. Even though we live

in different environments, at a certain

point in time we feel the same when we

look at an object. When I am having a

conversation with my family and friends,

I feel that we are of the same mind.

I believe that one admits differences

and similarities of each creature through

interacting with each other. Based on

a perception of this commonality, I try

to put my incidental excitement into

a two-dimensional surface of colours

presenting you with another imaginative,

phantasmagorical world.”

-artist’s statement.

Here are a few more not included in the exhibition who still deserve a mention:

Yeondoo Yung

In the Wonderland series, the artist takes children’s drawings and recreates the scene which he then photographs. Here is the making of, as related on his website: Jung’s new series of photos, “Wonderland” (2004), presents costumed ado­les­cents posing in sets based as closely as possible on children’s drawings. He collaborates with many peo­ple to bring to life the boundless imagination in the drawings. For four months, Jung oversaw art classes in four kinder­gartens in Seoul and collected 1,200 drawings by children between the ages of five and seven. After pouring through them, he carefully selected 17 drawings and interpreted their meanings. Then he recruited 60 high school students by pass­ing out hand­bills at their schools in which he invited them to act out the scenarios in the children’s drawings. In order to recreate faithfully drawing details such as dresses with uneven sleeves or buttons of different sizes, he convinced five fashion designers to custom make the clothing for the photo shoot. He also made props unlike any scale found in real­ity but similar to those in the drawings.

“Wonderland” changes fan­tasy into photographic reality without the aid of computer-generated graphics. The works, entirely made by hand, are a tremen­dous group effort similar to a stage production that captures the sudden changes in the actors’ forms, in the midst of people going about their lives against the back­drop of the city.

Sora Kim

Sora Kim’s ‘Abstract Walking’, deals with a theme very close to my heart. A sound installation, it presented a vast spatial and temporal territory that encompassed diverse stories and interpretations, and invited viewers to walk in this abstract territory. Produced for the Artsonje Center in March 2012, Kim collaborated with different artists and participants throughout different stages. First she collected stories of journeys from the participants. Then nine writers turned the stories into scripts that included their personal reflections and interjections. Next, eight musicians created accompanying scores, which were edited into one sound piece by music director Younggyu Jang. In the gallery the finished piece is played, “creating an abstract territory where the detritus of the collected spaces and time and the interpretations of various artists are scattered throughout; and suggests ways to experience art in an emancipated way, walking in the artist’s abstract territory”. A video work also accompanied the exhibiton. This creation of territories and emphasis on walking reminds me of the artist Francis Alÿs, who uses similar practices to create his artwork, as in the piece ‘The Green Line’,  in which he retraced the border between Israel and Palestine carrying a leaking can of green paint, telling the story of a fraught political history through the medium of walking.  Less politically charged than Alÿs perhaps, but Kim’s conceptual practice uses art as a means of communication, creating a space for non-hierarchical exchange and using elements from everyday life to produce unexpected dialogues.

  

For Inkeater (August 2012)

No, not ill-intent,
but ignorance.
To a fly's eyes
the world is magnified.
It's mass inflates;
When crushed,
then by his own weight.

Humour

The use of humour in art has traditionally been consigned to the position of second class citizen, deemed the lesser sillier cousin of high art and used primarily for as a tool for political and social commentary with little merit in its own right. William Hogarth was perhaps the first artist to be taken seriously as an artist and as a humourist. This is perhaps to do with the moral message of his painting, that was in keeping with the grand historical portraiture of the British Academy of the time.

Historically, the medium of painting doesn't lend itself well to humour. It is too reliant on narrative and realism descending into the realm of caricature or cartoon when it attempts to be cheerful. With the expansion of media in contemporary art, humour has found a new place, no longer reliant of funny depictions of people or scenarios, artists are employing ever ingenious means to elicit both a lighthearted chuckle and a deeper philosophical reflections from viewers, giving humour a new found position in contemporary art.

The power of humor in art is when meaning is layered and context destabilizes its superficial funniness to reveal something deeper and more meaningful. Humor can be a useful tool in art: ‘it can destabilize a situation and in a split second, draw the viewer in or allow something else out” – (Adam McEwen British artist based in New York).

Laughter can create a connection between the viewer and the work or the artist, allowing the work to be subversive. Humor can operate as a sign of humanity, in the face of overwhelming or dark situations.

Narrative plays a big role in the use of humor in art. Jokes need a set up, a funny situation or a narrative juxtaposition in order to generate laughs. This leads to a lot of artists who use humor opting for video work, such as Allora and Calzadilla's Returning a Sound (2004-05).

Homar, an activist, rides around Vieques on a moped that Allora & Calzadilla reengineered by  a trumpet to the exhaust system. During the ride, every thrust of the throttle or shift in speed alters the instrument's pitch. Allora & Calzadilla have edited out other ambient noise, leaving only the alternately sputtering vibrato and clear, pure sound of the trumpet as a jazzlike soundtrack, a call to action, or perhaps an anthem, as the artists discuss in the interview that follows. Their works counterpose militarism and war with adroit manipulations of sound, music, and spoken word.
 Strategically seeking out the sounds of combat as their sonic media, Allora & Calzadilla endeavor to reissue sounds whose meanings have grown far too familiar in an effort to restructure, at the source, those corporeal conformities, always marked in and on the body already, through which violent and potentially devastating action first becomes possible.

Created in 2008 and presented at the Zach Feurer Gallery, New York video artist Tamy Ben-Tor tackles issues pertaining to social customs and gender roles in her video titled Gewald. As evident of her work, Ben-Tor uses child-like story scenarios and songs to awaken social perceptions through her witty portrayals of everyday-life. At first impression, her work seems silly and even irrelevant, but as the video progresses, one may begin to understand the serious subject she addresses and the message conveyed.

At first in Gewald, Ben-Tor dressed in brightly colored folk attire sings how we must be aware of the household “man covered in mud who knows no piece” and the “woman with a cold womb like a frog.” As the video progresses, she advises children to “carve into their hearts” and “turn their eyes away” from the behavioral roles portrayed by these individuals she sings about.

Installations, such as Michael Farrell, or the wall drawings of Dan Periovschi that are also a performance, are mediums more suited to constructing a background or context for the humor to emerge. 

Dan Perjovschi is an artist, writer and cartoonist born in 1961 in Sibiu, Romania. Perjovschi has over the past decade created drawings in museum spaces, most recently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in which he created the drawing during business hours for patrons to see. The drawings present a political commentary in response to current events. Another exhibition of Perjovschi's within a Portuguese bank consists of several comic strip style drawings which address more European issues such as Romania's acceptance to the EU and abortion legalization in Portugal.

While painting or photography can also contain narrative, it needs to deliver its message instantaneously, within one frame restricting the ability to build up layers of meaning or context. Such works tend to go straight for the punch line, delivering their humor in a short sharp kick, such as the studies of perspective by Ai Weiwei.

Humor can also be used to mask the more serious issues, or as a release for dealing with repressed emotions. As Brooklyn artist Chris Doyle says, “If you cant find tremendous humor in the everyday, the sadness becomes overwhelming”. The problem with funny art is that is can often be regarded with suspicion, discouraging a more thoughtful engagement by a viewer. If it is good art it should prompt a second glance, one that looks past the joke to the message being delivered. That is perhaps what separates art that is merely cartoonish, aiming only to inspire a giggle, from art that uses humor as vehicle to discuss a deeper message- Humor that operates as a means to confront other issues rather than an end in itself.

Several themes begin to emerge in the work of artists employing humour.

Political satire has perhaps the most developed historical tradition reaching back before the days of Hogarth. Today artists employ a wider range of materials and references to pack a political punch. 

Fergus O'Neill, a Dublin based graphic designer penned the slogan, "Keep Going Sure It's Grand" which he then turned into posters. It's a play on the British, "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters from World War II which were intended to keep the British people calm while they faced potential invasion.

SAVE IRELAND! That’s the objective of graphic designer Fergus O’Neill’s ‘Keep Going Sure It’s Grand’ project. By producing an original edition of 42 billion screen prints, O’Neill is pledging one euro from every sale to the state thus halving our banking crisis debt. He says of the project: “the bid to sell 42 billion of these posters may seem absurd but it can be deemed no more absurd than the outrageous practices and policies that landed us here. There is little we can do except be ourselves and get on with it.” A range of 'modern Irish' products have emerged from the process as O'Neill believes Irish design is more than the twee and more than the serious, it can also be humorous but well designed. If he succeeds, his endeavours will halve the debt our fair country is currently drowning in. He also sells other merchandise with brilliantly funny Irish slogans like, "Feck It Sure, It's Grand" and "Grand Lovely - Bollox Shite" and "Fine Words Butter No Parsnips".

Erwin Wurms Instructions on how to be politically Incorrect,  explores boundaries of privacy and social taboos, the humour is also an astute comment on the atmoshphere of paranoia and invasion of civil rights that is prevalent in the current climate of suicide bombings and terrorist attacks.

In her subversive Sexy Semite (2000–2002), Emily Jacir peppered the Village Voice with personal ads for Palestinians looking to settle down in Israel. One asks "Do you love milk & honey? I’m ready to start a big family in Israel. Still have house keys." Another, more pointed, reads: "You stole the land. May as well take the women! Redhead Palestinian ready to be colonized by your army." The ads slyly suggest a way around an irreconcilable issue in the Middle East peace process: by marrying Israelis, Palestinians can gain citizenship and thus sidestep calls for the "right of return" (an unfulfilled provision of UN Resolution 194 that promises Palestinian refugees the chance to return home). But, given their placement in the love-wanted section instead of world news, the ads seem less about policy than the personal. Individual lives--people seeking love, a sense of home, the kind of daily routine you and I enjoy--are profoundly impacted by the occupation. And perhaps it’s through individual relationships that the conflict can ease. As one ad punned: "Palestinian Male working in a difficult occupation. I’m looking for a Jewish Beauty... Only you can help me find my way Home."

Gender/race stereotyping is another common theme, for example in the confrontational posters by Michael Ray Charles, which expose racial stereotyping by appropriating and exaggerating advertising imagery, and the crawl videos of William Pope L. while Canadian artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan create short videos satirizing lesbian and housewife stereotypes.

In Where’s Mickey? (2002), Destiny Deacon analyses issues of race, gender norms and stereotypes through the use of satire, humour, and images we recognise from childhood. Deacon presents us with a bright, colourful image of a "mouseketeer". The Mouseketeers were the youthful fan club of the Disney cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. These happy, smiling white children were broadcast across America and around the world on the television show The Mickey Mouse Club. This program was broadcast internationally in the late 1950s, a period in history that particularly interests Deacon as it predates many changes to social, race and family relations. Importantly for Deacon the Mouseketeers presented an idealised, sanitised version of what American children should be like. This artwork reminds us of the historical omission of non-white people in the media. By presenting a black Mouseketeer, Deacon corrects this historical discrimination. Questioning identity, its construction and perceptions is integral to Deacon's work. Deacon creates a parody of a female Mouseketeer, (or is it Minnie Mouse herself?) by appropriating parts of the costume (such as the mouse ears hat, shoes and gloves), and by using other found items such as a 1950s style hat. In this photograph Deacon takes this sense of parody further by using a man as the model, further bending and subverting this cultural icon by disrupting our expectations. The image suggests the childish game of dress-ups, with a serious undertone. The bright, flat colours are rather gaudy and cartoonish. The rumpled curtain, shallow stage-like space, and exaggerated pose suggest the theatrical, with the performing figure looking like it is part of a travelling troupe or a vaudeville play. The disembodied leg which can just be seen coming from outside the frame in the bottom left corner further accentuates the feeling of theatricality and artifice.

(from MCA Education Destiny Deacon: Walk & don’t look blak Resource Kit) 

Humour is also used to expose cultural or national stereotypes.The Blue Noses Group Chechen Marilyn conflates an image of a female suicide bomber with the pose made famous by Marilyn Monroe in the Seven year Itch. John Carson’s A bottle of stout in every pub in Bundoran, explores the limits and excesses of Irelands drinking culture.“In ritualizing the drinking situation and pointing out the effect of too much alcohol and in depicting all the different types of pubs in Buncrana, my intention is to get people to focus in on and take a considered look at our traditional irish drinking habits. It is then up to the viewer of the work to wonder whether the drinking habit is a valuable cultural heritage, a desirable activity, a futile indulgence, a sinful business or a serious matter for concern.”Refused sponsorship by Guiness who felt it was not in keeping with their policy of moderation.

Christian Jankowski’s The Holy Artwork connect art and religion to the questionable medium of the entertainment industry. Paul Davis Prayer Antennae invites viewers to prostrate themselves in a ridiculous pose in order to insert their heads into a helmet offering communication with god.

In each of these works, the artist's are using humour to play with wider social and political issues, while the medium may have changed, they still bear a moral message rooting them in the tradition of political satire.

However there are artists who use humour on a much more personal level. Paul Davis and Nedko Solakov both use simplistic drawings styles to render comic imagery that confronts their personal fears, as in the collection of illustrations of Solakov’s 99 fears, and Davis’s diagrams of the futility of the daily grind in Wake Up.

Born in 1957 in Cherven Briag, Bulgaria Nedko Solakov lives and works in Sofia. Using a wide range of media and techniques, including painting and the appropriation of found objects, Solakov proposes fictional narratives that are at once humorous and dark.

Nedko Solakov, “From ‘Fears’ #37″, caption reads: A balloon and a Cactus became friends. For the time being – everything OK. The cactus’ pricks are minding the tender balloon, and the balloon keeps itself close to the ground for a better chat with the cactus (even though the balloon can easily go 56 meters high). 

Nedko Solakov, “From ‘Fears’ #40″, caption reads: “I feel very insecure stepping outside in the darkness”, says the man. “Shut the door! Your light is killing me!” the darkness replies by sending vibes to the man. “This is it – I got goose bumps,” the man mumbles and steps back into the house leaving the door open.

Convergence

I recently attended the opening of the Oliver Cornet Gallery in Temple Bar, at the invite of a friend who is working there. A tiny space, it was nowhere near large enough to contain the people that spilled out onto the street blocking the ocassional passing car, and mingling with the crowds from the pub across the street. despite the cheap wine, the art itself was surprisingly rich. For another small independent fine art gallery I wasn't expecting much, but several of the artists showcased in the group show 'Convergence' were strikingly original. Maybe its after spending several months working in a conservative private gallery, where the art mainly consists of biscuit tin landscapes and the buyers were mostly bankers and big business men in designer suits, but I had developed rather low expectations of the contemporary Irish art scene. It probably helps that Oliver Cornet himself is a spry little Frenchman, with an evident taste for the delicate and whimsical. Most of the work was small, delicate studies in abstract lines and organic forms, from the ceramic shells and vessels of Annika Berglund, to the planescapes and prints of Hanneke van Ryswyk. One standout though was Mark Doherty's colourful manga-inspired drawings. Definitely cool enough to appeal to a younger generation of art makers and lovers, his work is also skillfully executed and with enough contemporary cultural and artistic references to pack a theoretical punch.
"He seeks to create alternate worlds in which to satirize our own, allowing us to look at our foibles exaggerated and thus challenge them by laughing at ourselves. Through this framework, he builds narratives which address such diverse issues as body image, our view of the 'other' in society, urban social isolation, man's conflicted relationship with nature, and  society's newfound adoration of science, celebrity and material wealth, among other things."  http://www.olliart.com/

The comic strip like appearance encourages a narrative reading of his works, which often resemble posters or advertisements in Japanese fashion magazines. The images upon close inpection are all slightly warped or grotesque, with figures resembling robots or animals and the colourful patterns and designs make the pictures not so much joyful and appealing, as bad acid trip nightmare.

Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other

I recently went to see Rivane Neuenschwander's exhibition at IMMA.  A mid-career survey, it contained a number of distinctly different works many of which encourage visitor participation. I wish your wish was the highlight, a single room with the walls punctured with small holes, each one containing a coloured ribbon printed with the wishes of visitors to the exhibitions previous location. Based on a local tradition in a church in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, where the faithful tie silk ribbons around their wrists believing that their wishes will come true when the ribbons wear away and fall off. Neuenschwander carries this religious superstition into the realm of the contemporary art gallery, crossing cultural and geographical divides through a kind of pay it forward intention. The wishes themselves were a little repetitive with quite a few "I wish there was no recession/ I had more money/ I could get a job". Amongst the more amusing ones was "I wish for world peace and that I had a turtle". Choosing one became an interesting choice between the people you felt sorry for "I wish it was benign", whose wishes you wanted to grant, and those you identified most with "I wish my college degree meant I could get a job". Having read the wishes of others on display also made me self conscious about my own wish, which you wrote on a scrap of paper and deposited in the hole in exchange for your ribbon of choice. I became all too aware of who might be reading my wish in the next city, and trying to make it sound funny or sympathetic so that someone would choose it and make it come true.
Even though the whole point of the project was to promote selflessness and a kind of international helping each other across time and space mentality, it actually had the opposite affect. My self and my friend spent ages trying to wittily compose our own wishes and then when we had chosen our ribbons, we both felt disappointed when they fell off later that day, as we had spent so long choosing the right wish in the right colour.

Another work in the exhibition with a similar ethos was first love where visitors can make an appointment with a sketch artist to describe their first love, and have a portrait drawn. The pictures on the walls were from previous exhibitions, but the cartoonish goofy quality of the drawings made the sincere and emotional intention of the work lose its punch. What was particularly disturbing were the portraits of people who were obviously still children, maybe a childhood friend, but in the context of first loves, it made the clownish grinning portraits take on a slightly sinister edge.
One theme that kept cropping up for me was that of the micro within the macro, the individuals wish amongst the hundreds of ribbons, one love within many, and the final room in the exhibition which contained a wall covered in numerous frames of what at first appears to be photographs of the night sky. upon closer inspection they are actually thousands of the pieces of paper made by a hole punch, which are actually called chad according to a quick google search. It was an astute take on how the miniscule everyday can take on metaphysical proportions in a different context. They reminded me of those microscopic photographs of germs and amoebas in science magazines that are indistinguishable constellations.  I couldnt help thinking they would also make really cool wallpaper.
This was the problem with most of the exhibition, the initial grand themes promised in works such as I wish your wish were let down in the execution, they just didnt  quite come to the greater conclusions and profound revelations promised in the themes and titles. This disappointment was embodied perfectly in the video the fall where the camera is a substitute for the eyes of a person running an egg in spoon race through a   blurred forest. the heavy breathing and jerky movements of the camera, along with the title, continually suggested the egg would eventually topple, a climax that was eternally thwarted by the continual loop of the video.

Up from Eden

i've just finished reading Ken Wilber's Up from Eden, given to me by my dad. Despite being essentially an academic book about psychological anthropology, its still pretty accessible to the average reader.
Wilber is attempting to give a very general and wide-sweeping account of the psychological development of mankind, from the earliest society to the present day. Its not just a historical account though, throughout he is promoting his idea of the Atman Project, the spiritual eternity or God-consciousness to which we all aspire. He proposes that while humankind continually attempts to attain a unity with this grater eternity/consciousness it also paradoxically seeks it in all the wrong places, and so continually fails to reach it. Early human sacrifices, war and patriarchy are all used as examples of how humans have tried to stave off death and attain immortality, instead promoting their own sense of self, and so failing to achieve that which they most seek.
Wilber compares the evolution of humanity to the personal psychological evolution of an individual,  which seems to contradict his rejection of the individual in his attempt to promote a higher spiritual unity with eternity. His talk of eternity and atman and transpersonal human development leans a little too much towards hippie Buddhist-inpired spirituality for my liking but he takes an interesting stance on the nature of humanity, rather than people being intrinsically good or evil, he understands them to be something else entirely. He rejects the liberal political view of humanistic psychology and philosophy that proposes that we are all born free and good but that the objective social and political world perpetuates oppression and inequality and that all we need too to become free is to alter the objective world, to abolish political and economic structures and the repressive family. However, the conservative worldview in which we are unfree because of something intrinsically evil in our very nature is also rejected. Wilber adds a third viewpoint to the familiar two, that of the mystics, who suggest we are unfree because we believe in a true self (be it good or evil) at all. Rather than a need to repress or unrepress the self, they suggest we undermine such a duality in the first place, and attempt to transcend it. This appears to me to be exactly what Wilber's Atman Project is proposing, but he goes on to attempt a merging of the three views, in order to cross the boundaries of the idea of a separate self altogether.
While I do have my own problems with present day societies cult of the individual and the emphasis on each persons individual worth and right, I would also be sceptical of this attempt to let go of the self entirely and transcend to some kind of unified consciousness with God or Atmans or whatever it is Wilber is getting at. I understand that he is not talking about a return to previous social structures in which large groups of people existed solely for the benefit of their rulers, kings or leaders, but rather a more spiritual/religious unified consciousness. Where we do not identify with each other, but the great blue yonder. The biggest problem is he never really explains what that yonder is, and why we should want to achieve it. While he continually suggests that this striving is precisely what all our bloody history has been about, he never makes it a concrete possibility, or outlines what it is or why we want it. While a few select individual, most of them Buddhist eastern prophets and wise men, have already achieved this higher level, for the rest of us mere mortals we must continue to struggle on in the society we have made for ourselves, always seeking out eternity in bloody oppressive rites inflicted on each other.