project 64/

WHITE PAPER

E. Stakhovsky, Psychiatrist, Dnepropetrowsk

One of the most important stimuli for the emergence of any idea, as is the case with any action at all, will be telling the story of it to another person, and best of all, to a disinterested person, an outsider. This notion appears paradoxical in relation to the rule known since long ago, which recommends always to act Just the opposite way: first you have to create and formulate a project, then you can show it to someone else, moreover, preferably to a person close to you, someone who is already predisposed toward you.

But in this case we are talking, so to speak, about the creation of a project stimulating the emergence of the very project itself, moreover a project that is free from the external problem; the creation of the impulse of the very project-oriented thinking and the setting of this "imagination machine" into motion which will pull everything else along with it.

Very little is required for such a project: a clean piece of white paper nailed to a board, placed on an easel or music stand and a patient listener, who consents to hear you out attentively, and what is more important, to pose questions during the course of the dialogue.

The action or the mechanism of this project is based on the commonly familiar psychological effect when it is easiest of all to speak about the future at that moment when there is still no foundation to do so, but the situation compels and stimulates this conversation. It is precisely this situation that emerges when an outsider is led to the white empty paper you have nailed up, and you are obliged, simply compelled, to communicate to him what will be on it. Self-respect, the seriousness of the moment, the demand to do this at that very instant or to fall silent under the threat of defeat creates an extraordinarily critical situation forcing your imagination involuntarily to flare up.

This very situation will force you to express, "to spew forth" an idea that just a second before hadn't entered your head, but the presence of a listener and that very same empty page on the board obligates you to formulate precisely and represent visually to him what is beyond his power to see.

WHITE PAPER

1. Buy an easel (No. 1), or even simpler (NO. 2).

2. Place a board 100 x 80 x 2 cm on it.

3. Tack a sheet of white paper 90 x 70 to it.