Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau: A Phenomenological and enactive approach of intermedial visual contagions

Visual contagions are very common in the creative process of many artists nowadays. I have been studying the creative process for many years now, through a phenomenological approach, that is, I am interested in the creative process as a lived experience. I am using the explicitation interview as developed by Pierre Vermersch. This interview technique was developed as a way to interrogate the subjective experience in a manner that is objective and reproducible. Using that technique, I have interviewed numerous artists about their creative process, and in particular I have questioned them about moments that they, themselves, considered important in their process. That includes among other things moments when decisions were triggered by other works, theirs or the works of fellow artists, and in particular by images. A lot of these visual contagions are multimedial, that is, artists are often inspired by images outside of their medium of predilection (for instance, it’s very common for a filmmaker to be inspired by a photograph or a painting). In this contribution, I will describe what I found out about this process of multimedial visual contagion while transcribing and analyzing some of those explicitation interviews. I will also show how the enaction paradigm developed by Francisco Varela is a good paradigm to describe this process of multimedial visual contagion. In short, the enaction paradigm describes how our perceptions are shaped by our cognition while at the same time our cognition is shaped by our perceptions. In this context, it provides a paradigm for how the perception of images is shaped by the idea of the new artistic project, while at the same time the idea of the new artistic project is shaped by the images that are perceived.

Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau is an artist philosopher born in Paris. He has been involved in art making for most of his life, including film, theatre, photography, music, and creative writing. He has been in turn actor, singer, director and author in around fifty projects in theater and film and occasionally performs as a performance artist. He has also practiced photography since childhood and published his first books of photographs in 2017 (Muir Woods Spirits) and in 2020 (Handscapes). He has two more planned in 2021.
Ivan has also been involved in academic research and teaching, in particular in art and philosophy. He is affiliated with the CNRS and currently works with the PRISM laboratory in Marseille, a joint-lab between CNRS and Aix-Marseille University investigating on the relationships between art and science. He is also affiliated with Chapman University in California. He is now particularly interested in the creative process, the link between art and spirituality, and the importance of rehabilitating love as a life value.
Several of his art videos have been exhibited during biennials and collective exhibitions. He also regularly composes for dance and film. His first album, Acousmatic Music 1, is scheduled for 2021.