Moratoriums

In the text The Psychology and Value of Emotional Containment, Dr Andy Drymalski refers to Jung's perspective on protecting the wellbeing of feelings, as a moratorium, in which, the physical containment of overflowing emotions can be looked at and reflected upon, from a distance, with a more objective perspective. 

The Cambridge Dictionary defines a Moratorium as follows;

Moratorium (formal)

a stopping of an activity for an agreed amount of time: a five-year worldwide moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. 

Moratorium (finance)

an agreed period of time during which a country does not have to pay its debt to other countries: An immediate debt moratorium would free resources for poor countries to spend on health and education programmes.

The premise for making a moratorium was to:

• demarcate a visual boundary and a safe enclosure in which to act out and harness fears, dreams, and desires, where conflicts and impulses could coalesce.
• to hold something in a state of poise, which could be subject to change, as opposed to holding on to something too tightly.
• a dynamic approach to thinking with an expansive viewing position to be encircled and viewed from all directions, to think through multiple perspectives.
• to leave perspectives unsubstantiated and left in the balance for consideration.

Moratorium I: underweight, 2015 is filled with weights, cord and pulleys that operate sash windows, and velvet curtains and curtain tie backs re-figured into a peacock form, weighted down by its own ornamentation, as a play on the term ‘window dressing’.

'Window dressing' is a term used by retailers as a way of dressing up a window display to draw in customers. The financial industry adopted this term to refer to the practice of altering financial data to appear more attractive to investors.

Moratorium II: under weigh, 2016 was originally filled with cut glass objects that were suspended within the unit made-up of glass window frames. Redirecting the focus onto the glass unit which is constructed from inverted windowpanes (a reworking that turns the usual act of ‘looking out’ around), I emptied the moratorium and precariously counterbalanced the empty unit as a declaration of a potential breaking point, this was a marker of letting go of all the stuff that can weigh a person down, to consider one's impact upon the wider environment.