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DG - Via Negativa of Creativity - From Darkness to Creation

Creativity Through Adversity and Nostalgia - A Transformative Path

From Darkness to Creation – Transforming Negativity into Creative Power.

Creativity emerges from negativity—born out of discomfort, stress, anxiety, loss, failure, and despair. Nostalgia as a driving force and transformative process, a therapeutic path that reshapes adversity into artistic expression and meaning. Creativity as a journey of transformation and healing.

VIA NEGATIVA OF CREATIVITY

From Darkness to Creation – Transforming Negativity into Creative Power

Creativity does not emerge from abundance but from absence, not from certainty but from longing. It thrives in discomfort, loss, and nostalgia—turning wounds into meaning, emptiness into form. It is not a process of accumulation but of excavation, carving paths through what is missing.

Every creative act is a confrontation with absence. What is lost, broken, or beyond reach compels the artist forward. Nostalgia is not mere sentimentality but an active force—a tension between presence and absence, between memory and reinvention. The past does not return; it is reimagined.

Loss, failure, and adversity are not obstacles but catalysts. They strip away illusions, forcing raw encounters with the unknown. The ruins of what was become the foundation for what could be. Incompleteness is not a limitation but an opening—a door to new possibilities.

The creative journey is a path carved through adversity, a movement through what is missing or lost toward what could be. It is not a way out of darkness but a way through it - transforming absence into vision, fragments into stories.

This is the essence of the Via Negativa of Creativity: not shaping from what is given, but creating from what is absent.

Via Negativa of Creativity - Negativity and Adversity

From Darkness to Creation – Transforming Negativity into Creative Power

Hello, dear creative fellows, and welcome to a new vlog!

In this episode, we explore the "Via Negativa of Creativity" - the path from darkness to creation, where negativity transforms into creative power.

Creativity does not emerge from abundance but from absence, not from certainty but from longing. It thrives in discomfort, loss, and nostalgia—turning wounds into meaning, emptiness into form. It is not a process of accumulation but of excavation, carving paths through what is missing.

Creativity Through Adversity - A Transformative Path

Creativity often manifests not from comfort but from tension, struggle, and uncertainty. It arises from the depths of discomfort, stress, anxiety, loss, failure, and despair, turning adversity into a crucible for transformation. Rather than being a luxury of the privileged or the secure (serene), creativity thrives in friction - it is an alchemical process that transmutes negativity into expression, chaos into form, wounds into meaning.

In moments of distress, the mind searches for ways to make sense of suffering. Creativity becomes a conduit, a method of articulating the inexpressible. When words fail, images, sounds, and movement step in. This process is not merely an act of escape but an act of confrontation. The artist does not turn away from pain but steps into it, giving it shape, rhythm, and voice. Art does not erase suffering; it reconfigures it, offering a path forward.

Pain as a Catalyst for Creation

(Creators Who Transformed Pain into Art)

History is full of those who created not despite adversity, but because of it.

Seneca turned exile and hardship into timless meditations on resilience.
Caravaggio painted violence and exile into raw dramatic scenes with light and shadow.
Hoelderlin shaped lolelyness and madness into transcendent poetry.
Van Gogh poured his turbulence into color and light.
Paul Celan carved Holocaust trauma into fractured poetry.
Frida Kahlo painted through her pain.

For them, creativity wasn’t a luxury—it was survival, a way of making sense of existence.

The Transformative Power of Creativity

At its core, creativity is therapeutic, not in the sense of merely easing pain and healing scars, but in its power to restructure perception. The act of creating is an assertion of autonomy; it reclaims control over chaos. When everything else feels unstable, the creative process offers a sense of purpose, a structure, a ritual that allows for transformation. It does not promise resolution, nor does it always bring immediate relief, but it offers movement—a way of pushing forward when all else stagnates.

Thus, creativity is not just an act of making but of becoming. It is a transformative force that reshapes both the creator and the world they touch. Out of discomfort, something new emerges—not in spite of adversity, but because of it.

The creative journey is a path carved through adversity, a movement through what is missing or lost toward what could be. It is not a way out of darkness but a way through it - transforming absence into vision, fragments into stories.

This is the essence of the Via Negativa of Creativity: not shaping from what is given, but creating from what is absent.

VIA NEGATIVA OF CREATIVITY - NOSTALGIA

1ST VLOG - DBDW04 - SCRIPT#NOSTALGIA

Inspiration

What is the Rick Rubin method?

#RickRubin/method

Rubin's process is loosely organized into four stages: Gather, Experiment, Craft, and Complete. These stages are similar to the design thinking model, which has the stages of Emphasize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

Awareness

Awareness

Das Bewusstsein als Fenster zur Welt

Das Bewusstsein funktioniert anders als unsere täglichen Aktivitäten, in denen wir eine Agenda wählen und Strategien entwickeln, um Ziele zu erreichen. Im Gegensatz dazu geschieht beim Bewusstsein alles um uns herum, und wir sind lediglich Zeugen, ohne Kontrolle über den Inhalt. Die Gabe des Bewusstseins ermöglicht es uns, gegenwärtige Ereignisse und innere Empfindungen ohne Anhaftung oder Beteiligung wahrzunehmen. Durch unbefangenes Beobachten können wir das, was wir wahrnehmen, in seiner Tiefe erfahren, ohne es zu analysieren. Bewusstsein ist ein Zustand, den wir nicht erzwingen, sondern aktiv zulassen; es erfordert Persistenz, nicht Anstrengung. Während wir den Gegenstand unserer Aufmerksamkeit erleben, geschieht das Bewusstsein zuerst, gefolgt von einer möglichen Analyse. Wir können unser Bewusstsein erweitern oder verengen, unsere Wahrnehmung im Innen oder Außen regulieren und die Perspektive verändern. Indem wir unser Bewusstsein kultivieren, erweitern wir nicht nur unsere Wahrnehmung des Universums, sondern auch die Möglichkeiten, wie wir unser Leben leben können.

In most of our daily activities we choose the agenda and develop a strategy to
achieve the goal at hand. We create the program.

Awareness moves differently. The program is happening around us. The
world is the doer and we are the witness. We have little or no control over the
content.

The gift of awareness allows us to notice what’s going on around and
inside ourselves in the present moment. And to do so without attachment or
involvement. We may observe bodily sensations, passing thoughts and
feelings, sounds or visual cues, smells and tastes.

Through detached noticing, awareness allows an observed flower to
reveal more of itself without our intervention. This is true of all things.

Awareness is not a state you force. There is little effort involved, though
persistence is key. It’s something you actively allow to happen. It is a
presence with, and acceptance of, what is happening in the eternal now.

As soon as you label an aspect of Source, you’re no longer noticing,
you’re studying. This holds true of any thought that takes you out of presence
with the object of your awareness, whether analysis or simply becoming
aware that you’re aware. Analysis is a secondary function. The awareness
happens first as a pure connection with the object of your attention. If
something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience.
Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.

Though we can’t change what it is that we are noticing, we can change our
ability to notice.

We can expand our awareness and narrow it, experience it with our eyes
open or closed. We can quiet our inside so we can perceive more on the
outside, or quiet the outside so we can notice more of what’s happening
inside.

We can zoom in on something so closely it loses the features that make it
what it appears to be, or zoom so far out it seems like something entirely
new.

The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate
our awareness, we are expanding the universe.

This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create
from, but of the life we get to live.

― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Old Drafts

Turning Adversity into Art ( old draft)

Creativity Through Adversity – A Transformative Path

Creativity doesn’t bloom in comfort. Creativity emerges through friction, resistance, and adversity. It rises from struggle, from uncertainty, from the pressure of life closing in. It takes root in discomfort, in stress, in loss, in failure. And in that raw, untamed space, something shifts—adversity becomes fuel, wounds turn into meaning, chaos finds its form.

When we’re confronted with pain, the mind searches for a way through. Creativity steps in—not as an escape, but as an act of transformation. When words fail, we turn to images, to sound, to movement. We shape the unshapable, giving rhythm to what feels formless. Art doesn’t erase suffering; it rearranges it, making it bearable, turning it into something that speaks.

Creators Who Transformed Pain into Art:

History is full of those who created not despite adversity, but because of it.

Seneca turned the chaos of his exile and the weight of Stoic philosophy into timeless meditations on resilience. Caravaggio infused his tumultuous life—marked by violence and exile—into raw, dramatic paintings that captured the human condition. Hölderlin, in his isolation, channeled his longing and madness into transcendent poetry. Van Gogh poured his turbulence into color and light.  Paul Celan, a Holocaust survivor himself, turned the horrors of war and imprisonment into haunting, fragmented verse. Frida Kahlo painted through her pain.

For them, creativity wasn’t a luxury—it was survival, a way of making sense of existence.

At its core, creativity is an act of reclaiming. It takes what feels uncontrollable and gives it structure, a pulse, a ritual. It doesn’t promise resolution, but it offers movement—a way forward when everything else is still. It doesn’t soothe; it shifts, revealing possibilities where there seemed to be none.

Creativity is not just about making—it’s about becoming. A force of change, both in the creator and in the world they shape. Out of adversity, something new emerges. Not in spite of the struggle, but because of it.

Creativity Through Adversity and Nostalgia: A Transformative Path

Creativity often emerges not from comfort but from tension, struggle, and uncertainty. It arises from the depths of discomfort, stress, anxiety, loss, failure, and despair, turning adversity into a crucible for transformation. Rather than being a luxury of the privileged or the serene, creativity thrives in friction—it is an alchemical process that transmutes negativity into expression, chaos into form, wounds into meaning.

Yet, loss does not only manifest as struggle—it lingers as nostalgia, as the traces of the lost. Creativity is deeply tied to absence, to the haunting presence of what is missing. Every journey begins with a sense of loss—something left behind, a moment that won’t return, an image that slips from reach. In my creative path, loss is not a passive void but an active force, shaping what I seek and what I create.

Loss, absence, and incompleteness are not mere limitations; they are generative. Creativity does not emerge from abundance but from the necessity of filling gaps, of reaching for something just beyond grasp. The abandoned, the vanished, the forgotten—each leaves traces that demand to be reimagined. Nostalgia, in its deepest sense, is not simply longing for the past but the unsettling feeling of something both familiar and strange, intimate yet elusive. It is the presence of an absence that cannot be named, a haunting that compels us to create.

This aesthetic of absence runs through my work: images emerge from what is missing. Fragments are not imperfections but the truest form of expression. In incompleteness lies the potential to open new spaces, to pose questions rather than offer answers. Creativity, in these cases, is not just an act of making but of becoming. It is a transformative force that reshapes both the creator and the world they touch.

Perhaps this is the essence of the Via Negativa of Creativity: not building from what is given, but carving new paths from what is absent. Out of discomfort and nostalgia, something new emerges—not in spite of adversity, but because of it.

References