{"id":644198,"date":"2013-02-26T20:24:08","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T01:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ted.com\/?p=70384"},"modified":"2013-02-26T21:33:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T02:33:50","slug":"embrace-the-shake-phil-hansen-at-ted2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/644198","title":{"rendered":"Embrace the shake: Phil Hansen at TED2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_70992\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 910px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/tedconfblog.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/02\/ted2013_0033237_d41_5040.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-70992 \" alt=\"TED2013_0033237_D41_5040\" src=\"http:\/\/tedconfblog.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/02\/ted2013_0033237_d41_5040.jpg?w=900&#038;h=656\" width=\"900\" height=\"656\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: James Duncan Davidson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">In art school, <a href=\"http:\/\/philinthecircle.com\/\">Phil Hansen<\/a> developed a shake in his hand. He couldn&#8217;t so much as draw a straight line anymore.\u00a0After years of excelling in pointillism, his tight grip of the\u00a0pen had caused permanent nerve damage.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To me this was doomsday. This was the destruction of my dream of becoming an artist,&#8221; says Hansen in his talk in Session 2 of TED2013. \u00a0&#8221;I left art school and, then, I left art completely.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hansen was lost. But\u00a0a neurologist helped him find his way again with three words: &#8220;embrace the shake.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At this unusual prompting, Hansen decided to let his hands do what they wanted to do &#8212; make scribbles. He realized that he could create beautiful portraits using this approach. He started experimenting, using his feet to paint or a blowtorch to create faces in wood.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Embracing the limitation can actually drive creativity,&#8221; says Hansen, who describes a moment of unproductivity that came, ironically, when he had all the supplies he needed. &#8220;We need to first be limited in order to become limitless.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some of Hansen&#8217;s surprising works:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height:13px;\">a portrait on stacked Starbucks cups<\/span><\/li>\n<li>a painting done with karate chops<\/li>\n<li>asking people to tell him stories about life-changing moments, which he then wrote on a revolving canvas<\/li>\n<li>live worms assembled into an image<\/li>\n<li>a tattooed banana, created with pushpins<\/li>\n<li>a painting done with hamburger grease<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hansen also found himself fascinated with the idea of destroying a piece after creating it. Calling it Goodbye Art, he made a scultpture of Jimi Hendrix out of matchsticks &#8212; and then burned it. He did works in\u00a0frozen wine and sidewalk chalk. He also set up images in candles, blown out before they fully existed, and only captured on time-lapse video.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Destruction brought me back to a neutral place where felt refreshed,&#8221; Hansen says. &#8220;As I destroyed each project, I was learning to let go &#8212; let go of failures, let go of imperfections. I found myself in a constant state of creation, thinking only of what&#8217;s next and coming up with more ideas than ever.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hansen thinks this might be a good process for others, too.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now when run into barrier or find myself creativly stumped, I sometimes still struggle &#8230; but I try to remind myself of the possibilities,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Perhaps instead of telling each other to seize the day,\u00a0maybe we can remind ourselves each day to seize the limitations.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/tedconfblog.wordpress.com\/70384\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/tedconfblog.wordpress.com\/70384\/\" \/><\/a> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?host=blog.ted.com&#038;blog=14795620&#038;%23038;post=70384&#038;%23038;subd=tedconfblog&#038;%23038;ref=&#038;%23038;feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TEDBlog\/~4\/vpKWr5rbsAs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo: James Duncan Davidson In art school, Phil Hansen developed a shake in his hand. He couldn&#8217;t so much as draw a straight line anymore.\u00a0After years of excelling in pointillism, his tight grip of the\u00a0pen had caused permanent nerve damage. &#8220;To me this was doomsday. This was the destruction of my dream of becoming an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7344,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-644198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7344"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}