KATJA AIKIONIEMI

1986 | Jyväskylä | sculpture

For quite some time now, I have been intrigued by why people through the ages 
have always had a propensity to believe in the supernatural. Religion experts
 theorize that one key reason is that a certain degree of counter-intuitivism
leaves a somewhat stronger memory trace than everyday events that we accept as
fact without question.



If someone were to tell us, for example, of having experienced gravity vanish 
beneath them and of having levitated above the earthly plane of existence, we 
would automatically greet this information with scepticism. Yet, due to the
 extra work done by our brain when confronted with incredulity, the story leaves 
a stronger memory trace.



But if the described experience had been a dream, something experienced in an 
unusual mental state, or an illusion conjured by a work of art – could the
 information we extract then be construed as something real? It would after all
 derive from within the realm of human experience, so perhaps the knowledge in
 this case merely calls for a different frequency of understanding.



Caption:

 I have been thinking about getting a tattoo like this. It’s a figurative image 
and also a visual form of my current motto.