SPOTLIGHT: DeAnima launch their manifesto for creativity
This is the story of De Anima: a new creative media platform for fellow artists to perform and pontificate while beginning the process of gathering a community and audience.
Words: Miguel Brooking
Reposted from deanimaproductions.com
Once upon a time, somewhere in lockdown 3… after 4 songs, 3 screenplay drafts, half a stage play and 2 paintings – the idea landed. It marked a noticeable collision between ‘artistic’ mind and ‘business’ mind and I was more than happy to inspect the collateral damage. Until then, the artistic mind had been floating freely throughout the hours of two lockdown lifecycles; inspecting and turning habitually towards the therapy of the creative process. With all of its drawbacks, Lockdown allows the space and quiet for the processes to rear their heads and raise their voices; so I had spent most of that time paying attention. What I didn’t realise immediately was how everything had been, in one way or another, orbiting around the inevitable creation of ‘De Anima’.
Creativity is born of boredom, nurtured by restriction and flourished by fuckery…
The covid era has brought with it a bombardment of negativity and I felt (amid a cacophony of case studies, death counts and an obnoxious disregard for mental health) a powerful urge to throw some whispers of optimism into the noisy fray of fear that echoed throughout mainstream media and beyond.
‘De Anima’ – Latin translation: ‘Of the Soul’ or ‘From the Soul’. Also a treatise written by Aristotle in 350 BC in which he discusses and studies his perception of the soul among all living things.
By creating a platform for artists under the De Anima flag, I could portray the soul of their expression, hone my own filmmaking, steal inspiration for myself and initiate a social media feedback loop (There’s the business mind again) – all the while being caught in the creative vortex, which I now recognise as my happy place. Every aspect took me away from my restricted reality and into a visionary haven. From coming up with the name to sketching the logo to conjuring the ideas for the first videos to creating the social media posts and captions, interview questions, filming, photography, video editing, picture editing, thumbnails, website design, blog post and so on.
What De Anima truly is remains to be seen. I suspect it houses the potential for creative control with future ambitions. But for now, I’m happy it exists; that I can enjoy its first steps and that I can continue making. At least now I can point to something in the knowledge that much of the pent up energy during the covid era wasn’t wasted. I guess i’ve always been relatively in touch with my soul but now I have a flag with it on.
