Too Numb, Too Overstimulated
Too Numb, Too Overstimulated
Reading Susan Buck-Morss’ Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered, I was struck by the concept of phantasmagoria intoxication. This idea is comparable to substance intoxication, such as consuming drugs or alcohol that causes diminished physical and mental control over one’s body. Phantasmagoria similarly intoxicates people but through constructed environments. It is immersive and sensory-controlled, as seen in spaces like shopping malls, theme parks, movie theaters, and even airplanes. Rather than affecting a single body, phantasmagoria creates a shared reality where everyone within the space collectively enters an altered state and perceives an altered reality. The experience seems objectively real because everyone in the space delusionally validates its authenticity.
After encountering this concept, I began to examine the environments around me to determine whether they belong to phantasmagoria intoxication. In particular, art exhibitions come to mind as they are already carefully curated spaces. Do they produce the same numbing, altered reality as other immersive experiences? My immediate response is that they do not. Unlike environments that passively engulf viewers, exhibitions demand active engagement—moving, thinking, reflecting, and relating. While viewers share the same space, they do not necessarily reach a collective consciousness or rely on others to validate the realness of their experience.
However, a growing trend in large-scale, immersive installations evokes the phantasmagoria. These environments engage viewers in full sensory participation, enveloping them in spaces free from external distractions. Though viewers appear to move freely—walking, interacting, choosing paths—their engagement is pre-scripted within a controlled framework, dictating what we see, feel, and how we experience. Immersion manufactures a “controlled focus,” not a deeper internal concentration. It conditions us to rely on distraction-free environments to focus. Is immersion a sinking of free will, an intricately woven fairy tale we choose to be trapped in? Have we grown complicit in seeking the comfort of constructed illusions, numbing ourselves to reality rather than confronting the disorientation of being truly awake?
Beyond immersion, I see another trend in contemporary exhibitions: an overwhelming density of information. Thematic complexity, interdisciplinary approaches, and diverse artistic mediums create rich layers of interpretation but often lack a clear trajectory. I struggle to extract meaning, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of visual and textual stimuli. Museum fatigue sets in—not from boredom, but from oversaturation. I enter with curiosity, yet leave drained. If these experiences are meant to stimulate, why do they exhaust me?
Focused immersion and sensory overload both leave us depleted. Is this yet another form of phantasmagoric intoxication? I recently confronted this paradox at a hot spring. My friend and I, initially hesitant, became obsessed with the cold plunge. “I like feeling numb,” she remarked. We kept oscillating between the hot spring and the cold plunge. In the cold, our bodies froze, slipping into a state of hibernation. Returning to the heat, we felt a searing sensation, yet paradoxically, another form of numbness. I kept thinking about this—why seek more numbness when so much of life already feels anesthetized? Does numbness help us recognize what it is to feel alive?
1. Buck-Morss, Susan. “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered.” October 62 (1992): 3–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/778700.
