Its been a really busy few weeks. I had a nice time. I passed my driving theory test, I saw art in London, fell over while drunk and met my long time heroine Coco Fusco http://www.thing.net/~cocofusco/work.htm. Now my pockets are empty and it’s raining outside. To avoid sinking into a stupor (my recent habit on days like today) I’ll attempt to do some research.
At present I have two options for the theme of this show.
1) Looking at new media arts and it’s use in therapeutic contexts for the exploration of mental health issues. There are some super NONE ART examples of this. The only ART example I can think of at the moment is George Khut but there must be more.
2) Depictions, representations and self portraits of ‘madness’ in using new/multimedia type artforms such as video and the internet. I can think of a few more examples of this and also it seems that I could somehow talk about the bits and bobs that lead me to get excited about this topic such as internet suicides (ie people who kill themselves in chat rooms). AS AN ASIDE: When I was talking to Coco Fusco on Wednesday I brought up the topic of internet suicides. She concluded quite simply that people take their lives online because it gives them the feeling that someone is listening to them. A rather simplistic interpretation, but I suspect that she is right. Anyway I think an allusion to listening or being heard would make a rather nice title for the show…..
ANYWAY, the way I propose to move forwards is to think maybe about taking the first idea as something that I can bring to the conference in December with Bisakha and developing the second idea into the visual arts event/show that I mention in the intro to this blog…….
Lets see how it develops!
TO DO LIST:
Write to George Khut re the use of bodily therapeutic principles in new media and interactive arts practice. http://thinkingthroughthebody.net/
Contact Ubermorgen http://www.ubermorgen.com/CATALOGUE/ re depictions of psychosis in interdisciplinary arts practice
Try and find out a bit more about Bonkers fest esp what was in the gallery programme http://bonkersfest.org/home.html
COOL!
