Mental Hellth Dumpster Fire [2023]

Transdisciplinary artwork and intervention resultant of the research findings of the project to this date, including collaborative textile works made with patients from the Psych clinic, a publication on 'Language as an Artistic Research Device & Medium', and compendium of artistic research methodologies and techniques.

 

Mental Hellth Dumpster Fire took its starting point by applying a new lense to the project that had come back recursivly from the accumulated resonances: 'Burnout is no longer and individual pathology but a social mood.'

 

Keywords, themes: Transdisciplinarity, Research Output, Exhibition, Multimedia

A Book on Burnout [2025]

The project has a book deal to publish the outcomes of its multi-year research on burnout, as situated within the arts, creative industries, and cultural sector.

Forthcoming in 2025.


Keywords, themes: Experimental Publication, Anedotes, Interviews, Diversifying Voices & Stories, Making Public, Reaching New Audiences, Topics that Resonate.

1. Introducing the Project and its Evolution

A Brief Overview of the Evolution of the Project Over Time

Art & Anxieties [2024]


Artistic research project with CARADT Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology mapping psychogeographies of todays art workers, artists, students, and those working in the creative industries.

 

Keywords, themes: Mental health, practice-based and applied research, transdisciplinarity, peer-to-peer, knowledge production, embodied knowledge, politics of emotion, experimentation

 PROJECT DEVELOPMENT OVERVIEW 

A Brief Schematic Overview of how the Project Developed


Including a selection of examples of work and links to more in-depth information.

 

 

💥NAVIGATION ADVICE: We recommend reading downward from Column 1 until you get to the bottom.
Though, feel free to take horizontal detours along the way to the corresponding Research Practices & Actions.

Band of Burnouts [2021]
An Artistic Research Lab held in fellowship with the School of Commons.

 

Keywords, themes: Safe Sharing Spaces, Collaboration, De-Stigmatising, Exhaustion, Experimentation, Collaboration, Artistic Practice as Research, Transdisciplinarity

Making & Breaking Journal [2025]

The Art & Anxieties research project was invitied to edit the next issue of M&B* by continuing the topic of 'Psychogeographies of the Present'- now with contributions, takes, and progressions from a curated range of practitioners and theorists.

 

*Making & Breaking is an online journal whose aim is to provide a platform for critical discussion on issues concerning the relationship between cultural production and social change.

 

Keywords, themes: Multimedia Publication, Collaboration, Extending the Research, Reaching Outwards, Diversifying Voices,

Artists in Labs [2022]

A research residency at Living Museum Ateliers Psychiatric Clinic in Wil, Switzerland as part of the program Artists in Labs.

 

Keywords, themes: Artistic Research meets Science, Patient Collaboration, Research Residency, Sharing Vulnerabilities, Co-Creation & Collaboration

?

?

?

GO BACK UP TO SECTION 2

2. Research Practices & Actions

Showing a range of artistic research activities, interventions, experiments, collaborations, and manifestations explored across the project's iterations

ARTISTIC RESEARCH X SCIENCE COLLABORATION
The Artist in Labs program connects artistic researchers with scientific environments, facilitating residencies for cross-pollination of knowledges and collaborations on knowledge-production.

 

In this iteration the artistic research project used different methodologies to connect, share, and create with the patients of the psychiatric clinic and its 'Living Museum Ateliers'. There all diagnoses are mixed and anonymised, from exhaustion and addiction, to personality disorders and beyond.

 

ARTISTIC RESEARCH PRACTICES

 

EXPERIMENTS, INTERVENTIONS & COLLABORATIONS

 

Band of Burnouts Collective Journal

A Multimedia Collaborative Zine made via Open Call, with Radio Show Release Party

  • For those with experience of burnout wanting to explore it within their work


Scholarship for Somatic Poetry w. CA Conrad

  • Cultivating a group who would go on to apply CA's 'Somatic Rituals' together to explore their experiences of burnout in experimental, collective ways.

 

Collaboration with We Are Not Sick

 

‘Anti-Burnout Zine Making Rules’

  • Creating experimental and sharable methodologies for artistic production that encourage non-normative approaches.


Garden Film Screening & Discussion Group

  • Hosted Zurich’s screening of Gabor Maté’s documentary The Wisdom of Trauma (2021), followed by a discussion with provided resources from the film's backing organisation Science and Nonduality (SAND) on safe discussion.


On Immigrant Burnout – Arts of the Working Class (AOTWC)

  • An article published in print with Berlin-based art newspaper AOTWC reflecting on the experience of a specific iteration of burnout: immigrant burnout.


(COLLECTIVE)

RESEARCH PRACTICES

A selection of 'ways and workings' the research lab utilised include:

 

 

COLLECTIVE RESEARCH PUBLICATION

  • Researching the Researcher Book
    • A glimpse into the processes of 5 artistic researchers.
      The group met bi-weekly to discuss their research and projects, sharing questions, concerns, and challenges.
      These sessions grew into a support system.

      This collective publication explores methodologies, trials and tribulations of their fellowship with SoC.

      By Jess Henderson, Amy Gowen, Betül Aksu, Charlotte Friedli, and Sid Smith.

ARTISTIC RESEARCH RESPONDING TO WHAT'S RESONATING

RE-CONTEXTUALISING

  • Re-contextualising from burnout and exhaustion, to the broader array of emotions and psychosomatic experiences.

  • Re-contextualising the research project from independent and nomadic, to situating itself within the research centre of an art school.

  • Re-contextualising to involve students (future artists, art workers, creative industry participants) and active agents/workers from the creative industries.

  • Re-contextualising methods and practices from different fields and disciplines. Including:
    • Psychogeography, conceived by Guy deBord.
      Now utilised for new practices and new environments.
    • Figure/Ground Analysis,drawn from Marshall McLuhan's practice.
      Figure/ground analysis considers that one cannot understand a figure (emotions, mental health subjects, etc) unless one understands the ground or environment((al) factors) they are surfacing from.

 

LETTING THE RESONANCE LEAD THE WAY

MENTAL HELLTH DUMPSTER FIRE approached the research thus far with a new lense; one that came from all of the interviews and interventions conducted thus far, and fresh off the back of the residency.

 

Taking a recursive approach, this new proposition diagnosed burnout as no longer and individual pathology but a social mood.


ARTISTIC RESEARCH PRACTICES & METHODOLOGIES

EXPANDING THE FIELD OF RESONANCE

EMBEDDING THE RESEARCH PROJECT WITHIN THE NEW ISSUE OF M&B JOURNAL


Invited to edit the next issue of M&B*, extending the concept of mapping today's psychogeographies by inviting submissions from contributors based on upon this aspect of the research.

  • Expanding upon the resonance with the topic of 'Psychogeographies of the Present'
  • Inviting critical and/or aesthetical engagement from contributors from all corners of the world
    of cultural production
  • Seeking new insights, practices, takes, texts, formulations, frameworks, and speculations.
  • First time the journal invites contributions in experimental, not-only-essayistic, multimedia formats.

 

STATUS: All submissions have been received and contributions selected. Issue will be released in February 2024.

GO BACK UP TO SECTION 3

✨NOTE:

The artistic research practices and examples presented here are a selection. A more extensive compendium will be published on Research Catalogue in the coming months.

TONE

  • Openness, going outwards and inviting inwards
  • Humour, satire (postmodern tactics), relatability
  • How to be personal and personable without the project being personal

LOOK AND FEEL

  • DIY resonates
  • Drawing upon honest inspirations - here, 60's and 70's rock and roll, particularly female bands and their energy/expression
  • References, combining and remixing high/low theory
 
 
LISTENING
  • Listening, hearing, and responding accordingly
  • Following what resonates, making a project recursive. Letting the research and the 'researched' lead the way.
  • No preconceptions
  • Accounting for the unaccounted

 

STAYING WITH THE 'BROKEN'

  • Non-normative, fragmented, undecided, uncertain illness narratives as transgressive and emancipatory
  • Experimenting with how to deal with experiences that escape words

 

3. Strategies of Resonance:
A Retrospect

Reflecting and zooming in on the strategies within the research approach and techniques that cultivated such resonance.

 

Below are the key points to be discussed at the presentation.