Separated and analysed, my project is to tell stories by combining them again, aware of their potential and the possibilities of perception to tell and receive stories with the whole body. The objective is to explore a way of telling stories that involves action, the interaction of the body, embodied stories. I am intrigued by the idea of whether telling stories in this way could create a connection with the audience or the participant, create a deeper understanding, perhaps closer to empathy, for someone else’s reality? After visiting Johan’s room, does he feel alien to you, or do you feel something else? If so, how can these storytelling tools be applied to generate a deeper reflection, a more emotional connection, say, for example in our educational institutions?
I wanted to tell the story of a person. Johan, a fiction character, and his story is based on those former patients of Beckomberga hospital, who when the hospital closed were granted their own apartment where they could live alone after years of living in the hospital.
But I had to think well how to tell it.There is a moral dilemma of how to tell a story about mental health, and not fall for contributing to the construction of the image of mental illness. These questions were key in the beginning, but I decided to ask, work on the project and try to answer them during the journey and in turn try to portray these questions in my project.
I am interested in the idea of combining techniques and ways of recording stories. As an illustrator I have a great appreciation for paper and art supplies. Sketchbooks, papers, and objects that Johan collects could also be characters in the story. As a technique, it seemed appropriate to work on this project with stopmotion and mapping projections. These share the idea of giving life to those initially inanimate objects, giving me the possibility of finding in that place of limited resources such as Johan's room, an infinity of characters which could tell stories.
In Johan's room there is also a documentary element, but this does not reside in the character - he is fiction. The documentary is found in the information in the room. Johan collects archive material on Beckomberga. These are newspaper clippings, television debates which will be recorded on vhs and reproduced on tv, magazines, etcetera. The intention is that the visitor of Johan’s Room can recognize the individual behind the generalized information.
“And I found that of all senses the eye was the most superficial, the ear the most haughty, smell the most voluptuous, taste the most superstitious and inconstant, touch the most profound and philosophical.”
Diderot
Collaborators: Viva Estampa
In the City of Buenos Aires since 2007, the organization "Viva Estampa" has, as the first of such initiatives, been operating within the framework of an agreement between the Moyano Hospital and the Eduardo Sívori Museum. The project connects the hospital with the museum, linking art, education, culture and mental health.
Viva Estampa sees art as another language for transformation and social inclusion, the development of processes and relational practices for diversity of people with and without severe mental health problems.
Its objective is to develop citizenship skills, cultural and social inclusion as well as health promotion and prevention; demystification of prejudices in general and regarding psychiatric stigmas in particular.
It provides a multiple approach that enables various responses to the problems of this group vulnerable to exclusion, allowing the right to culture, among others. Open the doors of a hospital, those of a museum, those of the city. Open up to people, to people in civil society. Enable new experiences and new social ties. To expand territories and enable others, physical and symbolic.
Viva Estampa has been growing and transforming during its 12 years of existence. Assuming the dynamism of the times, of the institutions, of the subjects and of art.
Inhabiting means much more than locating a body in a place.
Let us think of the concept of "inhabiting" as a process in continuous change, which appeals to the experience that one has in a certain place. The result of this process is the construction of a space where the subject is forming and conforming at the same time.
@vivaestampa
Viva Estampa is one of the collaborators in this project. With them I consulted the creation of the character and where to put enphasis in the storytelling. After investigating the relationship of the techniques I was planning to use in relation to mental illness and its history, I was informed how art, photography, illustration were an active part of the creation of the mentally ill. For example, photographs of patients from psychiatric institutions also circulated in museums. These institutions create the subject who is empowered to create and consume art and the subject-object of the exhibition.
Who is the subject entitled to create art and who is not? In “The art of insanity”, Hans Prinzhorn collects art from psychiatric patients from the largest hospitals in Europe, analyses these creations and publishes them in this book in 1922. In the prologue of the fourth edition Julia Ramirez tracks how this book was passing from hand to hand by the group of surrealists. Some of the works that appear in the book are very clearly similar to famous works of art belonging to Surrealism.
I decided that Johan, the fictional character of my project, should be an artist. With pencil and paper he would tell his story in the privacy of his room. There he portrays the world from his point of view.
The character is not at the scene. Before entering the room, the visitor will be notified of the character's absence. It is the visitor who must reconstruct Johan's image through interaction with the space. If there is no interaction, the place and the storytelling of the animations will be disconnected. The intention is to put the body into action – encourage the visitors to put their body into action. Only in this way is a change in space possible, through the body in movement and the interaction with the environment.
