Folie/Culture  |  Événement DSM-V+  |  Remerciements  |  Partenaires  |  Équipe  |  Contact  |  Programme - PDF |  Communiqué  | | english |
Programmation
de l'événement
GRILLE HORAIRE
Lieux de diffusion, billetterie
Les cinq conférences
11 au 15 octobre 2006
Débat
12 octobre 2006
DSM-V+ à vif
12 au 15 octobre
Manœuvres villageoises et interventions ruerales
11 au 15 octobre 2006
Espace bidules
11 au 25 octobre 2006
Putain de bal masqué pervers
13 octobre 2006
Films et vidéos
11, 14 et 15 octobre 2006
Théâtre
12 au 14 octobre 2006
La programmation associée
11 au 29 octobre 2006
 
About Folie/Culture :
 
 
Description of
the DSM-V+ event

About Folie/Culture

MISSION STATEMENT

We want to promote the work of established artists from all disciplines whose output reflects original research that is closely related to madness, or which gets people to think about painful social issues. We want to support the creation of original works, and to give madness a voice and the ability to express itself not only through “accredited” creators, but also those who have emotional problems and who want to do something creative. In order to accomplish this, Folie/Culture supports, produces and presents the results of these artists’ work, and makes it available not only to an informed audience but also to audiences that are unaccustomed to attending such events.

THE FOLIE/CULTURE MISSION

The objectives and concerns of Folie/Culture go all the way from the production of contemporary art projects to the promotion of mental health, specifically as an encounter between these two aspects of our work. These two extremities characterize all of our productions. The programming projects that we initiate in a given year are intended to lead people to think both about an attitude towards art and a method of making them aware of mental health. However, all of our projects are above all designed to give rise to thinking and challenging in relation to a selected theme.

What is particular in the position we have adopted as a community organization that develops current art projects is that they are always perceived from either an artistic point of view or a social point of view. Our work is different precisely because of these different perceptions, which we always mix into our events. We are distinctive precisely because we combine these two concerns, and focus on them in order to take thinking about them to a deeper level, marry them and get two different audiences to meet on the same ground.

Furthermore, the whole process, from the development of the project through to its eventual completion, can be identified by our dual position: the selection of artists, the venues and the collaborators. We are different from artists centres that occasionally become interested in a social cause because we support our artistic projects with significant, ongoing and relevant experience of the community environment (through agencies, decision-makers, stakeholders and users). This allows us to truly support the artists who are involved in our projects, and who for the duration of the project concern themselves with a mental health issue by providing them with the resources they need, and which are relevant to, their research. Their efforts directly enrich the mental health community: their works or interventions become alternative forms of awareness raising that could not have been thought of before-hand (we received an honourable mention in the Prix d’excellence 2001 for the prevention, promotion and protection of health and well-being, awarded by the Quebec Department of Health and Social Services). We have also initiated in this environment new attitudes that can be renewed by the work of artists and by our close ties to them, the different ways of playing a role in art and mental health.

By placing artistic productions in a mental health environment, attitudes are focused within a field of practice that questions from a new standpoint. This also leads to forms of thinking that often destabilize the artists who take part in our projects. When we invite them to join us, we naturally ask them to focus their involvement by thinking about a social cost that can often be painful. Their thinking therefore becomes richer because of our concerns, our processes and our position, which is often committed. Our singular approach to art questions not only artistic practices, but mental health awareness methods as well, and we are proud to be able to play this important role in both fields of endeavour.

It is precisely because of the encounters between the various artists, the various stakeholders and the many collaborators that in the final analysis, relationships develop between the various points of view, making our projects critical. The mental health environment is interested in our artistic productions because they go beyond all known conventions for the promotion of mental health. The arts community is interested because, under cover of awareness, the performances or works that result from our often collective productions directly question new attitudes in art, as well as a number of conventions about how to present such works.

Interdisciplinary Practice

At Folie/Culture, our practice is interdisciplinary in the sense that each project, which involves several disciplines, is part of our ongoing search within our dual identity, by adopting a special theme each year. In most of our projects, we provoke encounters between artists whose practices, status and career stage are different, and persons undergoing psychiatric treatment, all in the same context. As our programming is developed in order to stimulate thinking, all practices are treated as fuel for the process. For a given project, we might readily shift between performance (with a relational esthetic) and video, because both contribute extremely well to our mandate of raising awareness. Likewise, we can equally well function in an artists’ centre or a shopping centre, because there is no mandate for us to tailor our efforts to any specific venue. We have developed the ability to be flexible and receptive in everything we undertake, because we have no permanent home for our performances. We are thus continually on the lookout for spaces and venues that would imbue our work with even more meaning. Furthermore, by initiating collaborations between established artists, crazy people without a reputation and collaborators from many different sources, the risks that we take are consistent with our determination to defy conventions.

ABOUT THE DSM-V+

In exploring this attitude, a pervasive phenomenon affecting almost all aspects of life, we could not ignore the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders), a reference tool used worldwide for classifying mental problems, complete with specific criteria to guide psychiatrists and other mental health professionals in their diagnoses. Considered by some as the bible of psychiatric disorders, others feel it is dangerous when it is used with the sole intention of fitting people into categories from which it is almost impossible to escape. Many specialists see in the DSM the emergence of an arbitrary or totalitarian approach: You only scored 5 points out of 9, you can't be bi-po-whatever! The DSM is a diagnostic tool and not a method of treatment. Psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry promote its use so that specialists around the world have a common language and organize research based on this guide, which originally was a statistical tool. Reflecting current trends and ideas in vogue, the DSM decides what is normal and what is not. Nothing less! This is why we want to spoof the classification imposed by the DSM and produce a satiric DSM-V+ listing all the disorders the earlier editions left out.

Along the lines of the two international multidisciplinary festivals that we held in 1984 and 1987, we want to organize a five-day polymorphous and polysemic event to reveal the complexity of the subject through contributions from various artistic and social disciplines. The project consists of bringing together specialists to a symposium, on the "forgotten disorders" not mentioned in the DSM-IV. By specialists, we mean all those who have original thoughts on the subject of mental health and what constitutes normal and pathological.

Since psychologism has invaded all spheres of human activity, we in turn want to explore several fields of artistic activity– multidisciplinary arts, visual arts, soundscapes, etc.– and social activity. At the event we want to take a parodic, caricatural, mimetic approach and invite artists and other participants to invent, identify, describe, propose a forgotten disorder, old or new, and present it in the manner of their choice using poetry, performance, movement, yelling, deambulation, technology, video, visual arts… Each intervention however should serve as a demonstration or illustration: the "disorder" suggested has a name, requires a diagnosis, a suggested treatment, possibly statistics, etc. The goal being, as we said, to produce a DSM-V+.

We see the DSM-V+ symposium as an entity, a coherent whole which will bring meaning through the proposals of each participant. We will offer (6) sites for presentations and several approaches for producing a post-event catalogue.


1) Addressing the issue

Conferences and roundtable discussions at the symposium will bring together guest speakers and panelists focusing on artistic manifestations being carried out in terms of concepts related to the concept "the pathology of living." Artists, participants, and mental health professionals and patients are invited to share their feelings on the subject.

2) Taking it to the streets

The street is a public space, a zone that the citizens lay claim to, a place for guerilla theatre and open exhibits. A dazibao showcase, everyone has access to the street (or do they?). Has it been pacified or is it a place of confrontation? In the street we use our framework of psycho-geography to handle traffic and tension every day as well as the cracks in the varnish of rectitude. Is screaming in public the sign of a deranged mind or the only way to get your breath back? Normal behaviour or erratic behaviour?

3) Art in action

Polypoetic performances will take place in a primitive environment, a room stripped down for raw expression. This evening of brief poetry and performance art will take place in an atmosphere of deliriousness created by a masked ball. It will be an echo of how social hierarchy was turned upside down during the carnivals in the Middle Ages. It will play with the line that separates poets and performers from the public, the "proposals for disorders" of the artists and the passive perception of the audience. A celebration of art, a celebration of life against all DSMs.

4) Films and videos

This section on video and film will feature documentaries and fiction on mental health. The choice of material from around the world will be made in collaboration with Antitube.

5) Crazy gadgets

In this space for installation and activity we want to present gadgets... anthropomorphic objects that have lost their heads.

This space is dedicated to technological arts on the theme "Crazy machines that want to be human." Each one has a specific disorder that shows how even machines are not immune to behavioural problems.

6) Theatre

Using theatre, we believe we can explore the murky zones of the human mind. The stage becomes a place for expressing madness with rage and growling as an outlet against the surrounding narcissism, fighting indifference with flesh and blood. In a post-rupture proposal, we return to the weight of bodily existence. Organic theatre. In collaboration with Frédéric Dubois, we create theatre based on the strategy developed for the Labo de la jeune création théâtrale. This is progressive theatre created over 3 days, alternating improvisation, writing and staging. Each day, the public sees a new version. The actors improvise on the theme "the pathology of living" within well-defined guidelines, then an author writes a rough draft during the night based on the raw material the actors have provided. The actors then have a day to stage the text with the help of a director, etc.