Natural Object out of Focus
laminated print-out
140X65 cm
A natural object can be any person or institution, a refugee,the new kid on the block, a female/male, a hospital, a person suffering from insanity or sanity. What happens when what is considered natural gets out of focus? Does this blur our views? Or does it open a path of possible understanding of this other?
This is an excerpt from a work (original size 280x130 cm), produced by love and devotion as a part of an official art commission at two wards for psychotic
rehabilitation at Akademiska sjukhuset, Uppsala, Sweden.
The work is a photo from the surroundings of the two wards, at Ulleråker, Uppsala, but unfocussed it can be a space situated anywhere. The picture is a detail
from one out of 60 photos, shot during spring 2002 showing the milieu nearby the wards at Ulleråker. This detail was blown up to such an extreme that a "blur of green" was the endresult. At the time we read an article about a scientific investigation, in collaboration with NASA, on how the colour green soothens anguish after only a few
minutes. (Dagens Nyheter 28 april 2002)
This larger green image has been mounted into the stairwayhall connecting the two wards. The small snapshots have been placed between plexiglass and will be placed onto the walls of the entrance as well as on walls inside the wards. Aside this work we have taken a grip on the totality of the wards - from new sofas in leather to a complete cleanout of everything that makes the milieu messy and hard to orient oneself in.
We also work with a completely new system of pictograms that will be of help to patients that have a hard time reading due to psychosis, medicines or having another mothertounge than swedish.
To bring the outside to the inside of these closed wards makes the border between the world behind locked doors and the world outside less definite and easier to transgress. We wanted to point to a link to and possibility to reconnect to the world outside again (and do they not belong to this world even inside the institution?) - both physically and metally - and maybe lure to silent longing or maybe just rest. We wanted to show that the world still belong to the patients.
The biasses and fears we initially brought with us to the wards, soon developed
into a deeper understanding of the structures surrounding us in society, in this
case a mental institution. We approached an identification with the people who will
live for longer periods of time in this environment. This has confronted us with
new questions about all of us that are on the outside...
Maybe the world can come to the wards? Is this "other" something I can find within myself? Who is closing the door of whom? Where really is the mental disorder? Inside or outside the wards? Is the mental institution a prison or is it a possible place for retreat when the demands becomes too much?
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