phase 1 project proposal

1. Phase 1 project proposal - reviewed 09/08/2006

Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1932. I’m not the first person to read this and wonder whether it is a work of fiction or documentary. The characters in his science fiction novel are continually fed Soma, a drug that ensures they remain content and passive, and also a Violent Passion Surrogate treatment, the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage [1]. The need to control negative emotions using anti-depressants and mood-stabilisers appears to be on the increase, particularly in ‘developed’, ‘western’ societies. Paradoxically, Capitalism depends on human dissatisfaction, so claims Gustav Metzger, and the transformation economy, as described by Suhail Malik, depends on the unquenchable human thirst for self-perfection. We seem to be living in a culture distracted by the quest for satisfaction, with energy being consumed with worry about image, status and minor ailments. Human sadness is being exploited, by pharmaceutical companies who claim to be able to cure all angst and melancholia.

My starting point for Darkplaces was to continue research I initially carried out for my degree dissertation [2] in which I claimed that aggression and violence will increase if emotions are repressed and not expressed; "what else can we expect other than occasional psychotic eruptions on a vast plain of disengagement sustained by an economy devoted to simulation" [3]. I proposed to further research the historical developments of psychoanalysis and psychiatry and the disconcerting self-legitimisation of scientific knowledge, through Foucault and Lyotard respectively. And also proposed to scrutinise the theories of holistic and alternative medicine, whose belief that emotions can be located through the meridian points or chakras and not only in the brain, stands in direct opposition to Western medicine.

My aim, from the onset, has bee to interrogate the scientific sites that investigate human minds, classify our emotions and actions, and promote chemical treatments for anything from loss of libido to social anxiety. I wanted to interrogate how this non-holistic approach disregards the possible psychological causes of common physiological illnesses, and how this might actually be contributing to the frightening deterioration of our natural immune functions. I wanted to experiment with existing treatments for mental and emotional illness, and also with the idea of catharsis and emotional detoxification. Ultimately I set out to confront those private scientific institutes who seek to profit from our misery, and who work with other forces to ensure that we remain dissatisfied and dependent upon their new and improved remedies.

[1] Huxley, A ‘Brave New World’ (Penguin Modern Classic, 1932)
[2] Panesar, L ‘With no way of expressing, man shall explode’ Totality in Flux, Volume #1, Spring 2002 (A Red Room publication, Manchester) Click here to read full version
[3] Lasn & Grierson, ‘Malignant Sadness’ (Adbusters, no.30, June/July 2000)

Darkplaces is a project by The Arts Catalyst and SCAN