PEDRO REYES |
SANATORIUM. Instruction piece, therapy.
Stillspotting NYC, Guggenheim
2011
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This activity is centered on a scale model of a hypothetical museum. You are about to see your entire life as an exhibition. The galleries in this model represent different moments from the cradle to the grave. This show is prospective and retrospective, it includes your future and your past.
To illustrate each moment you select objects from the shelves. In these small figures you may find a formal realization your internal worlds. They represent as complete as possible a cross-section of all inanimate and animate beings which we encounter in the external world as well as in the inner imaginative world: trees, plants, stones, marbles, wild and domesticated animals, ordinary women and men pursuing various activities, soldiers, fairytale figures, religious figures from diverse cultural spheres, houses, fountains, bridges, ships, vehicles, etc.
The 'therapist' plays the role of the museum's curator. If you wish, you can explain to them what you are doing or wait until the end. They can clarify how some galleries can be used, however the rules are simple and you are the artist, your vision is what counts. Key to the Galleries of the museum: 1) The Cradle 2) The Father 3) The Mother 4) Grandmother 5) Grandfather 6) Grandmother 7) Grandfather 8) Play space -shrinking 9) Education -growing 10) Youth 11) Workspaces -career 12) Personal Life 13) Unused potential 14) Death (exit) |
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Group Activity, instruction piece
Stillspotting NYC, Guggenheim
2011
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SANATORIUM is a transient clinic which provides short, unexpected therapies. The only way to experience this project is to sign up as a patient.
SANATORIUM starts with an interview where you are diagnosed and then appointed to experience at least 3 of 16 available therapies.
SANATORIUM therapies are variations or mash ups of existing schools such as Gestalt psychology, theater warm-up exercises, fluxus events, conflict resolution techniques, trust-building games, corporate coaching, psychodrama, and hypnosis. SANATORIUM is a delivery system of placebos. In the same way as a Brechtian play, to be aware of the set up doesn't prevents it from doing the trick. For a skeptical mindset magic has to be deprived of its aura. SANATORIUM offers a secular space for psychological processes that can be found in religion or shamanism. When you sign in you sign a release form warning you that this is not real therapy nor real therapist. You decide to believe. Suspension of belief has to maintain, eventually you decide to believe, to tell yourself a story. SANATORIUM works with each individual's own narratives. SANATORIUM is a democratization of therapy, a 'psychological first aid'. The sessions are conducted by non-professionals. It taps into the excess capacity that we have to help others. MANIFESTO
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SANATORIUM. Instruction piece, therapy.
Stillspotting NYC, Guggenheim
2011
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In this activity the therapist asks the patient to think of a secret, something personal that he has hidden out of shame or fear; a story that is very embarrassing to tell. The patient writes the confession on a piece of paper while the therapist covers their eyes. The patient then rolls up the paper with the recorded secret and puts it inside of a glass bottle with a cork and places the bottle in a large bowl of water. In exchange, the patient may take a different bottle from the water and read the secret of someone else. Beforehand all participants are asked to omit data or names that could jeopardize their reputation, or that of someone else.
Catharsis in Greek means 'purification'. This cathartic action comes from reading another's secret and to encourage openness we explain that 'we are interested in sin, not the sinner'. This process is a secular substitute of the ritual confession, offering catharsis without mechanisms that create guilt or proclaiming judgment.
In the second phase the roles are reversed. The confidant becomes the confessor and the story of a stranger is revealed at random. Many of these stories have some degree of toxicity (that has been expelled in the purification of the other). While writing secrets is always a private ritual, reading them can be done in groups. By revealing a secret it is almost inevitable to succumb to the temptation of wanting to know the others' secrets and divulge the stories in a group. The authors, absent and protected by anonymity, become a mirror of the readers. |
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SANATORIUM. Instruction piece, therapy.
Stillspotting NYC, Guggenheim
2011
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Most people never get to know what epitaph will be written on their tombstones, although some - especially writers - leave instructions for what they want to be the summary of their life, most never think about it.
In this exercise you choose some words for your epitaph, in either plain or poetic language, that will tell future cemetery goers something about you, and perhaps about the meaning of life.
INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Take a few minutes to compose the words for which you will be remembered and write a draft. 2. Once you have completed your draft, choose 2 cards for your epitaph and place them on top of each other. 3. Gently pick up the letters of the metal stamps and hammer your epitaph letter by letter. 4. Once you have completed your lettering you may place your epitaph in the 'cemetery'. 5. Keep the second copy for yourself. |
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Instruction piece, therapy.
Stillspotting NYC, Guggenheim The Ashraya Inititative, India
2011
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The Voodoo doll, or what in Haiti is called pwen, is a magical surrogate for an intended target of sorcery. This therapy is a positive iteration of the Voodoo doll, thus called 'Goodoo'. Here we take a generic cloth doll and personalize it keeping in mind the person we want to do some good. Then we use diverse materials, charms or tokens on different parts of the body to cause the specific good to that person. If you wanted someone to be kind at heart we may introduce a small bottle of honey in the chest of the Goodoo doll. If you want someone to finish a marathon we may add wings to his Goodoo doll legs, etc.
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SANATORIUM. Instruction piece, therapy.
Stillspotting NYC, Guggenheim
2011
|
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To our minds a symbolic act has the equivalent power of a real act. Consequently, beating or hurting someone symbolically may free us from the need of having to do a real aggression. Based on this premise the patient faces a headless dummy.
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Take a balloon and blow it up. 2. Draw a face on the balloon of the person who has hurt you most in your life. 3. With encouragement from the therapist, tell the dummy why you hate them so much and how much you were hurt by them. 4. Get even by hitting the dummy until the balloon bursts. After this, participants are given some drops (a placebo) of a liquid that represents the vaccine against violence. The catharsis this therapy achieves makes redundant real acts of violence, freeing the subject from long standing hatred. |
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