ULTRASANITY.
ON MADNESS, SANITATION, ANTIPSYCHIATRY AND RESISTANCE
Invocations 25.01.–26.01.2020
With Ghayath Almadhoun, Leo Asemota, The Brother Moves On, Debbie Ann Chambers, Alessandra Eramo, Dora García, Patricia Gherovici, Jaswant Gudzer, Maleem Habib, Hearing Voices Café, Frederick W. Hickling, Lukas Hofmann with mirabella paidamwoyo dziruni, Scott Hopper, Luzek Marny, Adrian Quentin Vardi, Elena Veleckaite and Nico Walker, Taoufiq Izeddiou, Eva Kot'átková, Angela Melitopoulos, Jota Mombaça, Dorothée Munyaneza, Adjani Okpu-Egbe, Elisabeth Tambwe, Urban Feral, Patrick Vernon, and others
Schedule
| 24.01.2020 | At ifa Galerie Berlin Linienstraße 139–140 |
16:30 | Eva Kot'átková Room for Restoring Empathy Workshop with children (details below) |
18:30 | Leo Asemota, Jaswant Guzder, Eva Kotatkova, and Elena Agudio Guided Tour |
25.01.2020 | At SAVVY Contemporary Plantagenstraße 31 |
10:00 | Hearing Voices Café (Details below) |
13:00 | Lunch Break |
At silent green Kulturquartier (same building) Entrance Gerichtstraße 35 | |
| 14:20 | The Brother Moves On Sonic Prelude |
14:45 | Elena Agudio, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Kelly Krugman Introduction |
15:00 | Urban Feral Fossilised Frequencies SOUND PERFORMANCE |
| 15:20 | Adjani Okpu-Egbe & the curators CONVERSATION |
15:50 | Alessandra Eramo Tanz Sediment PERFORMANCE |
16:15 | Ghayath Almadhoun If We Were In a Virtual World POETRY READING |
16:45 | Break |
17:00 | The Brother Moves On SONIC INTERLUDE |
17:10 | Leo Asemota CARTE BLANCHE |
17:40 | Elisabeth Tambwe Abstraction PERFORMANCE |
18:15 | Patricia Gherovici Mad to be Nor-male LECTURE |
| 18:45 | Break |
| 19:00 | Lukas Hofmann with mirabella paidamwoyo dziruni, Scott Hopper, Luzek Marny, Adrian Quentin Vardi, Elena Veleckaite, Nico Walker Skin Come Leather Vol. III PERFORMANCE |
| 20:00 | The Brother Moves On SONIC INTERLUDE |
| 20:10 | Frederick W. Hickling Owning our Madness: Contributions of Jamaican Psychiatry to Decolonizing Global Mental Health KEYNOTE LECTURE |
21:00 | Dorothee Munyaneza When They Come PERFORMANCE |
| 21:40 | Jota Mombaça ... so, when I'm gone, I shall be in the air … READING SESSION |
22:15 | The Brother Moves On Trauma Room PERFORMANCE |
| 26.01.2020 | At SAVVY Contemporary Plantagenstraße 31 |
| 10:00–13.30 | Frederick W. Hickling, Debbie Ann Chambers and Jaswant Guzder Psychohistoriography Workshop (Details below) |
13:30 | Lunch Break |
| 14:15 | Elena Agudio, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Kelly Krugman Introduction |
| 14:30 | Angela Melitopoulos Déconnage PRESENTATION AND FILM SCREENINGS |
| 15:15 | Dora Garcia The Deviant Majority PRESENTATION & RESPONSE to Angela Melitopoulos |
| 15:45 | Patrick Vernon The Mental State and Well Being of Black Britain: From Emancipation to the Windrush Scandal PRESENTATION |
| 16:00 | Jaswant Guzder Journeys of Art and Healing: Private Temenos Versus Collective Engagement PRESENTATION & RESPONSE to Patrick Vernon |
| 16:45 | Break |
| 17:15 | Patrick Vernon, Angela Melitopolous, Dora García, and Debbie Ann Chambers Panel Discussion |
18:00 | Taoufiq Izeddiou with Maleem Habib En Alert PERFORMANCE |
| 18:30 | Debbie Ann Chambers Not Our Masters' Tools: The Collaborative Poetry Making of the Dream-A-World Cultural Therapy Program KEYNOTE LECTURE |
| 19:30 | Urban Feral AFTERLUDE |
20:00 | MUSIC & CONVIVIALITY |
WORKSHOPS
Room for Restoring Empathy
Workshop for Children
With Eva Kot'átková
24.01.2020 16:30–18:00
Open to children of circa 7–12 years.
Workshop will be held in English.
Entering into a dialogue with an emotional jacket:
How to speak through objects or personal items, particularly those which appear so close to our bodies?
How to see a jacket, shirt or jumper as a second skin, something that blushes, fears, demonstrates different feelings?
How to use them as protective shelters to hide in as well as an armor for everyday battle?
How to see them as a temporary storage space that allows us to leave unpleasant emotions behind?
How to use them as mediators to talk through about something that we perceive as urgent or pressing or simply unbearable to face alone?
And how to, on the other hand, treat them as exhausted, wounded bodies, daily companions, that need our help, replacement of parts or serious cure?
How to enter into a dialogue with your jacket without being immediately labeled as a freak?
Bring a jacket or jumper, something you wear or what you used to wear. Something that you suspect might know a lot about who you are and how you feel. Bring scissors. Don't be afraid of them. They allow us to give a speech organ to otherwise mute objects. Bring stories you want to share with others. No matter if they are made up or real, no one will try to verify them. Bring open mind that allows us to imagine the world as it really is.
Please register at communications@savvy-contemporary.com.
Hearing Voices Café: THE VOICES ARE REAL!
25.01.2020 10:00–13:00
The Hearing Voices Café (2014–present) is a safe space where anyone involved or interested in the phenomenon of voice hearing (because they hear voices, they have friends or family who do, because they are researchers, therapists or activists) can get together to share their story, their work, their research and their experience, with the clear aim of de-stigmatising and de-pathologising the voice hearing experience.
The Hearing Voices Café follows the lead of organisations such as the hearing voices network and intervoice. The voices are real!
See and follow: thehearingvoicescafe.doragarcia.org and read about Hearing Voices Cafés in Madrid, Barcelona, Hamburg, Paris, Valladolid, Toronto, London, Berlin.
Please join us in body and voice on Saturday morning, no registration needed.
Psychohistoriography Workshop
with Frederick W. Hickling, Debbie Ann Chambers, and Jaswant Guzder
26.01.2020 10:00–13:30
Open to 25 participants
Psychohistoriography is a therapeutic technique, developed in Jamaica (Hickling, 1989), that combines historiography – the analysis of the philosophy of history through recorded documents – with the oral tradition of verbal anecdotes in the context of large group psychotherapy dynamics. A PCT workshop typically has five stages: (1) psycho-historiographic large group analysis; (2) creating the scripts; (3) staging; (4) performance; and (5) evaluation. PCT uses the process of psychohistoriographic analysis that aims to identify key historical events that affect members of a group and to label these in terms of poles or tensions experienced by individuals in the group.
If interested, please write to us and we will send you a longer description of the workshop
Please register at communications@savvy-contemporary.com.
We cordially invite you to the public program of ULTRASANITY. ON MADNESS, SANITATION, ANTIPSYCHIATRY AND RESISTANCE – a project in four chapters which challenges Western scientific methods and perspectives on mental health. It questions medical (mis)conceptions of psychopathologies by situating them in the context of coloniality, racialisation, objectification, and patriarchal oppression. This project confronts us again with traumas and fears of displacement and contamination, pondering the notion of madness beyond a Western understanding. Without romanticising the notion and stigma of madness, we seek to address the heuristic and generative potential of certain forms of delirium. Our additional aims are to grant fundamental significance to community engagement and to spiritual, systemic, intra-generational histories in formulating healing strategies. With this exhibition and discursive programme, we navigate the space of ULTRASANITY, to problematize the dichotomy of insanity as the opposite of sanity, and to inhabit the liminal space that lies past the norm, stripped of processes of normalisation and control.
The Invocations program comprises a series of performances, film screenings, talks and round-table discussions, workshops, and sonic interventions, which bring together artists, writers, activists, filmmakers and musicians, patients, healers, clinicians, cognitive scientists, scholars and practitioners involved in the clarities and twilights of the ultrasane.
CURATORS Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Elena Agudio
CO-CURATOR Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock
PROJECT TEAM Kelly Krugman, Lili Somogyi, Abhishek Nilamber
MANAGEMENT Lema Sikod, Jörg-Peter Schulze
COMMUNICATION Anna Jäger
SOUND ENGINEER Kay Bennet Kruthoff, Rey KM Domurat
LIVE STREAM Boiling Head
GRAPHIC DESIGN Elsa Westreicher
ULTRASANITY. ON MADNESS, SANITATION, ANTIPSYCHIATRY AND RESISTANCE is a SAVVY Contemporary research, performance and exhibition project in multiple chapters, in collaboration with ifa Gallery Berlin, Association of Neuroesthetics (AoN_Platform for Art and Neuroscience), Picha Lubumbashi and Gnaoua Festival. The project is funded by the TURN Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes) and the Foundation of Arts Initiative. The work by Lukas Hofmann was commissioned by the Jindrich Chalupecky Society, and supported by the Czech-German Fund for the Future, and the Czech Centre Berlin. Alessandra Eramo’s work was commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Klangkunst Program, to be broadcast in 2020.
