One per cent / A spatial experiment on schizophrenia

Eleftheria Fatsea

One person out of every one hundred lives in a surreal world. This world is overwhelmingly destructive and dangerous as it lies on the extreme edge of the spectrum of human experience. Further from this edge one can witness only a dreadful abyss. Schizophrenia is the psychiatric label to describe the state, which stresses the existential position of a person to an unbearably uncanny and chaotic level. In medical terms, there is a clear description of the pathology of the illness and its symptoms. However, schizophrenic’s experience of himself and of the world remains incomprehensible to us, as long as we are sane and he is insane. My intention in this project is to translate an experience into a symbolic spatial gesture addressing the ninety nine per cent and create an installation, situated in a hypothetical space, which simulates the different emotional hues of that mental state. The qualities of the space and atmosphere will push visitors to the opposing edge, choreographing their psychotic possibilities while still allowing them to maintain their sanity. The final outcome constitutes an abstract and symbolic expression of the schizophrenic journey. Finally, one arrives to an understanding of the sufferer’s inescapable everyday reality and is reminded of the fragility and vulnerability of human mental state.