Instància. Una justificació sense informes mèdics i una col·lecció infinita per combatre la mirada estreta

Instància is a disperse research project born from my own incomprehension with the policies surrounding “mental health” and how it is handled. The project is conceived as an inverted funnel, in order to value multiplicity as a way of healing. In a context where the general protocol against mental health disorders is categorical and pharmacological, the main goal of this research is to remove the story from this reductive narrative path and give it new signifiers and a new hierarchy, so necessary to mental health and its management.

This project came from my own (negative) experience with university bureaucracy, which demanded I fill out numerous forms and provide doctors’ notes to justify why I needed to move one course to the following semester. This proved impossible as I do not have an official diagnosis of my mental health “problem,” despite the discomfort and misunderstanding I have experienced due to it since I was a child. This project is my attempt to raise awareness and effect change on this issue.

Instància is presented as a bureaucratic document, in this case a form that imitates the typical administrative tone of the forms I was required to fill in. In parallel, an artistic proceeding that explores the administrative rigidity is activated. I approach five people in different areas who are all connected with psychiatric management and had them complete the form, which turned out to be a “trap.” I put myself in the shoes of a silent observer (or of psychiatry in its purest, rawest form) and fished for responses from these people, who were personally unknown to me, and whom I observed as though they were animals – a reversal of roles.

Finally, the animals become “Gogo” toys. I used my own childhood collection of Gogos, because they represent hybrid beings – part animal, part human, part robot – morally decontextualized, infinite in quantity and shades of meaning (characteristics that work well with multiplicity). And so, applying some regulating parameters extracted from the responses to the forms, I added five new characters to my collection of Gogos. Five additions to a collection of infinite possibilities, that represent the many different ways to accompany, listen and deal with mental tricks and traps.