For our six week project for integrated project I have been preoccupied and haven't blogged as much as I'd like to! So at this point, my submission was on thursday the 01/03/12 and thankfully, everything was completed on time to a standard I was more than happy to submit.
The project progressed further into the direciton of delirium to represent psychological non place whereby the loss of identity within the individual and loss of engagement with the mind to the body was highlighted through a series of casted faces using silicone and plaster. This was then displayed and created to illustrate the transition of the overwhelming emotion when an individual is overcome by this non place and to help justify my reasoning, I will paste in my Artists Statement followed by pictures of the finished piece which will hopefully display the integration of sculpture and concept as well as the portrayal of the psychological non place of Delirium.
For the brief of ‘non places’, my concentration was led into the direction of the psychological non place of delirium- the state of ‘not knowing’. I feel this is appropriate as a non-place can be briefly defined as something which an individual passes through and has little to no engagement with. In conjunction with this, considerable complaints are made identifying a loss of personal identity, a decline in meaningful relations amongst the users of spaces, and the forgetting of history. From this, I found that the effects of delirium mimic those of non-place, as the feeling of mental confusion concentrates upon a psychological non place where memory loss, hysteria, loss of personality and indefinitely a loss of relation with the brain to the physical being are defined as absorbing the individual in a state of ‘unknown’. They are stripped of their original identity in the sense that their personality is taken and replaced with disorientation and hallucination as the relation to non-place extends further into the loss of engagement concerning brain activity to the physical being. As delirium takes over memory loss occurs and irrational behaviour overwhelms the patient to the extent they cannot comprehend what is occurring.
The type of delirium I decided to focus on is Acute Delirium 293.0 which is described as an acute confusional state by mental health professionals as this helps to portray that the effects of this psychological non place are temporary, much like the stance of anyone affected by non-place. The temporary effects of this delirium also signifies a passage of transition, as non-place takes place over a passage of time and usually results in an individual spending numerous amounts of time absorbed within non place. The individual affected by delirium does not necessarily want to be immersed into this psychological state yet has no option just as we as a society are accelerated through the transformation of time and space whether we like it or not.
The transition of faces epitomises the progression of a world dominated by non-place just as a brain becomes overcome by a state of confusion which is heightened through the contrast of colours within the piece. The emphasis on the colour white symbolises mental clarification and has connotations of a doctor’s uniform, therefore representing the medical affiliation with the form as delirium as well as creating psychological connotations of purity. The stripping of identity is heightened by the colour white as it exposes the individual in a vulnerable state, just as we often feel in non-places as this is a temporary state of transit. As white fades into black, it reiterates the opposite of an ability to focus, as it creates an overwhelming emotion as the individual is captivated by this psychological non place through the connotations to ‘emptiness’ which again relates to non-place through connections to excess space.
The transitional effect also creates a sense of blurring as a consequence, which is representational of the misdiagnosis which often happens when diagnosing delirium due to the inability to read symptoms. This then all relates to non-place as the distortion if the faces symbolises the definition of non-place being interpreted in many different ways, everyone experiences their own non-place and therefore the definition of it also becomes indistinct and reflects down to personal interpretation.
And finally, the inclusion of Morse code is relevant within the project as this is one of the most well-known coding systems used especially to signal distress. It also illuminates vocal contact which relates to the way a patient suffering from delirium is diagnosed which often happens as a result of an observation of behaviour, therefore requiring an intuitive response. By focusing on Morse code at the end of the transition of faces, highlights the demand for clarification and understanding at a greater level by the individual as a loss of conscious identity and engagement with the individual’s previous state is replaced with a deficiency of understanding, overwhelmed within their ‘mental space’.
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Acute Delirium 293.0
