health 13 results

health

What is shared, what is private and what are the possibilities of self-presentation in contemporary screen based culture? Adopting conventions of a YouTube vlog, Magdalena’s teenage diary entries surface raw and seemingly unedited. Stored in a number of disused mobile phones; songs, gifs, low-fi images and movies weave into and trail off in unfinished stories, anecdotes, soundbites and faces from childhood, where experience of mental illness is quickly interrupted by pop lyrics.
The nature of madness has been a topic for discussion since ancient times. However, mental illness is related to modern times and connected with institucionalisation of psychiatry. According to Michel Foucault it was the need of the burgeoisie to do away with troublesome individuals in the 18th century that led to the foundation of special institutions for the so-called mentally ill. Within the framework of those „cells for the unwanted“ psychiatry became a scientific discipline.