OPEN CALL: essays / articles / visuals
Exploring our concepts of mental health and the society and culture from which they emerge
FOR
37 pieces of flair
September – December 2014
The NewBridge Project / The Star and Shadow Cinema (Newcastle upon Tyne)
Description
37 pieces of flair is a 3 part season of arts and cinema starting in September with 4 film screenings at The Star and Shadow Cinema followed by a publication launch in early October and concluding with an exhibition and events programme at The NewBridge Project throughout November.
Intentionally avoiding the ‘knife wielding madmen’ or ‘isolated social outcast’ – so often aligned with the coverage of mental health in mass media – 37 pieces of flair will challenge the culturally perceived notions of mental health and how it affects all of our lives.
Call 1: Publication
Printed in a newspaper format the publication will act as a conversation provocateur throughout the exhibition and connected events. The intention of this newspaper is to provoke response and dialogue. We are open to creative use of this format and contributions could take the form of articles, essays, obituaries, grand statements, diagrams, photo journalism, etc.
Deadline for Publication: Midnight Sunday 31st August 2014
Send any questions and applications to: admin@lloyd-wilson.co.uk
Call 2: Exhibition and Events
We are open to works which respond to the project themes (see further reading below), these may include sound works, workshops, film, installation, performance, conversation groups etc. These works will form a group show within the NewBridge Project Space. If necessary we may be able to access alternative spaces for one off events, performance and talks.
Deadline for Exhibition Submissions: Midnight Sunday 7th September
Send any questions and applications to: admin@lloyd-wilson.co.uk
Fee:
There is a fee available for contributors to both the publication and exhibition elements. However the size of this fee is pending current funding applications.
How to apply:
• This call is open to all (sociologists, anthropologists, artists, philosophers, magicians, treasure hunters, etc.)
• Applications, outlining your proposal, should be no more than 350 words
• Along with your application please send a brief bio, any specific requirements and up to 5 images (jpg)
• Send any questions and applications to: admin@lloyd-wilson.co.uk
• Any questions? Please feel free to contact us before you apply.
Further Reading:
Why you may not find many references to mental health in this season about mental health?
Unlike countless other mental health themed Film Seasons or exhibitions, 37 pieces of flair will focus its attention less upon the individual stories of enduring mental health problems and rather take a step back in an attempt to grasp a broader look at, or investigation of, the society and its culture from which they emerge.
For example – Taking the expression (misattributed to Novelist William Ford Gibson) ‘before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not in fact just surrounded by complete arseholes’. You could say we are perhaps on the lookout for arseholes in a sea of soaring diagnoses.
Mark Fisher, in his portrait of our current predicament, Capitalist Realism, rather succinctlysurveys this territory: “This pathologization already forecloses any possibility of politicization. By privatising these problems – treating them as if they were caused only by chemical imbalances in the individuals’ neurology and/or by their family background – any question of social systemic causation is ruled out”.
This is not to discredit nor underestimate the psychological experiences of the countless individuals who identify with mental health diagnoses but rather, to explore the social, political, economic and anthropological terrain from which they occur.
Click here for more info on the programme and to download the Open Call.
Click here to see the cinema programme.
