Some key themes I am interested in -
- Dualism (the body as a machine/the idea of the essence/ephemeral nature)
- Identity
- Social Control/Obedience to Authority
- Reward
- Individual liberty
- Psychoanalysis
- Self presentation
During the course of the last project I became interested in looking at the unconscious, particularly the idea of the idea of ’woman’ and the unconscious. I took a particular interest in the Iconographie Photographique de La Salpetriere as the work embodies many of the themes which I became interested in exploring.
The Iconographie Photographique de La Salpetriere is a visual record of various states of hysteria recorded at the Salpetriere Clinic in
The experiments at the Salpertiere are also of interest to me as the women depicted in the photographic records appeared to be obedient and compliant to the demands of the doctors. I am interested in why they freely ‘performed’ for the camera. It could be because they longed to be in favour of those in power or simply because they had been taken from the real world and placed in an institution where this mode of behaviour became the norm.
I am interested in why, in the real world, people chose to perform/conform ‘freely, outwith the confines of the institution. Acceptance of the expected modes of behaviour is a condition perpetrated by the society we live in; few people express any interest in acting to change the status quo or can see how they can remove themselves from the confines of a mundane/non-questioning existence.
Following from this I intend to use the institution as a metaphor to investigate areas such as social control, individual liberty and the perception of the self as thinking and acting being.
