Group Therapy: Mental Distress In A Digital Age

Brain scan featuring in the research
process for Katriona Beale's new
commission on internet addiction.
Courtesy of the Laboratory of
Neuro Imaging and Martinos
Center for Biomedical Imaging,
Consortium of the Human
Connectome Project.

Written By: Mark Armstrong

Provided By: FACT

Exhibition at FACT, Liverpool from Thursday March 5 – Sunday May 17 2015 (Press view on March 5 at 14.00)

The exhibition Group Therapy: Mental Distress In A Digital Age will be showing at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) between Wednesday March 5 and Sunday May 17 2015.

Originating from FACT’s extensive work within mental health and wellbeing, the exhibition explores the complex relationship between technology, society, and mental health.

Developed with various partners, including Mersey Care NHS Trust, the Wellcome Trust, The British Psychological Society (BPS) and the University of Liverpool, the exhibition will be accompanied by a full public programme. Films, talks and events will encourage visitors to rethink their understanding of mental health and wellbeing and welcome further public discussion about how our mental health is related to the society we live in and the impact of new technologies. FACT’s Young People’s programme will also be producing focused events for local young people. The exhibition coincides with Mental Health Awareness Week 2015 (11 - 17 May).

Our society is characterised by a constant use of digital devices, from taking selfies and vlogging to working and gaming. Simultaneously, most people face some kind of mental health issues during their lifetime, affecting either themselves, or a friend or family member. But how is our use of technology connected to our wellbeing, and how does it affect our values and the way we see ourselves?

Group Therapy explores the past, present and future of mental health and wellbeing in relation to societal values and technology. Including apps, games and online forums, a variety of digital tools will be displayed that illustrate the diverse ways we use technology to manage and mediate our emotions in the 21st Century.

Vanessa Bartlett, who is co-curating the exhibition with FACT’s Director Mike Stubbs, commented: “Group Therapy proposes that art and the creative use of digital devices can challenge dated ideas about mental illness, helping to reduce stigma and encourage open discussion about our personal wellbeing.”

Supported by the Wellcome Trust and the The British Psychological Society (BPS), the major new commission Madlove by The Vacuum Cleaner responds to the artist’s own experience of psychiatric hospitals as punishing rather than loving environments. A collaboratively-designed asylum will be created at FACT as “a safe place to go mad", appropriate for a society where all of us experience emotional distress. Madlove features advisors from across the health, higher education and science as well as design sectors, including principal partner the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool.

Other artists include Dora Garcia, Kate Owens & Neeta Madahar, Quintan Ana Wikswo, George Khut and Katriona Beales.

In collaboration with various mental health organisations, including Mersey Care NHS Trust, FACT has proudly been involved in projects for participants with mental health issues for more than 20 years. Artists have both been working closely with the community in creative projects as well as created digital tools that support mental health. Examples are FACT’s recent launch of a mental health support app, In Hand, developed with young people, and projects with military veterans, many with mental health problems. Group Therapy offers visitors to take a closer look at FACT’s work in this field over the years in an interactive archive.

FACT’s Director Mike Stubbs added: “At FACT, we’ve always been very passionate about our work in mental health. We are very pleased that our efforts have resulted in such an inspiring and thought provoking exhibition, showing that emotional distress is a topic that concerns us all.”

Highlights of the exhibition will include the following:

The Vacuum Cleaner’s major new commission Madlove, supported by the Wellcome Trust and The British Psychological Society (BPS), is based on the artist’s own experience of psychiatric hospitals being punishing rather than loving environments. He is inviting members of the public to collaboratively-design a more appropriate asylum. Madlove features advisors from across the health, high education and science as well as design sectors, including principal partner the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool.

The newly commissioned animation Me and The Black Dog by Kate Owens & Neeta Madahar explores the tradition of understanding mental health using storytelling and metaphor. Using cultural references in British folklore to ‘the black dog’ as a symbol of melancholy or death, the work investigates the idea that the dark element of one’s personality isn’t necessarily something to eradicate, but can be valued as an intrinsic part of oneself.

Katriona Beales' new commission - an installation combining sculptural elements with moving image and audio - responds to the emerging field of Internet addiction and has been created in dialogue with Henrietta Bowden-Jones, neuroscience researcher and specialist in Internet addiction.

In a photographic series of American asylum buildings, Quintan Ana Wikswo evokes the hyper-vigilant eye movements of post-traumatic stress disorder. This offers viewers the opportunity to experience mental illness through the eyes of the individual on the edges of society as a result of trauma or social injustice, as well as gives a historical context, highlighting the power relations.

Ubermorgen’s Psychosis Sensation is a piece of software that allows users to ‘self diagnose’ and print prescriptions for various mental health conditions. Installed within a mock-up psychiatric practice, it highlights various ways that technologies of sedation and stimulation are used for treating every kind of emotional distress in contemporary society.

George Khut’s The Heart Library challenges common perceptions that technology distances us from our bodies, by connecting body and mind. Emotionally-mediated changes in the user’s heart-rate influence the colour and sound of a large, ceiling mounted video projection. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

The multi-channel video installation Twelve by Melanie Manchot aims to articulate the complex relations between individual and collective structures in recovery as well as in therapy more generally. Developed in close collaboration with twelve people in recent recovery from substance misuse, the work is at once cinematic and intimate, performative and rich in affective stories and gestures. Commissioned by Portraits of Recovery, funded by the Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England.

Dora Garcia's work The Deviant Majority addresses revolutionary reforms in psychiatry that grew out of the political turmoil of the late 1960s. The film highlights the German Socialist Patient’s Collective (SPC), active in the 1970s, who believed that the social relations initiated by capitalism were responsible for physical manifestations of madness.

Lauren Moffatt's 3D stereoscopic film Not Eye tells the story of a woman who makes an elaborate helmet with inbuilt cameras, to cope with the anxiety and paranoia created by a society saturated with images. Lauren Moffatt is currently an Artist in Residence at FACT as part of the European Media Artist Residency Exchange (EMARE) Programme. This programme aims to unite artists across the continent and partner countries, with arts institutions of various levels, whilst developing new, publicly engaging work. Supported by the Culture 2013 programme of the European Commission. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

Superflex’s video installation The Financial Crisis illustrates the 2008 crash from a therapeutic perspective and highlights the correlation between financial risk, anxiety and emotional distress.

Made possible through support from MYA and the Liverpool Children's Emotional health and Wellbeing Partnership, an artwork will be co-produced by artist Erica Scourti and a group of 13 to 18 year olds through FACT's young people's programme Freehand.

For more information, visit www.fact.co.uk/projects/group-therapy-mental-distress-in-a-digital-age.aspx?when=futureevents.

FACT 2015 Programme Launch

Written By: Mark Armstrong

Provided By: FACT

On Wednesday January 21, FACT officially launched its 2015 programme of events and exhibition, as presented by Mike Stubbs, Director at FACT, and Ana Botella, Programme Producer at FACT.

Full details of the 2015 programme are below; if you want to know more, visit www.fact.co.uk/whats-on.aspx.

Exhibitions:

Group Therapy
5 March – 17 May 2015
Group Therapy brings to the fore FACT’s long-standing work in the area of health and wellbeing through its Engagement strand. Investigating conditions of mental health and its relationship with our digitally loaded reality, the exhibition will encourage visitors to rethink their understanding of mental health and wellbeing. It will also highlight how far our personal wellbeing is related to the values of the society we live in and how we use technology to manage and mediate our emotions in the 21st Century.

Partners and sponsors: Arts Council England, Liverpool City Council, Wellcome Trust, Mersey Care, The British Psychological Society, Liverpool Specialist Child Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), Merseyside Youth Association, University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University, Hope University, Royal College of Art/Creative Exchange, Look Festival, ProHelvetia, Mondriaan Foundation, Australian Arts Council, Nexus, Janssen UK.

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Build Your Own
4 June – 31 August 2015
Build Your Own will explore how digital technologies have transformed traditional processes of production and created new ways of working, sharing and collaborating. The exhibition seeks to showcase a new creative economy in which craft, technology and community are at the core of a new generation of ‘indiepreneurs’, hackers, bloggers and co-creatives.

Co-producing partners: Crafts Council UK, London, and Norfolk Museum Service.

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Shona Illingworth: Lesions in the Landscape
17 September – 22 November 2015
A three-year research project where artist Shona Illingworth is exploring the effects of amnesia and cultural erasure on an individual and society at large. Using new technologies to access previously inaccessible memories, the project aims to develop new approaches to understanding the phenomenology of amnesia and to examine the implications of individual and cultural amnesia for social constructions of identity and place.

Partners: Wellcome Trust, London; University of New South Wales, Sydney; University of Kent, Liverpool University Press; Dilston Grove, London.

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Chicks on Speed: SCREAM (TBC)
10 December 2015 – 21 February 2016
For fifteen years Chicks on Speed (Australia/Europe) have forged an extraordinary career across music, fashion, art and design, with a dynamic approach to sophisticated DIY creative practice. Featuring a selection of their renowned objects-instruments - sculptural self-made musical instruments produced collaboratively with crafts workers, engineers, programmers and artists - SCREAM will experiment with new forms of collective creation.

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Learning & Young People:

Freehand
Ongoing
Freehand is FACT's young people’s programme, engaging with 13 to 25 year olds across a variety of media and artistic platforms. Freehand includes three aspects: Connects, Film and Makers. Freehand Connects is a group of young FACT ambassadors who meet bi-weekly to programme and curate young people centred content.  Freehand Film is a bi-monthly film showcase, aiming to reignite young people’s film culture at FACT. Freehand Makers gives young people space to experiment, make and tinker.

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Prysm
January 2014 – November 2016
Young people from across Burnley, Hull and Wigan work closely with artists, professionals and organisations to commission three digital artworks for their local library and communities.  Artworks will tour to libraries across the North of England, and there are CPD opportunities for the partners to share, learn and exchange best practice around art, young people and libraries.

Participants: Young people, aged 13 to 25
Partners: Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust; Lancashire County Council; Hull Libraries; Artlink
Funders: ACE Strategic Touring Programme

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Health & Communities:

Adult Mental Health Programme
Ongoing- March 2017
A growing programme of creative projects and commissions working with adult service-users and partners to explore the role of creativity in exploring mental health issues, tackling stigma and discrimination and creating unique contexts for exploring artist practice and research.

Participants: Service-users of mental health service providers over 19 years old.
Partners: Mersey Care, Mary Seacole House and others

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Young People’s Mental Health Programme
July 2014 – March 2018
Arising from the successful launch of our In-Hand smartphone App last year, we are following this project with a more sustained collaboration to support young people’s mental health, along with our partners Mersey Care. This strand is part of the Freehand young people’s programme, which also will be co-producing an artwork with artist Erica Scourti for the upcoming exhibition Group Therapy.

Participants: Young people, aged 13 to 19
Partners: Mersey Care

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Croxteth NHS Neighbourhood Health Centre
January 2015 – August 2015
This new artist commission for the upcoming Neighbourhood Health Centre in Croxteth is part of the Healthy Spaces series. Developed through a community-commissioning and participatory model engaging with local residents, the aim is to transform visitor experience whilst in the waiting area through digital art.

Participants: Local residents, schools and community groups (TBC)
Partners/Funders: Liftco; NHS Merseyside

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Heart of Glass
January 2014 – January 2017
A programme of high quality ambitious arts to develop audiences in St Helens, bringing together new commissions developed by community groups. FACT is the lead arts partner on the programme consortium, working with a range of partners in St Helens.

Participants: Across all ages and communities, with a focus on Rugby audiences
Partners: Saints Community Development Foundation; The Citadel; World of Glass; Platform; Helena Partnerships; St Helens Council
Funders: ACE Creative People and Places

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Veterans in Practice
Current – April 2017
Veterans in Practice are a group of veterans of all ages who meet every week at FACT and develop digital arts projects with artists.  We provide opportunities for veterans to engage with creative processes, training and find new mediums of expression. The participants produce projects that support other veterans as well as tackling stigmas around the veteran community.

Partners and Funders: Liverpool Veterans HQ, Paul Hamlyn Foundation

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Liverpool Veterans website
www.liverpoolveterans.co.uk
Developed by FACT’s Veterans in Practice group, this website is a central point for military veterans age 16 - 116 in Liverpool (and beyond!).  Created by veterans, it also includes information for families and civilians including news and events updates, and support with housing, finances or health. The website also contains an area for veterans from all over the world to showcase their artwork and creative projects.

Funders: Community Covenant

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Research & Innovation:

FACT Lab
FACT Lab is an incubator of creativity for experimental research and production that explores collaborative forms of making and learning in both the gallery spaces and in digital domains. Within FACT Lab are the seeds of the future programme, pathways for talent and business development in the arts and networking opportunities that will assist the whole of the arts sector.

Partners: HEIs, private sector creative industries, NPOs, technology partners
Funders: Research funders, technology developers, Cordis

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Collaborative PhDs
November 2012  – ongoing
With two of our current Collaborative PhDs finishing in the autumn of 2015, FACT have, in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University, secured a fantastic opportunity for two researchers at PhD level to start in April 2015, situated at FACT for 50% of their time. The two subject areas are New Materialism and Transdisciplinary Art Practice and Platforms for innovation: online video and the UK arts sector.

Partners: University of Liverpool; Newcastle University, Manchester Metropolitan University
Funders: Manchester Metropolitan University

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Artplayer
Ongoing
Artplayer is an online video platform curating and showcasing the best video content from the UK arts world, with over 100 channels from organisations including Liverpool Biennial, Film and Video Umbrella, Royal Court Theatre and Rambert Dance Company. In the years to come, we wish to make more dynamic the network through a diverse programme of themed events that enable us to share experiences, knowledge and opportunities in a focused way.

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Connecting Cities
January 2013 – December 2015
A three year project, funded by the European Union’s Cultural Programme, Connecting Cities is a worldwide expanding network aiming to build a connected infrastructure of media facades, urban screens and projection sites to circulate artistic and social content. Each year is themed around a different vision (networked city, participatory city and visible city), producing an average of twelve cultural projects to connect the various locations and their citizens.

Partners: Public Art Lab Berlin (coordinator), Ars Electronica Futurelab Linz, BIS (Body Process Arts Association) Istanbul, iMAL Brussels, m-cult Helsinki, Medialab Prado Madrid, Media Architecture Institute Vienna, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Riga 2014, Videospread Marseille.

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Human Futures: Shared Memories and Visions
January 2014 – December 2015
Human Futures is an invitation to share visions and memories through cultural projects. With FACT as the lead partner, the project seeks to conceive new modes of collective action and community building, bringing together artists and European and Canadian citizens to develop strategies and solutions for contemporary urban issues.

The resulting projects will be showcased at FACT in November 2015 at Human Futures Forum, coinciding with an international forum on collaborative practice and social change. This will be held as the culmination of three of FACT’s long term research-driven projects, Human Futures, Lesions in the Landscape (including the Amnesia Forums) and the Ghana Think Tank. A look at our future in relation to Place and Space including a detailed look at neurology, geology, technology, sociology and materiality.

Partners: Aarhus University, Public Art Lab Berlin, Media Architecture Institute Vienna, Quartier des spectacles Montreal, MUTEK Montreal, Elektra Montreal.
Funders: Funded by the European Union’s Cultural programme strand, with Canada as cooperating third country

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Move On: Residency Programme
January 2014 – December 2015
Move On aims to create a sustainable network of digital art research labs and festivals across Europe, Australia and Canada. Each partner will host one artist in residence per year, fostering cultural exchange to produce projects exploring and responding to the location.

Partners: Werkleitz Centre for Media Arts Halle (coordinator), Impakt Foundation Utrecht, Bandits-Mages Bourges, Goethe-Institut, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Brisbane, Experimenta Biennial of Media Art Melbourne, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Productions Réalisations Indépendantes de Montréal (PRIM), OBORO Montreal, Images Festival Toronto.
Funding: Equally funded by the European Union’s Cultural programme strand, with Canada and Australia as cooperating third countries

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Australian Residency Programme
April – June 2015
This three-month residency at FACT brings an Australian artist to develop a collaborative project exploring issues of addiction in the Ropewalks neighbourhood, working closely with FACT’s Health strand and local groups and communities.

Funder: Australian Arts Council

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Lesions in the Landscape (including Amnesia Forums) Shona Illingworth
October 2013 – September 2015
A successful large grant award enables artist Shona Illingworth to develop a research driven project looking at the parallels between traumatic culture loss in the Scottish Islands due to enforced depopulation and traumatic memory loss due to disease in the human brain. A core part of the work involves developing the Amnesia Forums, a series of cross-discipline academic round-table discussions. The work will culminate in a major show across all spaces in FACT in 2015.

Participants; Senior academic staff and researchers from across multiple disciplines, Dilston Grove, Whitchapel
Partners; College of Fine Arts (COFA) Sydney, Central St Martins, national Trust for Scotland, Kent University, University of Westminster
Funders; Wellcome Trust

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Games & Social Change
January 2014- May 2015
FACT is on the advisory board for a networking project that takes the AHRC theme of ‘Social change and the role of games’ as its primary focus. The network will create a multi-disciplinary community of practice, to explore the potentials of digital games as social change agents. As games have become ubiquitous, both the private and public sectors have begun to seriously look at the role that gamification can play in their work. Game design, techniques and mechanics have something to teach those of us who are seeking to engage people on issues of social importance.

Participants; Utrecht University, Dartmouth University (USA), Leuphana University, Copenhagen Games Collective, Diego de La Vega
Partners: MMU, MDDA
Funders: Research Council

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Public Programmes

FACT Connects
Ongoing
FACT Connects is a dynamic programme experimenting with new types of relationships between audiences and producers, and seeking to actively engage visitors with developmental stages of the creative processes which usually take place behind close doors. We present a diverse programme of pop-up tinkering workshops, micro-residencies, testing of products and creative propositions, interactive installations or expositions.

Upcoming examples of pop-up exhibitions:

Under Black Carpets
22 January 2015 – 8 February 2015
Artist Ilona Gaynor has, in collaboration with the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department, created an intricate crime investigation of a fictional bank robbery in Los Angeles.  Visitors are invited to put their detective skills to the test by forming their own version of what has happened, based on material evidence created by Gaynor, including satellite photos, scale figures of witnesses, hostages and bystanders, as well as architectural scale models of Downtown Los Angeles, vehicles and weapons.

The Quiet
12 February 2015 - 22 February 2015
The Quiet by artists Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen is an attempt to create the calm before a storm. An insulated room encapsulating a collection of objects - a particle machine, tropical plants, meteorological instruments, shark oil barometer and sailors’ storm glasses - together generate and hold a pre-storm environment, exploring the aesthetics of the invisible.
Partners: The Wellcome Trust

Partners: Liverpool cultural organisations; independent technological and commercial partners.

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Family Public Programme
Ongoing
The Family Public Programme offer families diverse and accessible activities with a strong focus on creative technology and DIY maker culture. Most activities are drop-in, take place in the building’s public spaces, and include 3D prototyping, 3D cinema and other artist-led workshops. It is created alongside our venue partners through Picturehouse’s Kids Club and programmed activity with Leaf.

Participants: Families
Partners: Picturehouse; Leaf; among others.

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Exhibition Public Programmes
Ongoing
The Public Programmes consist of a dynamic series of public events to further expand the ideas around the exhibitions and other FACT programmes. They are developed in collaboration with cultural producers, as well as FACT’s wide-ranging array of local and international partners, in the form of talks, screenings, crowd-sourcing initiatives, performances and other live events that ask provocative questions and provide spaces for risky conversations.

Partners: Picturehouse; exhibition partners; Liverpool cultural organisations