The scrutinized soul, at fundacio joan miro

Perplexity. 

Curated by: David Armengol 05/10/2012

Perplexity takes, as point of departure, the feelings facing the shortcomings of our understanding, and the subsequent thoughts that push us beyond the limits of our judgement and keep us teetering endlessly between doubt and belief.

The title of the program is in reference to the concept «small reason», used by the Spanish philosopher Javier Muguerza when trying to include situations where the strength of self-critique and of non-prescriptive arguments is required to construct a successful dialogue. We are talking, in other words, about a non-authoritarian «reason» —and, in consequence, a flexible reason, not locked into itself—, one that invites us, in this case, to follow a visual narrative built around five autonomous but complementary chapters.

The program includes the participation of Jordi Mitjà, Gabriel Pericàs, Julia Montilla, Arrieta/Vázquez and Samuel Labadie. These five artists, even though working from very different perspectives, share a similar attitude: the «perplexity» we confront when facing artistic evidence, the same that forces us to question social structures and conventions.

Samuel Labadie

The Examined Soul. 12/07 - 01/09/2013

The Examined Soul consists of an installation of small format drawings, sculptures and video that take, as point of departure, Daniel Paul Schreber’s memoirs, an example of an extreme case of paranoia in Germany at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, made popular by Freud’s studies on neurosis.

[backgrounder: Schreber reported in a systematic and coherent manner th einternal logic of his delerieums.  the memoir became the declaration of lega self-defense by which the Supreme Court of Dresden ruled Schreber's exit from the Sonnestein asylum in 1902.]

From those memoirs, Memorias de un enfermo de nervios [Memoirs of My Nervous Illness] [a 2006 film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479098/], Samuel Labadie builds a visual translation of paranoiac thought filtered through an art perspective. In it, we encounter a delirious world full of physical connections to the divine —the soul, for instance, becomes an organic element— that helps the artist construct his personal cosmology, one that translates Schreber’s texts into a world of images and objects.

alternate book links:

http://proxy.library.brocku.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN=1955-08712-000&site=eds-live&scope=site
http://proxy.library.brocku.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=1987096895&site=eds-live&scope=site
http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/memoirs-of-my-nervous-illness/

see: Le Lieu du Crime
Abadie's blog, with pictures: http://www.lelieuducrime.blogspot.com.es/