Frame di una testimonianza

DA VICINO NESSUNO È NORMALE / NO ONE IS NORMAL IF SEEN UP CLOSE

posted in sensitive environments

DA VICINO NESSUNO È NORMALE / NO ONE IS NORMAL IF SEEN UP CLOSE

DA VICINO NESSUNO È NORMALE / NO ONE IS NORMAL IF SEEN UP CLOSE

Story Bearers

sensitive environments

Rome, Biblioteca Cencelli, Santa Maria della Pietà, Museum-Laboratory of the Mind, 2012
  • Description
  • Data Sheet
  • Credits

Over 30 years after the Basaglia Law, mental health services in Italy are now widely integrated into the National Health System. On the ground floor of the complex of Santa Maria della Pietà, a former psychiatric hospital, the path of the Museum-Laboratory of the Mind, designed by Studio Azzurro in 2008, tells the story of the institution and the dynamics of asylums. No one is normal if seen up close is a preview of the core of the project for the second floor of the museum, a participatory environment that shows social representations of mental illness, discrimination and stigma through direct testimonies. The work was presented in November 2012 in a temporary location: the rooms of the Cencelli Library, in the main Pavilion of the Santa Maria della Pietà complex.

No one is normal if seen up close is a sensitive environment, an interactive space for listening to the testimonies of former inmates, relatives, doctors, operators, and nurses of the Santa Maria della Pietà psychiatric hospital, but also for deconstructing preconceptions about mental illness.

Visitors shall enter a room of the Cencelli Library, which hosts volumes dating back to the sixteenth century. Walking figures are projected on the long wall between the shelves; as in other works from the Story Bearers cycle, the visitor can choose to stop a character, touching it with his/her hand, and listen. The character will stop and speak a few words, a short sentence about him/herself, and if the visitor wants to hear his/her story, he or she can take him/her by the hand as far as the end of the wall to take him/her into the next room. There the character shall line up behind the other figures led by visitors and wait for his/her turn. This gesture of accompanying through physical contact establishes a personal dimension and relationship between visitor and character. Once the other figures have gone, the chosen character takes a seat on the other side of the room and, now in a more intimate condition, begins to recount his/her story. As they listen, visitors feel surprised as they realise that both the character’s appearance and the brief words they heard before made them mistake doctors for inmates. In so doing, they are forced to rethink about their own categories, the way they have easily judged, and their own considerations on mental illness.

4 video projectors
2 computers
IR led strip
2 IR cameras
2 plasterboard projection screens with a platform

Progetto a cura di Studio Azzurro e UOS Centro Studi e Ricerche Museo Laboratorio della Mente ASL Roma E
Direzione scientifica Pompeo Martelli
Ideazione e Regia Paolo Rosa
Fotografia Fabio Cirifino
Coordinamento progetto e produzione esecutiva Olivia Demuro
Coordinamento ricerca tecnologica Marco Barsottini
Sviluppo e implementazione software Lorenzo Sarti
Operatore video Rocco Cirifino
Assistenza alla regia sul set Alice Fratti
Post-produzione e compositing Matteo Cellini, Mauro Macella, Salua Nardinocchi
Montaggio testimonianze Mauro Macella, Monica De Benedictis, Silvia Pellizzari
Progettazione sistemi di comunicazione Giorgia Borroni
Suono e musiche Tommaso Leddi, Yugen
Allestimento Diego Quagliarella
Coordinamento generale Reiner Bumke
Enti Promotori Assessorato alla Cultura, Spettacolo e Sport Regione Lazio, Azienda Unità Sanitaria Locale Roma E

Progetto per la raccolta delle testimonianze sui percorsi di cura e promozione della salute mentale in collaborazione con UOS Centro Studi e Ricerche Dipartimento Salute Mentale, Pazienti, Familiari, Operatori ASL Roma E

Da vicino nessuno è normale - disegno del progetto e riprese di Studio Azzurro Da vicino nessuno è normale - i portatori di storie Portatori di storie - installazione video al Museo della Mente