Indexing Schizophrenia | Diane Zeeuw
Indexing Schizophrenia | Diane Zeeuw
Artist Statement
Introduction
This body of work cites and recycles images, objects, and information culled from a wide range of cultural and personal sources, including neuroscience and the broader medical field, the widespread proliferation of photographs of abandoned psychiatric facilities, historical documentation, and firsthand accounts of the experience of schizophrenia. Such images and objects have come to stand for, and in some instances have risen to the level of, iconic representation. In a positive way these various cultural artifacts can be interpreted as giving material form to what would otherwise remain an abstract checklist of symptoms, but conversely they may also be criticized as merely replaying unexamined beliefs regarding mental illness. Thus, in developing this project, the following questions repeatedly surfaced. First off, “How might such images unwittingly reinforce narratives of mental illness as a psychotic phantasmagoria of otherworldly radical difference?” Secondly, “Is it possible to produce images that do not collapse into tired cultural tropes?” And finally, “In direct contrast to the official indexing functionality of many of the source images, is there any sort of counter-narrative resistance arising from what can best be described as aesthetic excess?”
Some Brief Ruminations:
Biomedical images of the brain
The brain is arguably the most mysterious and complex organ of the human body, experienced as a material substance and also understood to be the site of complex abstract functions seemingly in excess of current psychological/neurological explanation. Since Descartes we have grappled with notions of consciousness, from the model of the proverbial “ghost in the machine” of normative dualism, to visualizing the functioning of the mind as a complex organic network. There are, of course, a plethora of images attempting to model or map the functioning of the mind/brain relationship. Models include “locationist” comparisons to “jigsaw puzzles,” or “connectionist” computer analogies envisioning the mind as a parallel processing machine.1 Other contemporary neurologists picture the brain as a complex electrical circuit, a series of chemical interactions, a neural system of components, or as a forest of interwoven neural threads.2
Given the complexity of the many ways we seek to understand and visualize the function of the human mind, we might ask, “How has biomedical brain imaging technology impacted notions of identity, personhood, and illness?” Moreover, “How might our aesthetic preferences inadvertently shape our affective understanding of such images?”
The abandoned psychiatric hospital
I would like to suggest that the image of the abandoned asylum functions as a haunted signifier in and of itself—constantly revisited and disrupted by the other for which it purports to speak. Architectural space certainly functions as a sort of “stage for the imaginary,” enabling our fantastical projection of the other. As de Certeau and Soja have both noted, architectural space is where we anticipate our encounter with the other. To quote de Certeau, space makes possible our “passage towards the other as the law of being and the law of place.”3 But we might also ask, “Do such spaces also inflict an intimation of the Real” (and here I am thinking of Zizek and Lacan), where all fantasies must inevitably fail—disrupted, fragmented, deranged?
Meta-representation and failure
To refine our understanding of metacognition and meta-representation, evolutionary biologists and psychologists have turned to the study of autism, schizophrenia, and other neurological disorders. As noted by researchers Leda Cosmides and Jon Tooby, to study schizophrenia is to peer into what happens when our scope-limiting structure has been disabled, or greatly impaired, suggesting that schizophrenia may be the result of a “late onset breakdown of the meta-representational system.”4
I am interested in trying to convey on an affective/material/visual level this fragmentation of the meta-representational system and the resultant excessive propensity of those suffering from psychosis to produce unmoored connections between disparate items and events. Albeit, in producing the paintings, I also recognize and admit a modicum of failure. In many ways the paintings replay problematic representations associated with the condition of schizophrenia, and it may be hopeless, even impossible, to avoid negative and positive stereotypes. But, on the other hand, it may be an even more effective strategy to simply accept and own the default interpretation, and in doing so, openly acknowledge the impact such images have had upon our dreams and fears.
1 Michael R. Trimble, The Soul in the Brain the Cerebral Basis of Language, Art, and Belief. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Douglas Hofstadter has also been a key exponent of the now
pervasive model of mind as a circuit-system of input/outputs.
2 Carl E. Schoonover, Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century. New York: Abrams, 2010
3 Michael de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, 1984, p. 109-110.
4 John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, “The Evolution of Decoupling.” Meta-representations: a Multi-disciplinary Perspective, edited by Dan Sperber, Oxford University Press, 2000, 55-103
Artist Bio
Professor Diane Zeeuw is Chair of the MA in Visual and Critical Studies and MFA/BFA Painting programs at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD). Her research has been presented at numerous national and international conferences including the Mediations Biennale, Poznan, Poland; the Conference on the Image, Freie Universität, Berlin; the Third International Interdisciplinary Conference, University of South Africa, Pretoria; and the American Studies Association of Korea (ASAK) International Conference on “The Changing Contours of American Identity,” Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea. Professor Zeeuw’s scholarly research has also been published in numerous peer review journals including “The Brown Body as Thirdspace: Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me,” w: Scripta Humana, Vol. 15, Liminality and Beyond: Conceptions of In-betweenness in American Culture and Literature (2021); “Schizophrenia: A Journey Through Higher Education,” Thought and Action, The National Education Association Higher Education Journal, Volume 31, No. 2. (2016); and a “Case Study: The Development and Evolution of the Creative Arts Practice-led Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts,” Leonardo Journal, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, doi: 10.1162/LEON_a_01407 (2017). Additionally, Professor Zeeuw’s studio work has been exhibited at the Shanghai Meilidao International Art Institution, China; the New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA; and Gallery 33 Contemporary, Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, IL, among other venues. Her studio work may also be found in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Art; the Steelcase Corporation; The Robert B. Annis Water Resources Institute; The Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences; and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, and Grand Valley State University.
Introduction
This body of work cites and recycles images, objects, and information culled from a wide range of cultural and personal sources, including neuroscience and the broader medical field, the widespread proliferation of photographs of abandoned psychiatric facilities, historical documentation, and firsthand accounts of the experience of schizophrenia. Such images and objects have come to stand for, and in some instances have risen to the level of, iconic representation. In a positive way these various cultural artifacts can be interpreted as giving material form to what would otherwise remain an abstract checklist of symptoms, but conversely they may also be criticized as merely replaying unexamined beliefs regarding mental illness. Thus, in developing this project, the following questions repeatedly surfaced. First off, “How might such images unwittingly reinforce narratives of mental illness as a psychotic phantasmagoria of otherworldly radical difference?” Secondly, “Is it possible to produce images that do not collapse into tired cultural tropes?” And finally, “In direct contrast to the official indexing functionality of many of the source images, is there any sort of counter-narrative resistance arising from what can best be described as aesthetic excess?”
Some Brief Ruminations:
Biomedical images of the brain
The brain is arguably the most mysterious and complex organ of the human body, experienced as a material substance and also understood to be the site of complex abstract functions seemingly in excess of current psychological/neurological explanation. Since Descartes we have grappled with notions of consciousness, from the model of the proverbial “ghost in the machine” of normative dualism, to visualizing the functioning of the mind as a complex organic network. There are, of course, a plethora of images attempting to model or map the functioning of the mind/brain relationship. Models include “locationist” comparisons to “jigsaw puzzles,” or “connectionist” computer analogies envisioning the mind as a parallel processing machine.1 Other contemporary neurologists picture the brain as a complex electrical circuit, a series of chemical interactions, a neural system of components, or as a forest of interwoven neural threads.2
Given the complexity of the many ways we seek to understand and visualize the function of the human mind, we might ask, “How has biomedical brain imaging technology impacted notions of identity, personhood, and illness?” Moreover, “How might our aesthetic preferences inadvertently shape our affective understanding of such images?”
The abandoned psychiatric hospital
I would like to suggest that the image of the abandoned asylum functions as a haunted signifier in and of itself—constantly revisited and disrupted by the other for which it purports to speak. Architectural space certainly functions as a sort of “stage for the imaginary,” enabling our fantastical projection of the other. As de Certeau and Soja have both noted, architectural space is where we anticipate our encounter with the other. To quote de Certeau, space makes possible our “passage towards the other as the law of being and the law of place.”3 But we might also ask, “Do such spaces also inflict an intimation of the Real” (and here I am thinking of Zizek and Lacan), where all fantasies must inevitably fail—disrupted, fragmented, deranged?
Meta-representation and failure
To refine our understanding of metacognition and meta-representation, evolutionary biologists and psychologists have turned to the study of autism, schizophrenia, and other neurological disorders. As noted by researchers Leda Cosmides and Jon Tooby, to study schizophrenia is to peer into what happens when our scope-limiting structure has been disabled, or greatly impaired, suggesting that schizophrenia may be the result of a “late onset breakdown of the meta-representational system.”4
I am interested in trying to convey on an affective/material/visual level this fragmentation of the meta-representational system and the resultant excessive propensity of those suffering from psychosis to produce unmoored connections between disparate items and events. Albeit, in producing the paintings, I also recognize and admit a modicum of failure. In many ways the paintings replay problematic representations associated with the condition of schizophrenia, and it may be hopeless, even impossible, to avoid negative and positive stereotypes. But, on the other hand, it may be an even more effective strategy to simply accept and own the default interpretation, and in doing so, openly acknowledge the impact such images have had upon our dreams and fears.
1 Michael R. Trimble, The Soul in the Brain the Cerebral Basis of Language, Art, and Belief. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Douglas Hofstadter has also been a key exponent of the now
pervasive model of mind as a circuit-system of input/outputs.
2 Carl E. Schoonover, Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century. New York: Abrams, 2010
3 Michael de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, 1984, p. 109-110.
4 John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, “The Evolution of Decoupling.” Meta-representations: a Multi-disciplinary Perspective, edited by Dan Sperber, Oxford University Press, 2000, 55-103
Artist Bio
Professor Diane Zeeuw is Chair of the MA in Visual and Critical Studies and MFA/BFA Painting programs at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University (KCAD). Her research has been presented at numerous national and international conferences including the Mediations Biennale, Poznan, Poland; the Conference on the Image, Freie Universität, Berlin; the Third International Interdisciplinary Conference, University of South Africa, Pretoria; and the American Studies Association of Korea (ASAK) International Conference on “The Changing Contours of American Identity,” Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea. Professor Zeeuw’s scholarly research has also been published in numerous peer review journals including “The Brown Body as Thirdspace: Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me,” w: Scripta Humana, Vol. 15, Liminality and Beyond: Conceptions of In-betweenness in American Culture and Literature (2021); “Schizophrenia: A Journey Through Higher Education,” Thought and Action, The National Education Association Higher Education Journal, Volume 31, No. 2. (2016); and a “Case Study: The Development and Evolution of the Creative Arts Practice-led Ph.D. at the University of Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts,” Leonardo Journal, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, doi: 10.1162/LEON_a_01407 (2017). Additionally, Professor Zeeuw’s studio work has been exhibited at the Shanghai Meilidao International Art Institution, China; the New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA; and Gallery 33 Contemporary, Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, IL, among other venues. Her studio work may also be found in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Art; the Steelcase Corporation; The Robert B. Annis Water Resources Institute; The Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences; and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, and Grand Valley State University.
