The goals and focuses of Folie/Culture are geared partly to contemporary art projects, partly to the promotion of mental health - and, more specifically, towards fusions of the two. The projects we schedule in a given year are worked out on a twofold basis: encouraging new artistic perspectives, and raising awareness about mental-health issues.
The entire development of a project (from design to display) is imbued with this twofold position; the same is true when we choose the artists, locations and collaborators. Unlike art institutes dedicated to one contemporary social cause, we engage in artistic projects based in regular, relevant, community-centred experience (via support organizations, decision makers, stakeholders or participants). This approach lets us give real assistance to the artists involved in our projects, such as the resources they need to complete research on mental-health issues required by the projects. Their work has a directly positive effect on the mental-healthcare community by raising awareness in alternative, hitherto unimagined ways. By inserting art works into this community, their new perspectives reshape the environment. But they also inspire reflections that may sometimes upset the artists themselves - their work requires them to immerse their ideas in frequently painful social issues. Their reflections are enriched by our focuses, artistic approach and socially-committed strategy, which questions standard artistic practice and normal methods of sensitization in the mental-health field. We are proud to be able to play such a significant role in these two areas of intervention.
The interaction of such diverse artists, participants and collaborators establishes an intriguing web of connections between the many perspectives and gives our projects critical meaning. The mental-health community takes an interest in our productions because they bypass all the conventional approaches to promoting mental health. And the art world takes an interest over and beyond the goal of sensitization: the art projects and interventions, often collective in nature, have the ability to reshape artistic attitudes and assumptions (such as how a work should be presented) in fascinating new ways.
Interdisciplinary Methods
At Folie/Culture our methods may be described as interdisciplinary because each of the projects, in seeking expression via several different disciplines, forms part of regular research that reflects our twofold identity and adheres to the annual theme. In most of our projects we provoke interactions between psychiatric patients and artists (of varying methods, career status and professional skills) in a single context. Since our projects are planned with the goal of inspiring reflection, all our methods serve as supports for reaching that goal. We can cycle easily between performance (with relational aesthetics) and video within a single project since these methods satisfy our sensitization mandate to a great degree.
At the same time, we can allow ourselves to cycle between artists' centres and shopping centres because our mandate does not stipulate a particular distribution framework. We have developed this ability to be flexible and open in everything we undertake despite not having a regular venue. And we are always on the lookout for new installation spaces that will afford new dimensions (literally and figuratively) to our work. Moreover, by initiating collaborations with well known creators, outsider-artists and collaborators from all backgrounds, the risks we take are matched by our desire to break away from convention.
