L.I.E.S. Laboratorio Immaginativo Esperimenti Sociali (Imaginative Lab for Social Experiment)

No knowledge is possible outside languages. Aiming to unfold the meaning of words through words themselves is like claiming an eye can stare at itself. Every effort to grasp a meaning behind the boundaries of language smashes against the reflecting hurdles of its own limits, as a body trying to get through a mirror. The human desire to reach out for the truth necessarily falls into temptation of certainty, turning into harassment on other people. Definition, assertiveness, attribution of meaning are necessary tools for communication among individuals, but strongly show in themselves marks of this abuse.

The L.I.E.S. project (Imaginative Lab for Social Experiment) was born in collaboration with the Italian School of Constructivist Psychology, rooted in experimental epistemology. The aim is to gather the psychiatrists into an artistic collective to investigate the topics of therapeutic research. Forced to face a different language, every participant is involved in a different human experience: the artistic one, with its own operational and productivity process. Carrying out social experiments will be possible to break down some conventions of the two different languages and of their proper registers.

Three different phases are foreseen.

Fhase 1.
L⋃V ¬M∉.
A first event related to a convention to be held in Padua in November, summit of postgraduate Schools of Psychology. An exhibition is set on a stage behind the speakers, hidden by the stage curtain. After an hour from the opening of the show, the convention is due to end. The curtain is opened and the speakers invite the psychologist to reach the stage for a reception. Psychologists and art lovers, let in from separate entrances, are so far unaware ones of the others. The whole event is suspended in this double nature.
At the same way, the preparation of the exhibition – made of balloons – wants to maintain a certain ambiguity between a proper art installation and an American style convention, also with food. Under a dome reproducing a section of a cellular membrane, some mylar balloons represent molecular elements. Those letters compositions are biological sums resulting from the assemblage of antithetic terms taken from psychotherapy tests.
A piece of work will be exposed at the bookshop at the entrance, among technical publications. Pretending to be a book with a title recalling scientific publication for masses, the sculpture is in reality a letter-shaped-pasta box. The same pasta is in the videogame first presented during the convention, on line at https://peaceful-refuge-7696.herokuapp.com/#. The player will play with some words taken from psychological tests, interacting and interfering with other participants, looking for a logical criterion that can not be given for granted, creating disorder and aphasia.

- L⋃V ¬M∉. Rendering, video animation.
- Poor Mildred. letter-shaped-pasta boxes, offset print.
- Alphabetti website. https://peaceful-refuge-7696.herokuapp.com/#
- Creode. Serigraphy posters of psychological constructs. Paper, serigrafic silk, mylar. 100 x 70 each.
- Membrane drawings. Watercolors and white pen on black paper. 70 x 50 each.

Fhase 2.
An exhibition in December curated by the collective L.I.E.S. presenting in an art gallery the artistic production of the group.

Art works:

Ak-4774-kA (lovefully right).
Ceramic, black earthenware and steel alloy. Measure of each element 150 x 40 x 6. Measure of the whole installation: variable

Good China.
Steel alloy. Measure of each element 30 x 3 x 0,4. Measure of the whole installation: variable

Considering language as relational tool, these two works are images of harassment of certainty.

Салтыков-Щедрин Государственная публичная библиотека.
Steel alloy, wood, Dictionary of Italian Language, Psychiatric Dictionary, silver leaf, glass. Measure 130 x 60 x 115.
Image of language as “a fortuitous meeting on an autopsy table between a sewing machine and an umbrella” (Conte di Lautréamont). This work recalls to circularity of dictionary, to the impossibility to reach an end to definite using words that need to be definite themselves. The psychiatric dictionary is the hardest side of assertiveness, at the same time both necessity and social abuse.

Tag cloud.
Mylar Balloons, resin. Measure 110 x 60 x 40.

Chic Mistique, golden issue – Dyptic
Mylar. Two posters 70 x 100 each
Video

Chic Mistique, silver issue – Dyptic
Mylar, metacrylate, silver leaf. Two posters 70 x 100 each

On the 13th of January 1966 Andy Warhol was invited for a speech at the Annual Dinner of the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry at Delmonico’s. This work is an historical reproduction of the hypothetical poster of the group Warhol presented instead of his speech and a typical menu of the restaurant. Two different layouts present two different points of view on the same event as seen by the psychiatrists and by the artist.

Fhase 3.
Social experiments.
From January 2017 the collective is based at the postgraduate School of Constructivist Psychology in Padua and Florence. Hybrid events will be scheduled through the year: lessons for the students enrolled at school, meetings, exhibitions.

Creation of an on-line showcase to facilitate the communication of ideas and material.
Re-reading exercises, social experiments focused on breaking through conventional systems and creating works of art. Eg. Fill in of MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) and psychiatric tests as if another person, to force the participant into the difficulty of understanding a written text from a point of view far from the personal one. At the end of the experiment the tests will be burnt altogether.

Images
- MMPI. A series of a desktop publishing remake of MMPI-2 test. 21 x 29,7.
- MMPI school of Novgorod. Offset print on gold paper
- MMPI burn after writing. MMPI-2, resin. 24 x 33.

See more images at:
http://l-1-e-5.wix.com/lies