Phobophobia / Philaphilia
57th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di VeneziaAtaraxia series, Salon Suisse.
Curated by Koyo Kouoh. Co-Salonier Samuel Leuenberger. Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi, Venice, It
Friday, 24 November Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi
I have written about a mother, who was handed a bagful of ashes as her 21 year old daughter, and she was grateful at least to have something to put in a grave.
Asli Erdogan
Phobophobia / Philaphilia is a project that expunges the fear of fear.
The project uses artistic processes to expose pain as it resides in the body and how to expel it. The process of ‘discharge’ is used as a method to develop escaping trauma into externalised expressions. The process is based around Somatic Experiencing which is a form of therapy aimed at relieving and resolving the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The project is designed to resonate not just with extreme examples of PTSD but with fear driven through media saturation of traumatic events. This second-hand experience fear leads to a condition that is singular to our times: the fear of fear.
For the Salon Suisse, and in alignment with the general theme of Ataraxia, Marcos Lutyens will invite visitors to take part in a hypnotic journey through the physical location in the body where the fear of fear resides and towards a state of ‘philaphilia,’ or the love of joy.
Special smells will be deployed to transition the frame of mind through various states.
From a poetic point of view, the work finds lineage in William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’ and Goya’s ‘Caprichos Enfáticos.’
The project is in resonance with Asli Erdogan, an outspoken and acclaimed Turkish writer with whom I collaborated two years ago at the Istanbul Biennial. She was imprisoned for her journalistic writings.
* Greek -phobia, from phobos “fear”
-philia, fondness
photos include some questionnaires to do with fear response.
