First Schizophrenia Produced in Series, 1998, 23 x 23 x 32cm, fibreglass, acrylic paint, foam, textile
The first mass produced schizophrenia processed on a computer in one of German car factories based on the Munch’s painting The Scream. It was designed as a helmet for fast motorcycles. The modulation was created by software which is capable of designing an ideal shape and surface of items subject to high speed following the laws of aerodynamics.
1998, video performance, ride on a pwerful motorcycle in helmet through Prague streets
FIRST SERIALLY PRODUCED SCHIZOPHRENIA – 1998
One of the first attempts of an itinerant development designer in the area of social design is the project “First serially produced schizophrenia” of 1998. It is an attempt to comment on circumstances that came about during WWII, but also project into the present day in a special way.
German firms were the first to participate in the financing of the construction of the concentration camps in which the industrial, mass extermination of people (genocide) occurred. The citizens of Central Europe were fully occupied with the manufacture of the weapons that were used to kill their fellow citizens. Workers who could not keep up with the pace of production ended up in extermination camps.
I am interested in incredible failures of the sense of well-functioning systems. The transformation of sense into perverted sense and consequently into nonsense is something fundamental that is characteristic for every age and therefore for ours, too. The transformation, for example, of sensibly balanced production into overproduction can have similarly schizophrenic consequences to those of the past (e.g. environmental problems). This ambivalence is also characteristic for my work.
To express the sense of failure of the system or behaviour (schizophrenia), I chose the “icon” of the Norwegian painter Munch – “The Scream”. A copy of his painting was scanned in a development laboratory of one of the German car manufacturers and processed in a computer programme used for modelling the ideal shape and surface of objects intended for high speed in accordance with aerodynamic laws. The resulting virtual maquette was then modulated in such a way as to facilitate the use of the shape for the manufacture of a motorcycle helmet. Its aesthetically perfect, glossy, commercial design seemed to be in conflict with the function and content of the helmet. Also important for me was speed in combination with serial production. The air flowing at high speeds is reminiscent of the thick lines flowing through the expressive landscape that forms the background to the insane figure of Munch’s Scream. A motorcycle ride multiplies the entire impression of schizophrenia.