Printemps des Laboratoires #4
Psychotropification de la société

Mad Marginal Charts by Dora Garcia reproduced on the wall of Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers for the Printemps des Laboratoires #4, Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th 2016

This year’s edition of the Printemps des Laboratoires, titled The Pyschotropification of Society and running from 30th May to 5th June 2016, sets out to present to a broader public and to pursue with a host of speakers (including artists, researchers and those directly concerned), the research conducted since October 2015 on “the psychotropification of society” (in particular via fortnightly reading workshops and seminars on ‘care practices and collectives’).

Psychotropification, a term combining the words ‘psychopharmacy” and ‘tropism’, refers to the exponential rise in the prescription and use of medication in the treatment of mental health disorders. Our intention in highlighting the notion of “tropism” is to show that the rise and banalisation of medical prescriptions is linked to a standardising ideology that is infiltrating and governing Western societies, which are more concerned with the freedom of action of pharmaceutical industries than with the freedom of action of the individuals that make up society. Through a week-long programme of screenings, lectures, performances, round table discussions and workshops, we will attempt to glean and understanding of the different paradigms involved in the problematic of Psychotropification.

The point of departure of our inquiry is an acknowledgment of the rising influence of pharmaceutical companies, and a certain tendency within psychiatric practice to reduce individuals to their pathology and to classify human beings according to categories of medical diagnosis.
In opposition to this, we hope to make these sessions an opportunity to embrace the possibility of being multiple and to reinvent ways of living together, by grounding our approach in the acceptance of individual, personal perceptual experiences rather than in the reason that governs us.  We want to make a place for our dead and for the unseeable presences we experience, for our visions, dreams and hallucinations, conceived as an integral part of our identity constructions. Let us posit heterogeneous modes of existence that are not necessarily rational and that can find ways of coexisting with one another. We want to give voice to different experiences, to our “minority becomings”, in order to resist a world wholly consumed by the will for efficacy and profitability.

During the weekend of the 4th and 5th of June we will be giving a platform to those engaged in a critique of the harmful effects of over-medicalisation (towards a way out of the medical sentence, against the enforcement of a single model of the body and behaviour), to collectives (the French Voice Hearers Network – REV; the Dingdingdong collective), in order to envision alternative ways of relating to their illness than those framed by institutions, to those whose engage with the complexity and multiplicity of the relations between the living and the dead, to those who reinvent therapeutic methods and institutions (The Cévennes network by Fernand Deligny, the Clinique de la Borde by Jean Oury and Félix Guattari, the Centre d’éthnopsychiatrie by Tobie Nathan). In this way, we will be exploring a host of issues that tie in with the stakes of artistic creation and enable us to better investigate the fertile link between art and madness and the creative mechanisms it gives rise to. We also invite the public to attend a series of workshops and performances: a shamanic performance by artist Grace Ndiritu, conceived as a therapeutic discussion session and inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) held in South Africa, an idiorryhthmic activation by Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson combining sounds and words, and also in creating a ‘reference’ site in order to imagine, together, collective therapeutic practices, facilitated by clinical psychologist Josep Rafanell I Orra as a continuation of his seminar held at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers from January to May 2016.

Various events held in other venues will precede or follow on from the two-day programme: the ‘Hearing Voices Café’, an artistic project by Dora García, will be held in the ‘Pas si loin’ café in Pantin and will be run in collaboration with the French Voice Hearers Network (REV); Disappear One, a film by Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson made in collaboration with the theatre company UEINZZ will be screened at Le Studio, an art house cinema in Aubervilliers.

During this two-day event we will be trying to identify the kind of language able to do justice to the various actors engaging with these issues (are they survivors? experts? militants/campaigners? persons directly concerned? users?), we will be paying attention to the vocabulary employed in the context of therapies and life experiences (illness? (health)care? healing? recovery?), we will be collectively exploring and experimenting with the question of art as a space of co-existence, resistance, invention and art as tool), and of art as a space for the integration and unfolding of common, everyday madness.

Alexandra Baudelot, Dora García, Mathilde Villeneuve
(Co-directors of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers)

With the participation of : Rossella Biscotti (artist), Jean-François Chevrier (art historian), Anne Collod (dancer and choreographer), Jean-Marc Dupaz, Rémi Eliçabe and Amandine Guibert (sociologists), Florent Gabarron-Garcia (psychanalyst), Emilie Hermant (writer), Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson (artists), Magali Molinié (clinical psychologist), Tobie Nathan (Emeritus professor of clinical psychology), Grace Ndiritu (artist), Josep Rafanell i Orra (clinical psychologist), Valérie Pihet (researcher and experimenter), Barbara Rodriguez Muñoz (curator), Pticarius (curious explorer), François Thoreau (postdoctoral researcher), Alexandre Vaillant (clinical psychologist), Veronica Valentini (curator and researcher).

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Dates of the Printemps des Laboratoires #4

Le Café des Voix
From 30 May to 3 June 2016 at the café Pas si loin in Pantin
(1, rue Berthier / 93500 Pantin)

Screening of Disappear One, a film by Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson
Tuesday 2nd June 2016 at the cinema Le Studio in Aubervilliers
(2, rue Edouard Poisson / 93300 Aubervilliers)

Public plateform of the Printemps des Laboratoires
Psychotropification of the Society
Saturday 4th June and Sunday 5th June 2016 at Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers
(41 rue Lecuyer / 93300 Aubervilliers) - Metro QuatreChemins Ligne 7

FREE ENTRANCE

Dora García, Mad Marginal Charts, from 2014, pencil on paper

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This forth edition of the Printemps des Laboratoires have received the support of the Cnap. Le Café des Voix is a project realized in partnership with the café Pas si loin in Pantin and the screening of the Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson's film at the cinema Le Studio in Aubervilliers is realized in partnership with Spectre Productions.