A film-maker is asked to film a psychiatric hospital. He decides to give the camera to the patients so that they can film their daily lives. A group of patients offer money to a person who dreams of becoming a cyclist. A cook does therapy in the kitchen while preparing meals. A kitchen that is also an opera house. A crèche where the children are in charge. A driver who never got his driving licence. A weekly meeting where nothing is discussed. A salary system where everyone gets what they need. A laundry that is a meeting place. Two researchers investigating their own lives. Psychotherapy sessions by letter. A crystal wave. Jean Oury used to say that normopathy was our disease. Tosquelles said that after meeting normal people, he never had any difficulty understanding mad people. Storytelling machines to re-imagine politics. Only through desire can one read desire. In this presentation, Susana Caló and Godofredo Enes Pereira explore a polyphony of documentary and archival material, video, images, oral histories, and music, to present their research into the institutional unconscious and the idea of a "militant analysis".

biografia

Susana Caló is a researcher in philosophy, psychopolitics, and semiotics. She did her PhD at the Centre for Research in Contemporary Modern Philosophy in London, with a reconstruction of the politics of language and semiotics based on the work of the activist and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. Her current research is dedicated to reconstructing minor histories of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in their intersections with broader political and social struggles and the collective life of concepts in post-war French thought, through oral histories and archive building. She is a visiting researcher at the Centre for Humanities and Health, King’s College London, and co-investigator of the Pragmatic Genealogy of Concepts (KCL) project, funded by the British Academy. She is a member of the Other Ways to Care collective and co-founder of the Chaosmosemedia platform. Godofredo Enes Pereira is an architect, researcher, and director of the MA in Environmental Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London. He has a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University London. Over the last decade, he has been developing research, publications, and exhibitions on environmental architecture, existential territories, and collective equipment. He is a co-investigator on the Scales of Climate Justice project, funded by the British Academy, and founder of the GIT/Territorial Research Group. Since 2017, Susana Caló and Godofredo Pereira have been working on the book CERFI. Militant Analysis, Collective Equipment and Institutional Programming, due to be published in 2024 by Minor Compositions.

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