This makes me feel Afraid Surprised Uncomfortable Weird at an Individual but Shared scale
Biennale Arte 2019 | Israel
Field Hospital X
The exhibition in the Israel house of the Biennale Arte in Venice in 2019 was one of the more horrifying art-related experiences of my life. You start by going into the lobby, where you take a ticket with a number on it. The lobby looks like a hospital waiting room and has the number of the current “patient” on a tv so you sort of know when you are supposed to be up. Once your number is called (my wait time was about an hour), you are called up the stairs individually and told to go into a sensory deprivation chamber where you are instructed to scream as loud as you can three times in a row while a woman on a recorded video in front of you does the same. I did not make a sound. You are then led to a room with separated chairs that face an individual screen which plays a video that you chose in the lobby upon entry. The video I so mistakenly chose was simply about 5 minutes of a man jerking off while wearing the mask of a sheep. It was symbolic of the struggles against sexual oppression by the government. It made me crawl out of my skin and now my fear of hospitals is even worse than it was before.
Contributor notes
What is surprising, refreshing, most interesting?
I never could have guessed how relevant the disinfected, sterile location and the action of being by yourself, distanced from your friends and family while awful media rams into your mind could be.
Key Insights? What can we learn from this?
Everything about this exhibit was curated to make you feel horrified, uncomfortable to say the least, and insignificant. It worked. By getting the viewer so far outside of their comfort zone, the artists strived to open up the audience to the struggles of citizens within their country and around the world.