Coprophagiology*
Anna Maltz and Haden Nicholl
September 8th - October 7th, 2006
Anna Maltz and Haden Nicholl engage in a fully collaborative experiment, turning MISSION17 into an insane asylum inhabited by the artists as patients.
The controlled environment of the gallery space will serve as a doppleganger for the controlled environment of the mental institution. Maltz and Nicholl will reside there, as their activities serve as reminders that the behaviors of artists and crazy people are often one and the same.
Identical beds are outfitted with suicide blankets customized by the patient artists. Craft materials will be available for art therapy: safety scissors only of course. Therapeutic trauma dolls will be on hand, which Maltz and Nicholl will make clothes for. There will be videos to watch to while away the time.
The patient artists will also conduct psychological experiments—on each other!
The question is: will the gallery asylum make the patient artists more or less crazy? Visitors are welcome to find out.
* The study of eating one’s own feces, one of the most telling symptoms of psychosis in humans.
