Spectacular Evidence: Theatres of the Observed Mind

A one-day symposium, Spectacular Evidence, included presentations, performances, screenings and talks from the fields of visual art, medicine and critical theory.
Drawing upon histories of madness and its exhibition, and considering how it has been staged as cultural performance, this event considered behaviours and ‘performances’ exchanged between viewer and physician in relation to patient.
Spectacular Evidence brought together researchers from clinical and cultural fields in mutual observation; relating ideas and practices towards a contemporary psycho-cultural reading of performances integral to psychiatric space, practice, theory and histories.
In considering historical constructions of exchanges between inmate/patient and observer it is possible to see the beginnings of a collective cultural (re)performing of madness; an exchange between observed and observer, which has often masked the actualities of pathologies, complicated diagnostics and exacerbated a collective thirst for a spectacular or entertaining version of disorder… creating a quandary of a missing subject and leaving a refracted set of materials, interpretations or artefacts.
Spectacular Evidence took place in the theatre at Toynbee Studios on 24 March 2017 and was curated/convened by Dr Zoë Mendelson and presented by Camberwell, Chelsea, Wimbledon Graduate School Public Programme.