BEDLAM
THE WORLD’S FIRST HOSPITAL FOR LUNATICS
AN EXHIBITION FOLLOWED BY
AN IMMERSIVE DOCUMENTARY
AN IMMERSIVE DOCUMENTARY
BY
MAT COLLISHAW
WRITTEN BY EMILY JENKINS
Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to Bedlam.
(bed-luh-m)
-
1. A scene or state of wild uproar and confusion.
2. Archaic. An insane asylum or madhouse.
Mental illness has always been part of our society. Established in 1247, Bethlehem Hospital, or ‘Bedlam’ as it derived from Middle English popular pronunciation, is the world’s oldest “lunatic” hospital. In an age when there was no state funding for hospitals, viewing the insane was legitimated and became an effective means for the exhortation of charitable donations. One of the more unsavoury side effects of the arrangement was the treatment of the hospital as an arena for entertainment where the public could visit for leisure purposes. For this reason Bedlam became notorious as a destination for the experience of madness and the abject. Bedlam became a byword for anarchy, chaos and confusion.
INTRODUCTION
THE JOURNEY
BEDLAM is a multi-user and interactive VR experience that envelops the visitor through the world’s oldest lunatic hospital.
BEDLAM can accommodate up to 40 spectators per hour. Visitors will first experience an exhibition designed by the artist that presents exclusive historical material, medical records, and individual testimonies.
They will then progress to a virtual recreation of Bethlem Hospital in the 17th century. Moving from cell to cell, they will encounter the patients of BEDLAM with delusional symptoms and compelling testimonies, including some historical figures such as Lady Eleanor Davies and “Big Daniel”.
“There is a real opportunity here to offer a stimulating, destabilising, and particularly well-documented experience to inform and question the place that stigmatisation and voyeurism still occupy in society’s attitude towards difference, but also to clarify the reasons for the public’s fascination with a certain type of ‘spectacle’, and their reactions to this legitimised spectacle — or what Foucault once called ‘the glorified exhibition of the scandal of madness’, as well as the benefits that some skilful prisoners have derived from visiting and talking to a varied audience, turning the mirror of irrationality on the expectations and responses of their visitors.”
— Dr. Jonathan Andrews, author of Bedlam Revisited: A History of Bethlem Hospital 1634-1770 (1991), and reader in the History of Psychiatry in the History, Classics and Archaeology Department at the University of Newcastle.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
BEDLAM is not a game or an educational tool, it’s intended as an artwork, an attempt to reflect on the human condition, on our relationship with technology, our perception of reality and the appetite for spectacle. The intention is to resurrect a particularly sinister chapter in the history of human conduct. Our interest in the absurd and the grotesque and the appetite for human debasement remains today; digital technology is just the latest vehicle to give us unprecedented and immediate access to these darker corners of human behaviour. The experience is not seeking to sensationalise or mock mental health problems, but to lay bare the savagery with which sufferers have been treated, and to draw parallels with modern day voyeurism.
— Mat Collishaw
PRODUCTION
TEAM /
PARTNERS
TEAM /
PARTNERS
COPRODUCTION
Mat Collishaw Studio
EL-GABAL
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA)
Bethlem Museum of the mind
CreativeXR (developed by Digital Catapult and Arts Council England)
CONTACT
contact@el-gabal.com
DISTRIBUTION
Antoine Cardon
antoine@el-gabal.com
+33 6 49 45 33 97