Psychasthenia: The Care of The Self, 1999

Knut Åsdam

Psychasthenia: The Care of The Self, 1999, shown at the 1999 Venice Biennial:

For the 1999 Venice Biennial Åsdam created the architectural installation Psychasthenia: The Care of the Self, 1999, as well as designing the exhibition environment as a whole in a response to the Pavilion’s own architecture and the ideologies implicit.

Psychasthenia: The Care of the Self, 1999. Architectural installation (40ft (l) x 25ft (w) x 10.2ft (h)). Glass, light filter, steel, 30 tons of soil, trees, bushes, flowers, grass.

An architectural enclosure made of filtered glass walls contains a ‘night time’ park/garden made entirely from live plants and soil. The filtered glass creates an artificial nighttime within the space in the daylight hours where viewers only see themselves and their surroundings reflected in the dark surfaces of the glass. Inside the installation, viewers can see through the glass and observe the outside without being seen. Leading into the piece is a 7m long octagonal corridor that fades from beige to black. This is both a sci-fi quotation and a practical light-lock. The interior architecture is made by trees, bushes, smaller plants, grass and soil in different levels and formations, creating a system of paths and areas with different degree of seclusion or openness. Moving through the space, the viewer becomes part of a sexualized cruising economy in relating to other bodies in the space. As with Åsdam’s other architectural installations, Psychasthenia: The Care of the Self deals with spaces that are part of the unconscious of the city while also facilitating a social space for the viewers to become part of the installation’s narrative themselves.

Exterior view from outside pavillion

Exterior view

Interior view looking from garden through glass to the outside

Interior view looking down path

Exterior view at night. Grow lights come on to keep vegetation alive and reverses the axis of visibility.In the daytime you can only see out and not it, at night you can see in (and not out) and the piece becomes a piece for the accidental wanderer by through the park at night.

| READ SIMON LEUNG ON PSYCHASTHENIA THE CARE OF THE SELF |

| READ GEORGE BAKER EXCERPT FROM "THE SPACE OF THE STAIN" ON PSYCHASTHENIA THE CARE OF THE SELF |

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