The Institute of Psychoplasmics

ABSTRACT: The Institute of Psychoplasmics is a group exhibition dealing with cults, rituals and the metaphor of the body politic. A key interest of the project is the way in which cultic groupings challenge the integrity of the social body by producing another within it. The exhibition, book and events explore parallels between the operations of new religious movements in the context of neo-liberalism and the forms of collectivity posited by contemporary art. These issues were addressed through a gallery display, academic essays, discussion, adult and children focused workshops and live performance event. The exhibition design, which considered the gallery as a research institute, itself investigated strategies of collaboration and psycho-social manipulation. The show was curated by Pil and Galia Kollectiv and commissioned by the Pump House Gallery in London and supported by Outset, Arts Council England and the Henry Moore Foundation. The exhibition included work by a.a.s., Insectoid, Diann Bauer, Amanda Beech, Mikko Canini, Seth Coston, Rod Dickinson, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Tai Shani, Francis Upritchard and Roman Vasseur. A publication edited by the curators, features writing by Suhail Malik, Amanda Beech, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Gilad Elbom, Tom McCarthy, Emily McMehen and Travis Jeppesen.

Terrorist transgressions: gendered representations of the terrorist in visual culture

The aim of Terrorist Transgressions is to analyse the myths inscribed in images of the terrorist and identify how agency is attributed to representation through invocations and inversions of gender stereotypes. In modern discourses on the terrorist the horror experienced in Western societies was the appearance of a new sense of the vulnerability of the body politic, and therefore of the modern self with its direct dependency on security and property. The terrorist has been constructed as the epitome of transgression against economic resources and moral, physical and political boundaries. Although terrorism has been the focus of intense academic activity, cultural representations of the terrorist have received less attention. Yet terrorism is dependent on spectacle and the topic is subject to forceful exposure in popular media. While the terrorist is predominantly aligned with masculinity, women have been active in terrorist organisations since the late 19th century and in suicidal terrorist attacks since the 1980s. Such attacks have confounded constructions of femininity and masculinity, with profound implications for the gendering of violence and horror. The publication arises from an AHRC networking grant, 2011-12, with Birkbeck, and includes collaboration with the army at Sandhurst RMA. The project relates to a wider investigation into feminism, violence and contemporary art.