They grew up on the outside of society...
Installation
2013

Slide projection, audio recording, viewing box (birch plywood, pine and acyclic) and benches (OSB)

Full title: ‘They grew up on the outside of society. They weren’t looking for a fight. They were looking to belong.‘

Presenting patient case studies from a 1964 aversion therapy trial by psychologists M. P. Feldman and M. J. MacCulloch titled “The Application of Anticipatory Avoidance Learning to the Treatment of Homosexuality”, this installation loops slides and audio, creating a continually altering combination of sound and image.

The structure is a replica of the one in which the male patients observed slides of men and women and were given electric shocks in conjunction with the former in order to "cure" them. Here the images are taken from Hollywood films about street gangs, placing the archival research within a shifting narrative and positioning the subjects as heroic outsiders.

Exhibition: 'We Are Here: Open Studio' at The White Building, London, 17-18 August 2013

Listed in ARTFORUM’s annual Critics Top Ten List by Erika Balsam, December 2013

This project was developed in the context of the SPACE Permacultures Residency at The White Building, London

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London, UK