Opening the Pill.

Three days of events focused on exploring the concept of dependency within the complex, contemporary panorama of mental health: OPENING THE PILL, a performative symposium, is the latest initiative organized by the cultural incubator MUSEION Art Club, in occasion of the exhibition Kingdom of the Ill, from 17 to 19 November 2022 at Museion, Bolzano. The project is the winner of the PAC – Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea, promoted by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero della Cultura (General Department for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture).

OPENING THE PILL – part of Beyond the Artwork, a content group research project organized by the Museion Art Club Forum (Frida Carazzato, Giulia Cordin, Brita Köhler, Flavio Pintarelli and Michael Scerbo) for 2022 and 2023 – will explore (mental) health as a technology, whose biotechnological apparatuses produce definitions like sick, healthy, dependent and sober in a constant negotiation between body and machine, organic and artificial, natural and synthetic.

In this context, the pill becomes the starting point and the means for presenting alternative practices and perspectives of emancipation. Thus, “opening the pill” means getting to know the technologies that are changing us today and discovering our political relationships with the technology we have become. Starting from well-known pills, such as estrogens, anti-depressants and stimulants, the OPENING THE PILL encounters will touch on various fields to highlight the complexity that underlies our relationship with these biotechnologies through talks, workshops, performances, reading groups and projects in Museion’s public space that will involve a wide-ranging audience in a variety of experiences.

Various artists will take part in the program, such as Shu Lea Cheng, Mary Maggic, Zander Porter, Charlie Laban Trier and Enrico Floriddia; the Patternhouse project promoters who will be hosted at the Casa Basaglia in Merano, as well as theorists and researchers, including João Florêncio, Valeria Graziano, Enrico Petrilli and many other local and international contributors.