Happiness Clinic Valletta

Happiness Clinic in Valletta

In reaction to the devastating impacts of COVID-19 on mental health, Gray Box creates and curates “Happiness Clinic”, an ephemeral clinic, which offers “artistic treatments”, cures, cares and therapies, in form of public participatory performances to celebrate joy, happiness, and spread positivity in today's uncertain world. During one whole day, from 10 am to 10 pm, the “Happiness Clinic” will open its fictional doors in Valletta, and encourage the public to participate in 9 totally free public space performances in 9 different spots through the whole city. A large scale of interactive outdoor performances - including ceremony, ritual, promenade, multi-sensorial experience, collective actions, gathering, public intervention, celebration, party - will be selected and presented through a transparent open call alongside three axes (“Care”, “Creation”, “Connection”), all of them coping with a variety of mental health and psychological problems, such as stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, insomnia, denial, stigma, anger and fear caused by the pandemic.

The intersection of COVID-19 and mental health

Mental health is an important part of overall health and wellbeing. It affects how we think, feel, act, and also how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices during an emergency. On October 6, 2020, WHO published the results of a survey of the impact of COVID-19 on mental, neurological, and substance use services in 130 WHO Member States. This report comes on the back of mounting evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic is having monumental effects on the mental health and wellbeing of populations worldwide. Public health actions, such as social distancing, can make people feel isolated and lonely and can increase stress and anxiety. Misuse of substances, particularly alcohol, is rising. And as with many other features of this pandemic, not all people have been affected equally. Frontline workers are experiencing increased workload and trauma, making them susceptible to stress, burnout, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet, the world is woefully unprepared to deal with the mental health impact of this pandemic, and we believe that art has a significant role to play.
It is important to let people know that it is completely normal to not feel all right all the time – it’s understandable to feel sad, distressed, worried, confused, anxious or angry during this crisis. Everyone reacts differently to difficult events, and some may find this time more challenging than others. During this particular time, people may be looking for new or additional ways to help them feel mentally better and get through. The main purpose of “Happiness Clinic” is to react to this context by improving peoples’ mental health and wellbeing through a wide range of participatory public space performances.

Supporting others' mental wellbeing

There is a lot art can do to help people during this time. Another report from the WHO, published in 2019, has concluded that engaging in art-based activities can significantly benefit health, both mentally and physically. Engaging people in activities such as dancing, singing and creating provides an added dimension to how people can improve their physical and mental health.
In “Happiness Clinic”, a series of participatory performances including, among others, ceremony, ritual, care, public space intervention, promenade, multi-sensorial experience, lecture, discussion, collective action, gathering, are imagined along three complementary and transversal axes to cope with the impact of COVID-19 on mental health:

Care of the body
Creation and co-creation
Connection with others, community-building

Supporting local artists

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic particularly threatens the future of artists, creators and cultural operators, who are severely impacted by the enforcement of social distancing measures and the consequent postponements, cancellations or closures of events. As the OECD demonstrates in a recent report, the risks are high for creators, artists and those working in the entertainment sector – a group of workers who are already vulnerable.
As a response to this situation, in the “Happiness Clinic” Gray Box wants to cooperate with nine Valletta-based artists, so as to redistribute the earned grant locally, ethically and equally. Every participating artist, selected through a transparent open call, will receive a decent fee.

Transparent open call

Gray Box will issue and jury a thematic open call four months before the opening of the “Happiness Clinic”, and encourage Valletta-based artists, collectives to apply.
Through a completely transparent selection process, a jury composed of Valletta-based curators, artists and cultural workers will choose nine proposals (3 / axe) belonging to all kinds of aesthetics including non-representative, non-canonical, marginal, experimental forms.
So as to avoid “seeing the same names everywhere”, we will also pay attention to select artists with none or very few experiences. We are also dedicated to build a broadly diverse and inclusive staff representing all races, ethnicities, ages, genders and backgrounds.

Applicants’ proposal must be, in terms of form:

Performative in the wide sense of the term (ceremony, ritual, care, public space interventions, promenade, multi-sensorial experience, lecture, talk, workshop, collective actions, gathering...)
Collective, participatory, and engage actively the public while respecting social distancing directions of local authorities
Last maximum 3 hours and can be repeated several times in row during the day
Be realizable to outdoor with no or very easy technical requirements
Preferably rely on a technique, such as naturopathy – aromatherapy, energy technology, relaxation techniques – sophrology, manual techniques – osteopathy, kinesiology, podology, sport or on an approach like dietetics, food coaching, phytotherapy, traditional massage, reflexology, reiki, magnetism, feng shui, meditation, relaxation, hair care, body care, ayurvedic care, stretching, hiking, qi gong, pilates, tai chi chuan, art therapy, music therapy, dance therapy…

In terms of concept, applications must develop one of the three axes:

Axe 1 – Care of the body, development of self-confidence and encouragement of self-care and self-love through the use of sport, dance and movement exercises as political tool to:
- challenge the mainstream fashionable “ideal” body and "body norms";
- defy the traditional canon (in terms of proportion, size, scale, shape and aesthetic) together with the dominant representation of the healthy and unhealthy body;
- free ourselves from the concept of “standard of beauty”.
Axe 2 – Creation and co-creation through alternative, experimental and horizontal learning and unlearning processes using those marginal forms (ballroom dance, folk dance, jumpstyle, street dance…) and aesthetics which are currently rejected by the conformist mainstream canonical dance history and the market (eg. vulgar, kitsch, narrative...), as oppositional tools to:
- challenge the traditional hierarchy of genres and techniques in western academic art;
- question current hegemonic aesthetic trends and defy dominant cultural values and ideologies.
Axe 3 – Connection with others and community-building activities are seen as a “call for gathering” for friendship, reciprocal support, collective study on a particular subject/issue, and tooling. These are simply human experiences which go beyond relational aesthetics by introducing the production of knowledge and the sharing of skills and tools in addition to the creation of friendly and safe spaces.

Timing

4 months before the opening of the “Happiness Clinic”: Open Call for proposals from Valletta-based artists
3 month before the opening:

- Selection of the participating artists together with the local jury
- Administration (contract agreements with the selected artists)
- Reservation of public spaces
- Press

1 month before the opening:

- Rehearsals
- One-on-one meetings with the artists
- Organization, schedule, time- and space-management
- Communication

Opening of the “Happiness Clinic”: one full day of free participatory performances providing positivity, happiness, joy, wellbeing, self-care and self-love against the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health.

Ethics and values

“Happiness Clinic” is an artistic project which aims to be responsible, ethically engaged and socially impactful through its concept and form by:

Coping with the mental and psychological consequences of the pandemic
Building micro-communities, human connections, interactions after a long period of social distancing and isolation
Performing outdoor (parc, street, square, monument…) to open the project to a wider public
Promoting contemporary dance and performance through generous and simple interactive actions, understandable and appreciable by everyone
Putting the emphasis on emotions, joy, happiness and human relations
Giving financial support for local artists (9 in total)
Promoting less-known, less-visible artists
Showing unrepresented, oppositional, “out of the box” aesthetics

Curating as artistic practice

Through a curatorial form, we wish to create an alternative system of thinking and behaving, based on cooperation, participation and engagement.
“Happiness Clinic” frees itself from the obsession with the new, the career, the exposure and the haste to overproduce, that this overall race for novelty and overconsumption generate.
“Happiness Clinic” is an anti-fast art, an apology for slowness, a dazzling, passionate and generous platform for small actions and big changes.

International cooperation

“Happiness Clinic” is an international cooperation between the company “Gray Box” and Valletta-based artists, and therefore a way to financially support the local art community.

Credits

Concep:t Anna Ádám / Gray Box
Local Project manager:
Jury: Anna Ádám + 1 representer of the partner institution + 1 local curator or cultural worker
Artists: 9 Valletta-based artists, selected through an open call
Performance venues: outdoor (parc, street, square…), reserved by the partner institution
Financial support: VCA

A bit about us

Anna Ádám is a Franco-Hungarian visual artist and performance maker whose work blurs the boundaries between choreography, image, and object, with emphasis on the body and on the movement as the central forms of expression. She studied performance and fashion before obtaining her Master of Arts from the ENSAPC Art School in Cergy, France, in 2016. By combining performing arts, visual arts and curatorial practices, Anna Ádám’s work transgresses normative discourses, challenges gender boundaries, systems of representation, standards of beauty together with the established codes of the fashionable body.
Anna Ádám also considers workshops, community building activities and curatorial practices as part of her main artistic medium. At the intersection of an art workshop and an interactive performance, in the form of "thematic movement research laboratories", private one-on-one "séances", experimental learning and unlearning sessions, Art Fitness classes and JAM LABS, she creates and curates social and spatial contexts, develops new forms of collective aesthetics based on participation, connection, and physical presence.
Anna Ádám also participated as a performance artist to external projects (Palais de Tokyo (FR), Musée Georges Pompidou (FR)...). Since 2016 she presents regularly her work in both theaters (E-Werk Kul- turzentrum (DE), Theater MU (HU), National Theater (HU), Piccolo Tea- tro (DE)...) and exhibition spaces (Ludwig Museum (HU), Museum of Modern Art Yerevan (AM), National Museum of History Paris (FR)...), and holds workshops in universities across Europe (Austria, France, Hungary, Serbia, Armenia...). In 2019 she gave seminars at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (AT) and at the University of Artois (FR). In 2020 she is resident artist at the Mediterranean Dance Center (HT) and at ZFinMalta (MT). In 2021 she will collaborate with Dance City Theater (UK), La Générale (FR), Abbaye de Maubuisson (FR) and teach with the ZeroPlus Dance School (HU) and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy (FR).
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Gray Box: Created as a collective in 2014, and founded as a company in 2018, Gray Box’s work takes interest in going beyond the boundaries between "white cube" and "black box": choreography, image and object, by emphasizing the body and movement as central forms of expression. Based on trans-disciplinary research and collective experimentation, our company creates, curates and produces, in all horizontality, a body of work with a strong political, ecological and social dimension. We consider the moving body together with its immaterial aspects - such as perception, empathy, emotions, intuitions - as a political tool to forge emancipated communities, create social connections and human interactions.
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