‘Language Confusion Clinic’ at Schloss Wartin (DE)

The LFTT Library collaborated with Polish artist Aga Tamiola and The Emergency Kit for Neuroskeptics at The Schloss Wartin Summer Salon to produce the Language Confusion Clinic; an intimate workshop style ‘clinic’ in the beautiful surrounds of the Castle Wartin estate. Drawing on tools developed at Artists Unlimited, Bielefeld concerning language barriers and mis-translations as productive of intercultural knowledge sharing, and combining this with the neurological interests of Tamiola and the aesthetics of psychiatry – The Language Confusion Clinic employed anti-rational methods to reveal serendipitous associations in thought amongst a group of strangers.

A selection of books from The LFTT Library from differing historical and geographical cultural contexts was made available to the group as a medium of dialogue. This select slice of the archive was paired with the Emergency Kit For Neuroskeptics which added some cross associative poetic flair. Two bells were employed as signals to request a desire to read either from the Library or the Kit. The third bell signalled a wish to personally free associate with the imagery that revealed itself from the texts. During the group session strange tangents rose to the surface of our collective thoughts, enabled by this simple triangular framework.

Within the high academic context of The Schloss Wartin Summer Salon; a project initiated by the Yale University Alumni Club in Germany e.V. and the Collegium Wartinum Foundation,  participants of the Language Confusion Clinic expressed a cathartic pleasure in this anti-dogmatic mode of reasoning and social knowledge sharing. The Emergency Kit for Neuroskeptics is a joint project of Aga Tamiola and Sean Erickson.

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