COLLETTIVO 180

Collettivo 180

VISION QUEST Contemporary Photography is happy to open the 2008-2009 artistic season by presenting the collective photographic exhibition entitled COLLETTIVO 180.

Thirty years after the approval of law 180 which was also known as the “  Basaglia  Law” taken  from the name of the psychiatrist who promoted this law, we felt the  need to put together an exhibition. We didn’t want to create a celebratory exhibition, but  rather one which would be able to once again attract attention to a particularly  important theme, that of mental health.

The 70’s constituted the most active period of our Italian Republic;  there were debates on the subjects of terrorism, the mafia, political misdemeanors, not to mention  new social ideals and deep reaching civil battles. All of these phenomena  led to important State laws.

  Today, we’d prefer to forget all of this but an even more serious  tendency is that of once again  arguing out these matters and reorganizing those self same laws.  In this way important  achievements have been nullified.  Therefore, in the spirit of the facts above we intend to carry  forward a small but important  contribution aimed at re-awakening the memory and at increasing  the awareness of how this  attention must be constant and acute. 
Consequently, the  exhibition shall commence with historical pictures from the years 1967 to 1970  when it was possible, thanks to Franco Basaglia and his co-workers, for some  individuals to gain entry into psychiatric hospitals and to photograph the  horrors within their 4 walls. Attention towards a world which up until those  years had been intentionally hidden away grew inexorably thanks to these  pictures, and many photographers started and continued to document every aspect  of it. 
Since that time  thirty years of the law have passed, and forty years have passed since the  opening of the first psychiatric wards: many things have been achieved but  there are still more yet to be achieved.

  The exhibited  photographs span this complete arc of time fixing one’s attention by, before  everything else, obliging one to reflect on today’s situation. This state of  affairs today is running the risk of tragically slipping backwards and falling  into the hands of indifference and shameful speculation.   For these reasons  therefore part of the exhibition shall be held inside the ex- Psychiatric  Hospital of Quarto, Genoa, together with projections, meetings and other  events. One of these shall be a true and proper showing of the “Fourth Eye!”  exhibition: young photographers together with the staff of the institute and  some of the patients shall make their own contribution. They’ll be given a  disposable camera (same model for everyone) with which they’ll be able to  freely photograph the goings on inside the hospital. A selection of their work  shall then be exhibited inside the ex- Psychiatric Hospital and published in  the exhibition catalogue. 
All of this shall be to demonstrate the very importance of demolishing every type of barrier; at the  same time it shall also serve as a protest against those individuals who would  like to hide away suffers of mental illness from the eyes of society.

In fact, it’ll  never be possible to fight back against this society which is by now based on  appearance only, if we continually allow the bandages to fall over our eyes in  a mist of silence. 

Fabrizio Boggiano

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