Tag: Psychoanalysis

In Florian Habicht’s new documentary we are introduced to the cast of Spookers, a New Zealand live action thrill-experience set in a decommissioned psychiatric hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. The cast or ‘family’ address the camera and divulge their experiences of mental illness, religion, sexuality, social cohesion.

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Spookers. New doco by Florian Habicht at Melb film fest. Decommissioned NZ psych hospital now used as site for spooky thrill theme park. A site of repression turned into expression. From managing the psyche to fit social norms to allowing expression of psycho-sexual extremes in a controlled environment. #rage #expression #portraiture

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The building that once held and managed the psyche, often under duress and against the will of the patients, is now a site for the expression of psycho-sexual extremes under controlled conditions. The site operates as a space that connects both the unconscious drives of the players in the current day and the repression and enforced compliance that was common in Psychiatric hospitals until the opening of institutions following the social upheavals of the 1960’s.

Titicut Follies…

Limmy is Glaswegian. He came from the web, born of early YouTube. Compressed domestic tales from the compressed cloud cover of a pishy wet city.

Between 2010-13 he produced Limmy’s Show, a BBC Scotland sketch show. Ecstasy jokes at funerals. Junkie internal monologues in airless living rooms. Anti-moral tales from the housing estate. A wet surrealism born from desperation, seratonin-depletion and workplace demoralisation.

Limmy faces the camera. He has his location. His battery is charged. He hits record.

He found a niche in Vine, the short-video sharing social network subsumed into Twitter in 2016. Working in such concision his gestures are witnessed in flashes; a gnarl of teeth, a glance, the snatch of a gesture that transmits directly to our reptilian stem. Before we can react we see, and what we see is Limmy’s primordial state. Often in bed, without clothing or the presence of others, Limmy gags for the camera. A slithering tongue followed by a kitchen knife followed by a loving stare to camera. These are the masks of persona trying itself on. A face cycling through numerous emotional states and energies. The additional impact from their cataloguing into 600 Vine Supercompilations on YouTube makes suffocation inevitable.

Limmy will now create his ‘Homemade show’ in 2017. Between cheap high-resolution video cameras and the infinite potential of his apartment. A new form born from hand-held video devices, social sharing and the home.