A Summary of the Second Review Meeting

There are many decisions Prarthana has to make. She has done extensive reading up and research in the past two weeks.
But in this subculture of the obsessives - which type are you going to work with - those with diagnose OCD or "ordinary" folk who have their obsessions but have not become OCD?
Prarthana said she wants to work with the latter.
Define: obsession
Define: degrees of obsession
In which case, how do you identify them? Do they come out of the closet for you to identify them?
What are their obsessions - how do you categorise them in terms of variety and degree of intensity of obsessions?
How do they survive without therapy - coping mechanisms?
Are there support groups for them?
The key question is if you have done all this research, does it answer these questions?
Prarthana had listed out all her own obsessions - fear of white squares in the hall way, computer recycle bin must always be empty, bathing with dettol water, cleaning loo with dettol, checking all four doors of the car, keep computer desktop clean, fold clothes in certain width etc.
She must look at notions of purity and contamination - fear and anxiety
Obsession and addiction - if you cannot fulfil your obsession, you turn to addiction in some form.
Don't lose the focus of your project which is "It's fine to be obsessed with something - leverge it!
You have chosen a part of you which is seen by the world/medicine as defective and are looking at it as to be fine. But what will you do with it? Take Salvador Dali, he turned his kinkiness into a methodology for art - the paranoiac critical method. What do you propose?

THINK/TO DO
1. What can you do to take research to expression?
2. Meet psychiatrists, get case studies, meet your obsessed people - gather stories.
3. You may need audio, video, sketches of them, sketches by them
4. Design a set of experiments like the alignment experiment you mentioned.
5. Test them in public spaces - what are the obsessions that people are compelled to perform in public spaces?
6. Find out to what extent visual patterns (literal) and metaphoric (in the head/emotions) are linked to obsessions. Discover them, collect them.
7. What incidents might have led people to adopt obsessions?
8. What obsessions do certain kinds of upbringing bring?
9. Think about the form of your work - it might be a book, a campaign, an art installation, a space. Can you try to make something (an artefact) that makes a normal person behave in an obsessed manner?
Next meeting: August 3, 1.30 pm