Homemade Schizophrenia

Homemade schizophrenia is a set of objects that turn you schizophrenic.

With this project – developed for the graduation at the Central Saint Martins – Firdaws Fourcroy explores the ways in which social norms are sedentary, and how their barriers can be transgressed by achieving madness.

Madness in term of self focus, where the ego-centric focus is not based on materialistic needs but on the self. Individuals who are attached to other value systems than materiality have trouble existing in a society where materiality is the central focus. Normality is defined by shared beliefs, unspoken rules of social behaviours. This creates a common definition of reality which is defined as what the majority of a group considers as normal. Capitalism, materialism and the emphasis on productivity are normality in the modern world.

The cutleries aim to de-familiarize the protagonist with his automatic behaviours allowing the shaping of different realities. Based on The Anti Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari, the schizophrenic is the average man who is divided between his primitive (impulsive/natural) desires and the desires imposed by a capitalistic system. When an individual does not share social desire, he cannot be part of society. The main problem of productivity is the acknowledgment that any living thing is productive. As Deleuze and Guattari explain in Anti-Oedipus everything is a machine except the schizo. The schizo is the one legitimately allowed to run away from it. Being conscious of the self is being conscious of existing in a society. Existing as an actor pushed to produce and to be aware of the boundaries imposed by normality. The schizo has stopped living in material culture. His desires are no longer depending on the “working machine”. The working machine is a machine able to produce and to reproduce. In a society based on materialistic needs, immaterial desires will be excluded.

The cutleries are designed to disrupt everyday rituals, and render the user unproductive. They put the user in a position of discomfort so that they might become aware of their own automatic habits. The set consists of a “one grain at a time” rice fork, a too large spoon, a holed spoon, and a weak knife. These shapes impose unusual movements on the user. The heads of the cutleries are heavier than the handles creating unbalance and within the heads lie magnets that draw the cultleries to each other, all together creating conflict between the user and objects. The cutleries draw the user back from the trappings of modern convenience and materialism to an unproductive state.

Homemade schizophrenia
Design: Firdaws Fourcroy