Constelações da Boca do Céu: poéticas de uma esquizonauta ou formas de navegar o caósmos

Abstract

This research was conducted by an artist and researcher diagnosed with schizophrenia. Grounded in self-reflexive experience and in schizophrenic modes of feel-think-being within contemporary society and culture, the study poses the following questions: if society and culture can be understood as exhibiting a schizophrenic affect or disposition, how might their processes of subjectivation be navigated? What lines of force are mobilized to mediate or stabilize processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization? Which aesthetic elements or procedures operate within and around these dynamics? These questions structured the research, which developed in close relation to everyday life and, in turn, informed both the artistic practice and the theoretical inquiry through dialogue with artists and thinkers from the fields of art, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Starting from the assumption that, in order to cope with the chaos established during psychotic episodes, individuals with schizophrenia develop coping strategies that take the form of a constellation - thus enabling orientation and engagement in the movement of life, allowing navigation between delirium (imagistic processes) and thought (conceptualization and abstraction) -, our hypothesis suggests that art, for the schizo subject, is not merely a therapeutic instrument that enables self-expression, but rather, and more fundamentally, an aesthetic dispositif that fosters the development of ethical and political thought in active relation to one’s historical, social, and cultural context, situating madness as a counter-colonial mode of creation, reflection, sharing, and knowledge production. Drawing on what Ken Gale has termed methodogenesis, the research both shaped and was shaped by the lived experiences encountered throughout its trajectory. The study examines key moments in Western thought that accompanied the emergence of schizophrenia as both a clinical pathology and a mode of production, while engaging in critical dialogue with theorists and artists whose work supports and expands the proposed analysis. In addition, the research considers works by both schizophrenic and non-schizophrenic artists in order to identify how constellational procedures manifest aesthetically and whether they reveal shared formal or conceptual characteristics. Finally, the project culminates in the creation of a schizophrenic poetic constellation composed of artworks that integrate and respond to the theoretical and conceptual contributions developed throughout the research.