Each month Improper Walls team will select brain and soulfood for you, then stir it up into a newsletter and our brand new blog.
“Speaking in broad terms, most cultures do not embrace open discussions or portrayals of mental illness or taboo symptomology. At best, these conversations are seen as uncomfortable. At worst, they're ostracized or criminalized. Anything that carries a negative connotation is something we may be judged or shunned for.”
Finally, no shame!
But first, TRIGGER WARNING!
Despite having already touched on some sensitive topics in the past, this month’s edition goes a bit over our usual amount of “everything that’s wrong (and right and somewhere in between) with the world”.
Participating in Mental Health Awareness Month again, this issue speaks about (but not solely on) suicidal thoughts and suicide – an act that carries even heavier stigma than other symptoms.
As mental health is deeply interconnected with other social phenomena, one of our external contributors sheds more light on Femicide, the murder of women for the reason of being women.
For the mental health awareness month, Improper Walls, in collaboration with foundation Made of Millions, presents the international group exhibition “Shame Shouldn't be a Symptom”…
Read More"In my understanding, art can and should be an offer to deal with oneself and one's own relation to the most diverse topics, and in the best case, stimulates an inner or interpersonal dialogue. In this sense, I believe that one possible task of art is to approach socio-cultural norms and taboos in a new way, through new language, and to question or criticise them."
Read MoreFemicide, the “murder of women because they are women”, should be a highly debated concept due to the losses it involves. However, most of the Austrian public seems to be as unaware of the concept and its roots as the influencers we encountered before. “Most of the victims of manslaughter are still men!”, some may say in an attempt to debase the claim that femicides constitute a specific form of violence, and that this is a practice that only happens far away, in other countries, on other continents even. “It was only because he loved her so much!”, others might argue, or “I am sure that she provoked it!”, just falling short of “I am sure she deserved it!”
Read MoreHe picked me up while we were both riding the 1-train uptown. I had been forgotten by a girl who drank too many bottomless mimosas at a drag queen brunch somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen. Apparently, a friend of hers thought I would be a nice birthday gift but had not counted on the birthday girl blacking out on public transport and leaving me behind.
Read MoreChat rooms were anonymity paradises. Not without dangers, but is our current day of authenticity safer or better? The comic essay on the old Internet by @triquidick continues!
Read MoreFrom Andrea Z Scharf's sketchbook, some personal thoughts on "Navigating Through Anxiety, 2021"
Read MoreBecome a part of participatory project “Kanye West doesn’t know what it’s like” by photographer and psychologist Patrycja Stala.
Read MoreLast minute chance to experience April selection of Human Rights Film Hub curated by Martina Genetti.
Read MoreFinally, daylight saving time! (Just kidding)
Yes, once again, we messed up our natural biorhythms to preserve the over 100-year-old attempt to make war cheaper; by losing an hour of sleep. Brilliant.
So, first, we excluded ourselves from the symbiotic wholeness of Earth’s ecosystem. Then, we created the monetary system; another tool for excluding each other from the new system. Then, we tried to make killing each other over that system cost less by saying it’s 7AM instead of 6AM.
I mean…truly, human kind deserves its place at the top of the food chain.
Read More“I think that no matter how you look at it, all the topics in art are always under the big umbrella of "Human Rights", in other words, art is always about human rights, about free choices, about the relationship between law and duty.“
Read MoreIt’s spring ya’ll! Time to transmute that inner rage and winter depression into a raging against old, destructive, conformist ways that are no longer useful and make space for something radical and new to emerge.
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