The School for the Deranged

Abstract

This paper is a first-person narrative of a project entitled “La rara troupe” (The Strange Troupe), a space for creation and co-existence between a group of people both with and without diagnosed mental illness. This space has been taking shape since 2012 in the Educational Department of the MUSAC (Contemporary Art Museum of Castile and León). The paper combines first-person narration and film-based analysis through the audiovisuals created by the group. It is a self-reflective attempt at praxis, where artistic research methodologies, the pre-eminence of the affective over the discursive, and the politicisation of discomfort are the tools we have authorised for a necessary, open and changing investigation aimed at considering contemporary cultural practices centred on approaches to reality.