A different kind of socialising

Suchan Kinoshita at Sutfene in Zutphen

With Instrumentarium Suchan Kinoshita won the ZonMw Incentive Prize in 2002. That year the annual award spotlighted improving communication in the health care sector. The idea to involve visual artists originated from/was inspired by an artistic climate in which a return to the social focus was once more emerging. That meant that the artwork retreated into the background and contact with the public and the event became the focal point. In addition, some artists opted to test their methods outside art and to operate at the heart of social reality.
This development led SKOR, in collaboration with ZonMw, to invite six (groups of) artists to come up with a plan for an actual situation in a care establishment. The project also afforded an opportunity to examine, within a specific framework, what artists’ ideas, expressive skills and strategies could generate and signify in a non-artistic field.
Instrumentarium was conceived for Leeuwerikweide nursing home, a part of the Sutfene Foundation in Zutphen, the Netherlands, where psychogeriatric patients are cared for. Such patients are difficult to get through to. They are often confused, disorientated, angry or sad. The people who are involved with them often have difficulties dealing with them. And, accordingly, it by no means an easy task to create an artwork that does justice to the situation in the home and is also artistically meaningful.1 The organisers had requested something which could bring together residents with dementia and children. After all, contact with young children can mitigate negative feelings, sometimes even dispel them temporarily.

Investigative approach
While paying due attention to the problem, Suchan Kinoshita emphasised in her proposal that she did not wish to approach dementia solely in terms of limitation and deterioration, but to focus on the unsuspected possibilities the condition also offers. The loss of inhibitions may be embarrassing for one’s acquaintances, but it can also give the person in question fresh scope, comparable with children’s lack of inhibitions and readiness to experiment and test new situations. When the awareness of what is and is not ‘done’ disappears, fresh possibilities can be discovered. The same applies for the blurring of the boundaries between past and present. Memories become confused, are sometimes experienced as actually happening now. That produces confusion, but possibilities too.
This investigative approach and the unorthodox perspective on art typify Suchan Kinoshita’s working method. In her museum work she also gets visitors to undertake things themselves, spectators are active components of the work. Similarly, the title Instrumentarium for the Leeuwerikheide project is intended literally: art as an instrument. The artist made a dressing-up chest, ‘tool-box’ and sound tables. Workshops, entailing close cooperation with residents and carers, helped in interpreting the various possibilities of the ‘instrumentarium’. As participants were playing, ways emerged to involve children and residents in what was happening and trigger their creativity in a joint undertaking. Everyday reality in the care home and the residents’ perception of their surroundings were important benchmarks. In a concrete and mental sense, they formed the environment in which the artist sought space and the art stepped in. Kinoshita was aware of her position in the Sutfene community, as an involved outsider, who was regularly but always temporarily present. That position enabled her to observe the situation from a certain distance and approach it in a different way.
Today the ‘tool-box’ tables have replaced the normal tables in the common room. Each drawer has its own contents and proffers a tempting invitation to play, as well as a topic of conversation. The design of Instrumentarium deliberately excluded rules, to give users ample scope to play without rules, or to invent or discover their own rules as they went along. The different tools can be picked up any time. However, in practice there is a danger that they will not be used enough. The elderly often prove to need prodding, though the children find their own way. This makes constant demands on the activities supervisors. However, regular contact with the artist means they themselves have become very much involved in the project.
Instrumentarium has become part of the daily reality of Sutfene, a new thread in the existing fabric. Kinoshita had no wish to intervene forcibly, but wanted to create different opportunities for those who were interested. In a modest way the project has entered the daily routine and constitutes an invitation for interaction and exchange. Instrumentarium is a proposal for a different kind of socialising.

Mariska van den Berg

1.See: Open, no. 3, ‘Kunst in psychogeriatrische verpleeghuizen’, 2002, published by SKOR.