Mindfully Dizzy

By Harold Offeh

How can our environment affect mental health?

Working with patients from the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit at Bethlem Royal Hospital, Offeh explores the value of paying focused attention to the overwhelming possibilities of our external environment. The participants mapped their experience of their immediate surroundings through detailed rubbings of the architectural surfaces, which were then incorporated into a dizzying lenticular pattern by the artist, designed to alter visitors’ experience of Science Gallery London’s architectural environment.

In this way, Offeh proposes an approach to “mindfulness” - the mental process of paying attention to the present moment, a practice often used by people to reduce stress and anxiety, whilst making reference to a quote by philosopher Søren Kierkegaard – "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom" – proposing that anxiety could be attributed to the dizzy feeling one might get when they are about to step into the unknown; a feeling of uncertainty, but opportunity.

About the contributor(s)

Harold Offeh

Harold Offeh is an artist working with performance, video and social arts practice. He often employs humour as a means to confront the viewer with historical and contemporary culture. He has exhibited and performed widely in the UK and internationally. He lives in Cambridge and works in London and Leeds.

Comissioned by Science Gallery London in collaboration with Hospital Rooms, this project has been developed through workshops with patients from the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit at Bethlem Royal Hospital, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.