Madness and Modernity

The Wellcome Collection
Curated by Lesley Topp and Gemma Blackshaw

Steinhof
Double screen monitors | 2 x 16:9 | 10 mins 30 sec
By David Bickerstaff

"Am Steinhof" was opened in 1907 to keep pace with the steady increase in Vienna's population and the resulting lack of psychiatric hospital beds. At the time, it was the largest and most modern psychiatric institution in Europe. In cooperation with architect Otto Wagner, it had been built with an overall capacity of 2,200 beds and comprised 34 patients' pavilions (clinic, nursing home, sanatorium) as well as its own theatre and church. The 1.43 square kilometres (0.55 square miles) area also housed a farm to supply the institution. However, despite many new approaches, the centralized safekeeping of mentally sick people in a large institution on the outskirts of Vienna perpetuated the principle of social exclusion.

The video installation is a silent journey though the vast hospital grounds and various buildings examining Otto Wagner’s modernist vision and art nouveau detailing. Both beautiful and disturbing, the films give a short, visual insight into the relationship between Architecture and psychiatric treatment.