Centre d’édition contemporaine Geneva

Caroline Schattling Villeval, No, no no healthy trust, 2023, a box containing a safety pin that joins together an object made of Murano glass and two or three silver-plated brass chains, wrapped in tissue paper, variable dimensions, black print on a white box, 9.2 x 9.2 x 5 cm. On the bottom of the box is printed a QR-code that gives access to the animation video, No, no no healthy trust, color, 2’, 2023. Edition of 100 copies, including 3 e.a. and 2 H.C., numbered, dated and signed. Editorial assistantship: Ilana Winderickx; video modeling: Sara Bissen and Caroline Schattling Villeval; graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition of the Centre d’édition contemporaine, 2023.

Edition offered to the members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine association for the year 2023.

CHF 150.-

In the video No, no no healthy trust, the question of the body remains, in this case individual as well as biological. The theme of power is approached through the topic of well-being. “For Caroline Schattling Villeval, the interest in care as a concept emerged through the discovery of the feminist self-help movements of the 1970s. The movement was initiated on one hand as a reaction to the masculine domination in the health system, and on another hand as a set of contemporary artistic practices which were articulated around said movement. In Europe, the Feminist Health Care Research Group, formed in 2015 in Berlin by Julia Bonn, Alice Münch and Inga Zimprich took inspiration from the West German Health Movement in order to create spaces to welcome collective research around exhibitions, workshops or zines as tools to think about and construct a more radical health system. As an empowerment process, individual education notably revolves around learning DIY practices within a communal setting, as a way to propose a collective alternative to the dominant health system.

In the video No, no no healthy trust, a small green plant agitates itself in a jerky trance. Is it the result of drug consumption within a festive setting, or maybe dietary supplements consumed to provide a daily energy boost? Regardless of whether it’s one or the other, the specter of the neoliberal economy seems to loom large. Caroline Schattling Villeval’s characters are often offbeat, submerged by a world which overflows with possibilities to get better, always better. They seem to be in a perpetual well-being quest, an investigation of happiness. Happiness, as it was formulated by Martin Seligman, co-founder of positive psychology next to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, follows a hyper-individualist logic; To reach happiness depends on one’s will to undertake a series of important actions as a way to achieve a sustainable blissful state. How convenient for capitalism! Supported by the good vibes only slogan, the wellness industry takes off in the beginning of the 2000s: happiness can be bought. Yoga, pilates, diets, detoxes, miracle morning, beauty care, meditation, self-development, spiritual retreat: so many practices that guarantee a better life, evolving at the pace of supply and demand, standardising bodies and minds while detaching them from any kind of collective commitment. Health is no longer limited to fighting diseases, and now encompasses attempts to perform better, self-optimise, compensate hypothetical deficiencies. For one’s own sake?