Institute for Experimental Distress

Arto vanHasselt

Fine Arts / Video

“Feel the delight of seduction! Reconnect with what is really happening between you and your screen. Elevate entertainment to your direct consciousness. Do not allow rest to be alienating. Take back the power from your passivity!”— Institute for Experimental Distress (IED).

Institute for Experimental Distress explores our relationship with alluring online images. The institute borrows the extended and repetitive format specific to meditative videos which abound on internet platforms such as YouTube. Through images and sound, the IED’s productions transform your computer into a healing station that diagnoses the mental capture of your desire by big data’s entertainment apparatus. Treating this as a curse, it helps you to cure it through speculative cathartic methods.

Sound design by Tristan Bründler