View of the Institute for New Feeling’s installation seek, 2015, at Recess.
Comprising Scott Andrew, Agnes Bolt and Nina Sarnelle, the Institute for New Feeling engages in a biting, pitch-perfect critique of the commodification of dubious medical interventions and spiritual cures. The collective lists past projects on its website as “treatments” and “products.” Among them are an air freshener diffusing oxytocin and the Center for Autosexual Reproduction—a facility-as-installation (with a website and video trailer) purporting to allow patients to propagate their own DNA. At Recess, the IfNf presents “Seek,” a quasi therapy session where subjects are guided through a sort of aura reading based on the “misuse of online search engines.” Act quickly to book an appointment-only session with the artists at Recess (through June 24), stylishly decked out as a New Age clinic, to receive your futuristic diagnosis—emphasis on “gnosis.”
Pictured: Installation view of “Institute for New Feeling: Seek”; at Recess. Courtesy Recess, New York.