Cosa Mentale, questions the ability to connect and collaborate by letting someone take part in one’s actions without stepping completely aside.
The Cosa Mentale drawing protocol addresses the question of whether it is possible to draw with two brains connected to one hand. A mentalist, equipped with an EEG headset, stimulates two electrodes placed on a drawer’s arm. By focusing, the mentalist sends an electrical impulse that makes the drawer lose partial control of their hand’s movements.
The question here is to welcome an external energy, to let someone intervene, agreeing to lose yourself, so you can go to a place you would not be able to reach alone. The result reveals images that we would not have been able to anticipate, opening doors to new depths of our imagination.Drawing with two brains connected to one hand is an experience of physical connection achieved through an external, non-organic circuit. Thus, two human bodies are connected through a kind of electronic extension of the nervous system. The electrical energy of the mentalist's brain is interpreted by an interface and transformed into an electrical current that activates the other drawer’s muscles.
These new physical and mental connections are made possible by the power of code and machines, which artists use and alter to question their definitions of drawing and collaboration. The artists create new conditions of exchange and discover how creation can appear from disruption.
How to collaborate in silence, only through feeling? Who really has control? Over what? Who starts where, and who finishes what?
