There are 504 psychoneurological asylums in Russia, most of them are located outside the city and surrounded by high walls. They house almost 150,000 residents unnoticed and unaccepted by society. We don't see them on the streets, in shops, or on public transport. We don't know how they live their life. The asylum in Peterhof is one of the largest of its kind. 1030 people live here. The Perspektivy charity takes care of 148 adults and young people with the most varied and severe developmental disabilities. This story is about them.
concept
The concept was based on our observation that the closed-off life within the institution runs according to its own special rules and along its own coordinates at a different pace and with different goals than we are used to. So we came to the following starting points: isolation, deceleration, microdynamics, microcosm, different perspective, different scale.
The site is divided into four chapters: Forest, Corridor, Recreation Room and Forest. This sequence reflects the route a visitor takes through the asylum – there and back. The site also has practically no customary vertical scrolling – the main navigation is horizontal. This makes it possible to feel the course of time differently, reflecting the characteristic flow of time in the orphanage.
Print format
book edition of the project
The purpose of the project Deep Inside is to make visible the world of special people from closed institutions, to bring attention to them and potentially attract support. The mission of the project is to re-examine the limits of empathy, compassion and human closeness within society.
PHYSICAL FORMAT
multimedia installation
From the outset we knew that the project should exist not just in the form of a multimedia website and book, but also as a physical construction; a space which you can enter and experience all those things we had come up with in the concept. The installation took the form of a black container that you can go inside, with long panoramic photos of the forest and corridor displayed on the walls; and video and audio excerpts of interviews with Perspektivy staff and trustees.
