It Can Smell Loneliness – Isolation is killing me
Team
Name: Pia Palo
Nationality: Swedish
Institution / Company: Umeå School of Architecture
Name: Elsa Brynje
Nationality: Sweden
Institution / Company: Umeå School of Architecture
– FINALIST of 2020 Monument Competition
Loneliness is a public health problem, and it affects us regardless of age, religion, sexuality or ethnicity. It can be voluntary or involuntary, objective or subjective.
Loneliness is considered shameful, a feeling hard to admit to oneself as well as to others, spite the fact that it is something that we all feel. Moving through public spaces we pass people that we perceive as happy, groups that we believe feel that sense of belonging that we miss and the light streaming from the windows of others seem to mock us with their warmth.
The monument highlights the loneliness that we feel, both literally and figuratively speaking. Spotlights installed surrounding a public space, with sensors that instantly notice lonely people, puts the problem in the limelight. It Can Smell Loneliness is erected by the Public Health Authority and helps them to track the mental health of the population.
By highlighting loneliness, the monument leaves a constant reminder of the fact that lonely people still exist, even in our highly connected, modern world. Lonely hearts are a contemporary as well as a future problem, and they need to be seen. Big brother watches you, but with good intentions.
#political use of public space #monitoring #shame #loneliness #support of mentally ill
