Paranoia

Questions like “What does this mean?” are central to our encounters with art. “How are these signs connected?” or “Does every symbol fit into an unstated scheme?” are the foundational concerns of aesthetics. Yet, when the same concerns crop up regularly in almost any other part of life, we give the mode of perception a clinical, pathological name: paranoia.

Paranoia is an attempt to drag the dark, suspicious, paranoiac impulses that animate all artistic interpretation into the open. Via the time-honoured method of the symposium, Verdurin becomes a meeting space for artists, curators, literary scholars, philosophers, and paranoiacs of all stripes, to rehabilitate suspicion as an object of study and scrutiny. 

Why have so many artists and writers gravitated towards conspiracy and intrigue as a metaphor for aesthetics? Are art and literature exempt from the now constant ‘debunking’ and ‘fact-checking’ of every public utterance? And might our most paranoiac fantasies – from shadowy conclaves controlling global events to monsters hiding under the bed – be, in their own way, a kind of art?