Installation view: Room 1 (THE FUTURE/THE PAST/THE PRESENT/THE PAST/THE FUTURE); Depression Is An Inability To Construct A Future (2008), GCGCA(i)

Depression Is An Inability To Construct A Future

Meßkirch Castle, Germany

20 Mar - 20 Jun 2008

‘Freedom, which on this earth can only be bought only with a thousand of the hardest sacrifices, must be enjoyed unrestrictedly in its fullness without any kind of pragmatic calculation, as long as it lasts … mankind’s struggle for liberation in its simplest revolutionary form (which is nevertheless liberation in every respect), remains the only cause worth serving.'

- Andre Breton

In 1929 Martin Heidegger publishes Being and Time. It is an analysis of Dasein - a German word meaning 'being there' or ‘presence', and is often translated as ‘existence'. Its fundamental insight is the articulation of the subject’s dynamic threefold relation to time - experienced in the ‘present' as the fractured togetherness of the future as it flows into the past.

Daseinsanalysis is an existentialist approach to psychoanalysis that developed out of this influential philosophical work. In 1969, the American existential psychologist Rollo May wrote in his book Love and Will that 'depression is the inability to construct a future'.

For this exhibition, a practising Dasein Analyst who has successfully used Dasein Analysis to cure depressive patients (many of whom are all now involved in creative projects that project the possibility of a liberated future) will be available for hourly Dasein Analysis sessions from 10am to 6pm every day for its duration.

Installation view: Room 2 (Dasein Analysis Room); Depression Is An Inability To Construct A Future (2008), GCGCA(i)