Allergy
The body recognizes a substance as a threat and produces an avoidance response.
DESENSITIZE
Overview
A psychological exploration through the ruins of a failed Desensitization Center.
The story reveals how fear, control and emotional conditioning transformed human behavior, and how a system built to enforce harmony ultimately caused its own collapse.
ProjectPersonal projectSoloSpeculative installation / Time-based media
Project film / 01:14DESENSITIZE / 2025
WHEN FEAR BECOMES A DIAGNOSIS.
The project begins with an unsettling analogy between the body's avoidance of allergens and society's fear of the “other.” In this imagined future, governments treat xenophobia as an allergic reaction that can be reduced through compulsory therapy.
What happens when a social problem is medicalized to enforce artificial harmony?
FROM BIOLOGICAL AVOIDANCE TO POLITICAL CONTROL.
Research into the Behavioral Immune System offered the speculative starting point: people instinctively avoid signs of contamination, but the same language of danger can also be projected onto unfamiliar people and social groups.
Fear of the “other”
Perceived difference becomes associated with risk, impurity and the need for distance.
Desensitization
The fictional government medicalizes prejudice, turning emotional correction into mandatory treatment.
FROM TREATMENT TO COLLAPSE.
A fictional timeline traces how a biological explanation becomes a medical experiment, then public infrastructure and finally a compulsory system. The forecast is not a prediction; it establishes the conditions that make the abandoned center possible.
- 2024Signal
Rising allergies and social avoidance are read as connected symptoms of a more fearful society.
- 2034Trials
Drug trials and early desensitization methods begin treating xenophobia as a correctable response.
- 2044Centers
After violent incidents, governments open centers combining cognitive and immune therapies.
- 2054Mandate
Desensitization becomes a global civic duty promoted as the route to social harmony.
- 2064Collapse
Every center abruptly ceases operation. The reason is never officially explained.
THE ABANDONED CENTER / FUTURE WORLD
Worldbuilding
THE CURE BECAME A CIVIC DUTY.
Desensitization Centers combined cognitive conditioning, biometric scanning and immune therapy. Years after every center abruptly closed, a lone explorer enters the ruins to reconstruct what happened from the traces left behind. The abandoned architecture becomes the narrative carrier: its machinery promises social harmony while its decay suggests resistance, side effects and systemic failure.
AN INSTITUTION DESIGNED TO MOVE THE BODY FORWARD.
Repetitive concrete geometry, strict one-point perspective and cold monochrome surfaces turn the center into a mechanical sequence. Fog obscures the boundaries while exposed cables and debris reveal the system's decay.
ARRIVAL. ASSESSMENT. EXPOSURE. ADAPTATION. TRANSFORMATION.
Arrival
A narrow, symmetrical corridor draws the participant into an isolating and controlled environment.
Assessment
The body is guided through the center as if it were an object being processed by the system.
Exposure
Biased and violent imagery is paired with induced discomfort to create a conditioned aversion.
Adaptation
A final dispenser delivers personalized treatment, reducing identity to a controlled clinical procedure.
Transformation
The participant leaves with an altered response, but the work withholds whether this change represents harmony or compliance.
Final outcome
THREE SCREENS TURN VIEWING INTO SURVEILLANCE.
The screens form a low digital wall across the room. Their wide field of view makes the audience continually scan between images, creating the tension of monitoring and being monitored. Red light, smoke and sound make the fictional center physical.
Reflection
THE PROJECT QUESTIONS WHETHER REMOVING FEAR CAN CREATE HARMONY, OR WHETHER CONTROLLING EMOTION CREATES ANOTHER FORM OF SOCIAL REGULATION.
Nature’s Embrace
Responsive Installation / Biophilic Interaction / Workplace Wellness
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