SOFT
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| Soft Cell (source)
‘He’s headed for the rubber room
—The Rubber Room, Porter Wagoner In 1972, the late American country singer Porter Wagoner, wrote of his own experience in a rubber room, an American term for a soft cell, which came into existence in 1839. Dr John Connolly, an employee of Hanwell Asylum, England, devised a means to end the use of mechanical restraint within psychiatry with the introduction of cushion-lined, soundproof cells where patients could be confined. The hard plastered wall–the familiar boundary that defines and protects our vicinit–begs to be left alone, with the exception of an occasional punctuation by a light-switch or socket. The padded wall, on the other hand, invites interaction. From a mere touch to the violent banging of a skull, the soft wall is ultimately undisturbed by the patient and the patient unharmed by the wall. Arguably, softness is reminiscent of amicable matters–a kitten, a cloud, a rabbit’s tail. However, the padded cell presents an instance where soft associations are transformed into aggressive ones. The soft cell becomes even more unnerving than its hard alternative. Although the softness of the interior serves the good-natured purpose of defending the wall from the occupier and the occupier from the wall, the padded chamber potentially evokes emotions that we deeply fear. It may serve as a reminder of permanent confinement and the frightening prospect of anticipated violence, brutal suppression by the suffocation of eternal seclusion and the paralysis of a straight jacket. It is the room’s innocent characteristics that evoke these fears. Is it more frightening, then, that popular methods of restraint have subsequently shifted from the manipulation of a patient’s physical boundaries to his mental ones? The softness of the padded cell is replaced by the gentle grade of sedation.
Joy Natapa Sriyuksiri
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Pouring a Quilted Wall, Kenzo Unno (source)
Fabric forming tends to produce inflated pillowy forms. The flexibility of the mold reveals the malleable moments in the life of the material. As the mold holds the material, restraints act with force to tame the mass as it bulges. In this instance, mold and material work together to create form, resulting in the hardened appearance of softness.
Erandi de Silva
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One Response to “SOFT”
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I like this juxtaposition. We both wrote about subverting the language of comfort. Yourself through the the investigation of soft entrapments and myself through the entrapment of softness.