MENTAL

by the Vacuum Cleaner

Vårscenefest 2016

The Metropolitan Police call him a Domestic Extremist. The NHS have described him as ‘highly disturbed’ and labelled him with Borderline Personality Disorder. ‘A real and present threat to the safe running of our lawful business’ is how E.ON described him at the Royal Courts of Justice.

He prefers the term Mental.

After 14 years of being an outlaw and inpatient, artist activist ‘the vacuum cleaner’ presents an autobiographical performance told through his psychiatric records, police intelligence files and corporate injunctions collected through the Data Protection Act.

The Vacuum Cleaner (a.k.a. James Leadbitter) started his autobiographical project Mental in 2013 and it is an ongoing work today. After volunteering to have his life investigated as part of a dispatches episode on Private Detectives and breaches of the Data Protection Act, he was taken aback by how much of his life was found in records and how much it affected him. This lead him on a personal exploration of what information there was out there about his past. What did it say? And if it told a story.

The piece involves him sharing information from his psychiatric records, police intelligence files and corporate injunctions collected through the Data Protection Act and reflecting on the information with his personal experiences and views. It is set to a ‘disco soundtrack’ and is performed as a live event from his bedroom or other bedrooms he stays in when internationally touring.

For this performance during the Tromsø Spring Theater Festival, Small Projects is transformed into The Vacuum Cleaner’s own bedroom.