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The Pieces of Mind Madifesto:

Defining ourselves outside convention, we see our condition as a dangerous gift to be cultivated and taken care of rather than as a disease or disorder needing to be "cured" or "eliminated." We have the ability to fly to places of great vision and creativity, but like the mythical boy Icarus, we also have the potential to fly dangerously close to the sun—into realms of delusion and psychosis—and crash in a blaze of fire and confusion. We understand that we are members of a group that has been persecuted throughout history, but has also been responsible for some its most brilliant creations. And we are proud.
As a part of our effort to radically alter the way that our world views the mad and madness, this summer The Icarus Project, in partnership with the Fountain Gallery, is excited to present "Pieces of Mind: A Celebration of Dangerous Gifts." The exhibit will not only feature the works of members of Fountain House and the New York Icarus community, but of Icarus Project participants all across the country and the world. We also hope to use the opening night (July 6th) as a chance to explore other aspects of creative expression by integrating performance and audio elements. We will also use this event to familiarize the public with The Icarus Project's past, present, and future. A space will be dedicated within the gallery to showcasing artwork, flyers and literature from our three years of radically re-visioning the world of the mad.
We believe that when we learn to take care of ourselves, the intertwined threads of madness and creativity can be tools of inspiration and hope in a repressed and damaged world. The 2006 show is meant to showcase the fruits of inspiration, as well as to encourage others to develop their own dangerous gifts as a part of healing. While we celebrate our beauty, we also aim to deconstruct, debunk, and ultimately destroy mainstream conceptions of what it means to be "mentally ill."
As members of the Icarus Project, we rejoice in the artistic blossoms that emerge from the fertile grounds of our madness. We see art and all other forms of creative expression as not only a method of healing but also a fundamental means by which we can dismantle the parts of our societies that to us, seem to be truly "insane." We are often told by those "sane" people around us that our actions, speech, thoughts, or even our identities are inappropriate to the situations in which we find ourselves. Some of our psychiatrists measure our progress by the degree to which we adhere to societal norms of proper behaviour. We at Icarus are tired of being told to get in line, to shape up, to buck up, to get a job, to just find a way to fit in already. To us, what is truly inappropriate is to fall in with the currents of the mainstream when that river has so clearly gone off course, is muddied and choking on the dust of the life unexamined, the life unliberated, the life unexpressed. With this show, and in all of our work, we are attempting to filter out these clouds of oppression, conformity and alienation to reveal our radical visions of what the world could become.
And so it is as a part of this process of cultural transformation that we invite you to join us, as we revel in "Pieces of Mind: A Celebration of Dangerous Gifts."