The Unhappiness Repairer

“Happiness today is used as a mechanism to frustrate human desires, to make people reach for some future promised bliss and accept the present system of societal and economic rules. The only way to be happy is to be completely independent of the context you are in,” says Silvia Neretti. Her thesis explores the relationship between happiness, psychotherapy and design, asking: would it be possible to design happiness? Commenting on current psychotherapy practices and taking design as a tool to rebuild the self, Silvia has designed a collective practice. It draws on ethnopsychiatry and shamanism to trigger a freeing of the self, a reliance on our capacities to influence our context according to our needs, to reach a form of happiness that can be trained: a passion for a complex, meaningful and engaged life. Silvia Neretti presents herself as a pop-up saboteur-designer, a collector of wisdom who teaches happiness as a rebellious act. — Keep an Eye Grant Nominee, Gijs Bakker Award Nominee