Christian Chambenoit   //   Placebo

Once your mind believes, it will be able to influence your body and possibly even cure it. That’s the effect achieved by what pharmacists call PLACEBO. A pill given to you as a medicine but containing only sugar or neutral substances will have an effect on your intellect. They will tell you how great or how efficient the medicine is and you may be cured by the idea of it. The idea for PLACEBO came to me after my series of anatomical and botanical paintings. I’d made some inks which represented flowers, insects or body parts with some addition of Chinese characters used to describe acupuncture points. I was looking for acupuncture images as I was focusing on meridians and energy circulation and found acupuncture related images were quite common but paid no attention to aesthetics and were purely created for technical purposes only. I decided to photograph both the acupuncture doll I had for years, and some live models posing almost nude. Then, I composited these two images into one and printed the resulting image large. After the first exhibit of these 2 models during a solo show in Shanghai, I decided to add some actions to the prints by putting some nails into the photos. It was for plastic reasons, trying to make a photograph more realistic, more expressionist. I started with nails to express the idea of different cultures surrounding me for the past 20 years. In my culture, applying nails into a body is strongly related to pain, but during all my time in Taipei and Shanghai, I regularly visited Chinese doctors who practice acupuncture asking them to not only resolve my back pain but also headaches, insomnia or others afflictions. Chinese cultures applies needles into the body not to inflict pain but to cure it. The first nail I put into my photo was the starting point of my new works called PLACEBO. I was looking at my photographic print and was thinking about at which place, in which point I will put the first nail. The decision was laborious and took a long time as I was feeling something a bit strange… I was afraid, afraid to do something involving more than an artistic process, afraid of involving some mysterious power which could have uncontrolled consequences. I visualized African guru sculptures, witchcraft and others strange paranormal activities, and it scared me. When I finally decided to put in the nail, I almost felt afraid of hurting myself and was relieved than once the nail was in place, I neither bled nor experienced any bodily pain. This personal experience allowed me some insight into the potential power of the mind. I’m a very rational person, I believe and have faith in science, I don’t believe in the paranormal or witchcraft but I was moved. My mind almost let me believe that my action would have a physically tangible consequence. That’s the point of PLACEBO. I decide to working on something friendlier than nails but I wanted to keep the acupuncture aesthetic and technique. The points and lines on the body have something primordial, close to some original tattoos yet the position and aesthetic intimate medicine. Later on, after some talks with Mr. David Tan who bought some of my previous works, I considered amending the work with particular acupuncture needles. This conversation also brought about the idea of having the choice of where to place the needles. Suddenly everything became obvious to me, you should be able to choose the place according to your own pain or discomfort and to act as you will with an avatar. I wanted to make a self-body secure cabinet making it possible for self-acupuncture sessions. If the owner become an actor and could recall the primal ideas and energies used by ancient shamans and prehistoric hunters, this cabinet would be able to effect great actions on the body. It seems obvious than if ancient religions were efficient for a dear hunter or a rain caller they will be efficient for a modern person with sufficient concentration of mind. The cabinet or retable is a logical consequence. Once the owner plays with the PLACEBO, it will be charged with the player’s energy and will become more and more personal as a very close sensitive object. Consequentially, it is reasonable that after very personal sessions, the owner will feel a need to close it, to retain the energies and keep it away from other’s view. The PLACEBO will be then fully functional. As a contemporary artist I find interesting similarities between art and psychology. To be efficient, psychologists need to be expensive, rare, be difficult to get an appointment with and to have a particular aesthetic with special furniture such as a sofa, it’s about setting, context, mind conditioning. Once you get there, your mind tell you than after passing all these difficulties you will certainly be cured, what happens after is just magic. It returns to the animal magnetism of Doctor Mesmer or even the natural magic of Paracelsus. It was the very beginning of these modern PLACEBOS which are be able to unleash patient’s primal healing mind-body energies.