Terminal Uniqueness is a term we discovered from USA recovery circles. It can also be called “personal exceptionalism”. We also quite like deciding what it means ourselves.
Before the pandemic, our plan was to work with artists in recovery to create a workshop programme that would explore how we might improve our mental health collectively and to challenge an individualist culture. This would have meant working with groups in Brighton and across England.
Then in March we changed our plans and set up a Facebook group Terminal Uniqueness Fun Things to do at Home and Share where through the lockdowns we grew to over 800 member internationally and encouraged people to send in videos telling us about the coloured objects in their homes.
We then did two rounds of artistic commissions with twenty people in addiction and mental health recovery who created brand new pieces of art in response to the material on the group. We showed these in a series of watch parties on our group.
You can see some of this work in the videos below:
In the second lockdown after holding a few live sessions we began to explore the theme of terminal uniqueness further through creating terminally unique carrots. In 2021 we plan to continue the project in some form!
