From Generation to Generation

'From Generation to Generation' addresses issues of mental health and the psuedo-scientific theories of eugenics. The installation piece integrates historical documentation, including individual histories of institutionalisation, in a reconstructed environment of architectural and electronic surveillance. The title 'From Generation to Generation' refers to both the seperation of the 'feeble-minded' and the eugenical strategy of granting reproductive preference on the basis of race, class and 'pure intellect'. Although Robertshaw's installation employs arduous research involving records located within the British archival domains of 'Mental Health" , the related issues are by no means limited to practices of a remote past. Unfortunately, eugenicism is still prevalent in the social discourses of many advocates who are not all so obvious as the Canadian 'scientist' Phillipe Rushton. Aspects of eugenicism are present in the research, not only of blatant racists, but also "....in certain tenets of human socio-biology and insome proposals for human genetic engineering".