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Bill lives with another older, male service user called Dan in a two-bedroomed, council- owned bungalow. As discussed he has a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia but rarely talks about this although he did disclose during an interview that he hears voices and has periods of disassociation (it is during these periods that Bill is normally picked up by the Police and detained under Section). Bill has lived in this property for a number of years now and shares the property with Dan. Bill describes himself as the ‘carer’ within their relationship and has often discussed how he undertakes the majority of the domestic chores because Dan is generally too psychologically unwell to share these tasks.

If we look at the following image Bill has presented where he is discussing one of his main hobbies, which is drawing.

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“I prefer to sketch more than paint but um I do, do some watercolours and it’s usually of animals or wildlife or people’s pets or whatever you know what I mean so I’m usually using pencils and just sketching really (3) but it’s good, it helps me to chill out (1) a bit anyway”

Within this image, on first glance it looks like Bill was currently drawing at the time this was shot. We have a drawing, a selection of pencils in two boxes, a pencil case, an eraser and two pencils indicating the production of art. Bill may be presenting here a kind of ‘snapshot in time’, of just having stopped drawing an image but there is a sense of ordering and anchoring of space here (Thrift, 2004b). Certain items are presented at certain angles, the box of pencils on the left, the two pencils on the table and the eraser, are all tilted towards the left hand side of the photograph. These positions jostle with the more vertical positioning of the other box of pencils and the slight slanting of his drawing.

The two pencils, for example, are adjacent to each other, pointing in the same way these two items are spatially ordered. This is an artistic visual production of the undertaking of artistic endeavours. Culturally, the landscapes of creating art can be bound up with assumptions of a lack of containment, so as not to impede upon the flows of creativity. The artist can be continuously in the process of throwing off the constraints of everyday life by blocking out the forces of the exterior world. In this picture, Bill gives the impression of momentarily breaking away from his creative pursuits to take this photograph. There is a sense of rhythm here created by the arrangement of objects but there is also a sense of a purposeful framing and ordering of materiality. From my own interpretation, this visual image has been through

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the processes of; “developing, editing and selection” (Hurdley, 2007b, p. 354). This suggests not so much a break in his drawing but more so of a cultural display of appropriate materials, arranged and composed to suggest that this photograph seeks to suggest elements of

continuous production (Knoblauch, 2008). In this way, Bill has drawn from his own experiences (both somatic and those psychologically embedded) of practices habituated within the creation and production of art (Wise, 2000; Tucker, 2010a). He is performing this process of habit here by replicating a scene of performance and movement connected within this particular set of processes.

Perhaps the ordering and arrangement within this photograph may be visual evidence of his spatial production of self-identity here. Bill is not an idle service user who is solely reliant upon psychiatric medication and therapies alone he is somebody who utilises his engagement with art to help to relax him. Bill’s filtering and placement of objects here can relate to the wider cultural images of the production art as he displays all the tools necessary to enable him to sketch (Cwerner & Metcalfe, 2003; Thrift, 2004a). He doesn’t just show the finished or partly finished drawing but draws attention to the process as well. Maybe Bill is visually presenting himself as somebody who resides outside of the cultural assumptions of mental health distress, he has some order in his life and this is punctuated by the neatly arranged composition of his photograph. In this way, there are no visual signs of poor social

functioning within this particular snapshot (Bijl & Ravelli, 2000; Cwerner & Metcalfe, 2003).

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“It’s Sunday today and um I thought I’d show you part of my book

collection…I collect H.E. Bates’ First Editions and um today I’ve been down to the car boot sale and I’ve been well enough now, I’ve got a bus pass I’m much more able to get about and um if I hadn’t got that bus pass I’d be more or less getting on towards housebound and it’s been very difficult to do these things”

Again, we have an image of order and system where the books are both displayed and contained within a receptacle specifically designed to house books. This is an image which conforms to the wider cultural assumptions of ordering items and is therefore a symbolic use of space where Bill can reinforce his own sense of social order and moral performance within the home (Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton, 1981; Ruby, 2005). The books are neatly arranged and they are all perfectly upright which is largely due to Bill having enough books to ensure that they all stand and display in the same vertical trajectory (as opposed to a half full bookshelf, where some books may lean one way or another). Here Bill has packed out and closed this space as a way of executing his own performance, of an avid reader, with the hierarchal display of his books (Baudrillard, 2005).

What is interesting here is Bill’s presentation of differentiation from the psychiatric

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diagnosis of schizophrenia (Barch, 2003; Bentall & Fernyhough, 2008). This difference is illustrated by drawing attention to his hobby of collecting books authored by ‘H.E.Bates’ which is punctuated further when he advises he collects ‘First Editions’. Not only does Bill read and engage with a notable literary writer but he also collects the much prized first editions, there is a series of differentiations here with a focus on conspicuous consumption (Woodward, 2001, 2007). Bill’s performance here is not one imbued within the dominant psychiatric assumptions of paranoid schizophrenia because he has higher levels of cognitive dexterity than those others who share the same group behavioural characteristics of this particular diagnosis (Werlen, 1993).

Bill’s move away from psychological forms of distress is reiterated further when he discusses how he obtains his books by attending car boot sales which is now easier for him to undertake as he has a bus pass. Here, Bill is placing the focus on his physical impairments as opposed to his psychiatric diagnosis. It is the physical aspects of his life which impact upon his movements and performance when acquiring books. Consequently, this is an area of his life which has little association with his self-identity of service user, other than Bill is an

aspirational service user which he visually and verbally displays by the use of his version of status symbols to reinforce these points further. As with Bill’s photograph of his artwork we are again with a visual a sense of ordering and compartmentalisation to inform the viewer that his home space is instilled within the discursive practices of storage (Cwerner & Metcalfe, 2003).

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“I collect old Northamptonshire postcards and old tins (not shown in entirety within the footage) and as I said books and um (2) I’m a bit mad on books and things but um well it helps me to chill out…and I read a lot as well and um eh I go to the local flea markets and um jumble sales if I can get there and if I’m able to do it physically”

In this particular shot, Bill frames his possessions in an artistic way in terms of interior design. These particular objects have been placed very specifically for viewing using different angles and hierarchal positioning on the table. Particularly, in this shot we have a sense of Rose’s (2007) concept of ‘audiencing’. Bill is conveying a social message here by demonstrating an artistic ability in producing a manicured picture which can then articulate his own production of social meanings of order and containment (Pink, 2003). Here, Bill has taken time to arrange a series of objects this has required an amount of conscious thought and physical effort.

Centrally, a page of the book lays open displaying a coloured picture of a woman with two children. The image here is one imbued within antiquity as this does not seem to be a

contemporary piece of work. This preference for aged items is reinforced when Bill discusses how he collects old postcards of Northamptonshire scenes. What is interesting is how Bill both displays and keeps these postcards. Contained within the appropriate apparatus of a photograph album Bill has opened the album to provide a brief glimpse of his collection.

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This is a tidy and ordered collection rather than having postcards being kept in boxes or strewn around the house for example. Here he has become part of the consumerist society who purchase items for holding and display purposes only to possibly illustrate identities of ‘normative’ social functioning (Gullestad, 2001; Miller, 2001).

Finally, we are presented with an image of another book titled; ‘Book Collecting’. The use of this particular object may be Bill’s way of kind of anchoring his social identity of avid book reader. He not only reads lots of books but he also has a book on collecting books. Again there is a series of differentiations here (much like the purchasing of H.E. Bates First

Editions) as Bill goes further than many by taking his pleasurable time of reading to another level. He also discusses how reading; “helps me to chill out”. In this way, these objects perform a psychological function as they are not there purely for the sake of reading or flicking through postcards. What they do is become part of his process of seeking respite perhaps from the chaos of the outside world, they provide an anchor to stabilise his interior space (Wise, 2000).

The arrangement within this photograph can be seen as somewhat staged and sterile but it can also be viewed as having the rhythm of movement, flow and change. As discussed, before Bill does not embody his diagnosis of ‘paranoid schizophrenia’ , it may be a part of his own introspective psyche but outwardly Bill is a service user with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder who has some difficulties in physically getting out and about. The spatialised production of his home is not seemingly clogged up with blockages as everything seems to have a place – there is a pattern of coherence here. However, it would be interesting to see if the rest of the house was kept in the same manner, or if Bill has home spaces where items are left to gather dust (Cwerner & Metcalfe, 2003). This kind of ordering and containment might well go some way to destabilise and dissipate the wider psychiatric and cultural assumptions surrounding schizophrenia as a diagnosis of ‘unpredictability’, ‘delusion’ and ‘irrationality’. In this way, the social visibility of Bill’s objects are not merely static artefacts for decorative purposes only but are inter-relational within his own production of home space. They form an integral component within his process of ‘becoming-other’, of ‘becoming-rational-moral-service user’.

Bill’s visual images of tidiness and arrangement do not stop within the interior of his home space but are also evident in his garden space too. Consider the following photographs and narratives, where Bill displays the fruits of his labours in his garden;

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“I enjoy my gardening um but um I’ve not been so physically able as I usually am and these are the last of the tomatoes which in fact have been grown in the greenhouse and we’ve had pounds and pounds of them and not to mention the runner beans um and eh the French beans and the spuds and everything else from the garden and it’s been a really good year for us that way”

In this photograph, Bill displays his crop of unripe tomatoes, again these items are arranged in an appropriate manner. They are either boxed in containers or perched upon plastic cups but they are not arranged in a haphazard way. These tomatoes are unripe which can visibly indicate that Bill is an active part of the production process of growing vegetables. His input into the process here is vital to ensure that he can display a visible reminder that Bill is a productive service user. Bill also reinforces his engagement with conspicous consumerism and functionality by drawing attention to the fact that he grew his tomatoes in a greenhouse, a building specifically designed to procure all types of vegetation – his garden is one

conforming to a positive projection of life (Lefebvre, 1999).

Apart from the arrangement of this shot, we also have strong elements of production here, of being self-sufficient at some level, as not being too dependent on the state or psychiatric services for example. Bill elaborates on his expertise within the garden by discussing the other vegetables he has grown during the season, the beans, the French beans and the

potatoes. Essentially, this is a particular shot of self-production, of not being idle or reliant on others for providing food – Bill is more than capable of growing some of his own food. This

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sense of productivity is set against a backdrop of physical impairment; “I’ve not been so physically able as I usually am”. Even though Bill feels less able to tend and care for his garden, he still carries on and manages to overcome the physical difficulties he faces. There is no mention of the psychological here as maybe for Bill, it is the visibility and labour of yielding crops within his garden which may provide an element of stability rather than the relaxing cultural assumptions imbued within such spaces.

Overall, Bill’s set of visual images are bound up with the dominant cultural assumptions of the positive elements of storage and the negative componentns of clutter. Within his footage together with his narratives, Bill refers to habituation, of reading, collecting postcards, drawing and growing vegetables to illustrate the constitutent processes which form his transformation. Namely, that of ‘becoming-less-psychologically-disturbed-than-most- paranoid-schizophrenics’. Thus, his spatialised production is anchored and circumscribed around the acts of creation and manufacture, which he elaborates by focusing on certain objects within his home space. Bill is not your average paranoid schizophrenic, Bill is a service user who has the necessary cognitive capacities and self-regulatory behaviours to conform to the cultural notions of aspiration within home spaces. Consequently, through his spatialised production, Bill is always ‘becoming-other’.