Artist - Lucy Panesar - Felicity Mukherjee

Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project: Summer 2011

Felicity Mukherjee was a market research expert and fictional corporate persona I adopted for live art works between 2007-2011. I last appeared as Felicity to direct The Academy of Youth Mythology at the Royal Festival Hall in 2011, a project funded by the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project and managed by the South London Gallery.

Circa 2008-09, Felicity conducted market research on surveillance technologies for her fictional corporation Panopti.com. This took place at Gasworks Gallery, for Speed Data Radio at Lift Festival and for Ladies Night hosted by Frog Morris at the Montague Arms.

Photo of Lucy Panesar measuring the finger of another person, with a clipboard on her lap.

Image of a pie chat that displays information on people's expertise in performing music.

From January to March 2008, Felicity conducted audience evaluation for Rational Rec at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club and Spitalfields Festival. In October 2008, she presented her findings as part of a Rational Rec feature on BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now show.

Photo of Lucy Panesar performing as Felicity Mukherjee. She is with some children in front of a large grid taped to the floor. She holds a megaphone and points to a display board.

Photo of Felicity's assistant, using chalk to trace the movement of people moving across the floor grid.

The Motivation Game was interactive personality questionnaire conducted by Felicity at the South London Gallery 2008 summer festival. The game helped participants recognise their potential for moral, social and economic transformation, inspired by Milton Bradley’s ‘Game of Life’ and Southwark’s Victorian historical status as ‘The City of Transformations’.

Photo of a festival goer interacting with the 'diagnostic machine', with other people standing around.

Photo of Felicity's assistant operating the machine from inside with a microphone.

On entry to BonkersFest on Saturday 19th July 2008, visitors were asked to proceed directly to the Diagnostic Evaluation Machine to receive a 'normality diagnosis' and 'de-normalisation zone referral'. I designed and produced the machine in collaboration with Richard Cobelli. It was operated by Felicity Mukherjee and assistants.

Photo of Lucy Panesar as Felicity Mukherjee, interviewing a festival goer, holding a clipboard.

Photo of festival goer engaging with one of Felicity's assistants. They are looking down at images on a table.

On Saturday 1st September 2007, Felicity and her team of assistants conducted a market research exercise for BonkersFest on tour at Liberty, a disability awareness festival in Trafalgar Square. In the exercise festival goers contributed to the effective marketing of a fictional new psychotherapeutic treatment that assists the process of ‘de-normalisation’.

Photo of a small vibrator in a plastic zip-lock bag on top of a white, folder towel. There is a printed label attached to the bag.

Good Vibrations was a faux market research exercise conducted by Felicity and assistants to help develop marketing for an electro-therapeutic device (vibrator) for hysteria and other female stress related disorders. It was a live art work commissioned by The Live Art Development Agency for East End Collaborations on 6th May 2007 and the South London Gallery for BonkersFest on 2nd June 2007.

Photo of four people sat down. Left to right: Dan Gretton, Sheila Ghelani, Alistair Hopwood and Lucy as Felicity Mukherjee

In 2007, I worked with Arts Catalyst and Scan to hold a seminar on corporate social responsibility and the role artists and activists play in 'identity correction' and interrogating the activities of big business, addressing questions such as: Can business ever balance public good with corporate wealth? How do corporations use concepts of 'healthy', 'normal, 'good for us' to market pharmaceutical therapies? How do artists critique and challenge the process of big-business PR?

Speakers included Dan Gretton from www.platformlondon.org, Felicity Mukherjee from NFHC International Inc (played by me), Alasdair Hopwood from www.withyou.co.uk, social anthropologist David Leitner from Cambridge, and artist Lucy Panesar (me - played by performance artist Sheila Ghelani).

Screenshot of an article in Circa Magazine about the Seminar on Misinformation

Felicity Mukherjee first appeared on Saturday 27th January 2007 at a 'Seminar on Misinformation' at the University of Cork, organised by artist Niamh Lawlor. Felicity gave a unique presentation on 'Information in the Corporate Sector', before offering valuable insights into '½ Smile' therapy, offered by her fictional corporation NFHC International. The seminar and Felicity's presentation was reviewed by Treasa O'Brien for Circa magazine.