Over The Deep End, 2023
In 2021, I suffered from panic attacks for seven months before a female doctor identified the cause as hormonal. Over the Deep End explores my experience of panic disorder: the dread of attacks; the looping pattern of ambulance rides, emergency rooms, and hospital beds; the fear and pain of being separated from my son. My life began to fracture in ways that surfaced childhood memories of my own mother’s mental health hospitalizations.
I tried to arm myself with an intellectual understanding of how panic operates chemically in the body. That knowledge was rendered useless the instant adrenaline and cortisol flooded my bloodstream. With my rational brain essentially offline, I could only ride out waves of unspeakable horror as each attack built to its crescendo, peaked, subsided, and returned.
In a liminal state of insomnia and terror, time was no longer sorted into day and night. I existed in a kind of dream, at the mercy of a dehumanizing healthcare system. It was a sinking, a drowning - a truly wild grasping to hold on to my very self.
certain things, 2001
certain things, 2001
Anxiety and disorientation increase as technology is used to fine-tune personality. The gulf widens between a mother and daughter struggling to understand medicated female identity.
Screenings:
Women in the Director’s Chair, Chicago, IL
Negation and Consumption, Ocularis at Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn, NY
Den Haag Film and Video Festival, the Netherlands
Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival, Victoria, BC
Art in General Video Marathon, New York, NY
International Shortcut Festival, Monterrey, Mexico
Z Film Festival, Chicago, IL
Periscope, Coolidge Corner Theater, Boston Cyberarts Festival, Boston, MA
missing visceral, 1998 (excerpt)
missing visceral, 1998 (excerpt)
Screenings
Short Films About Female Identity, Spitting Image at Washington Street Art Center, Boston, MA
Video Now, Hong Kong Independent Short Film & Video Awards
Faultlines in the Psyche, 7th Annual New York Video Festival at Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC
Works in progress, sketches, ideas, 2021-2023
just because (work in progress)
Trying to make sense of my experience of panic disorder. Might work some of this into a longer piece.
Je t’aime Mama (work in progress, bad/low sound mix)
It is scary to feel lost, but it is scarier to feel lost when you are a parent. You are supposed to be doing the leading. I want to let my son believe that everything is going to be okay. But I also want to show my son that there are ways to navigate difficult things. I want him to see that I asked for help, and I took care of myself, and I am better. I want him to see how we can be strong for ourselves.
It is hard to be divorced. On “transition days,” he begs for extra hours, refuses to pack his bag. It is hard for me to say goodbye to him, every single time. The hugging just inside his dad’s front door, in my old front hall. Hugging, standing on the purple rug I got at a flea market. I left even my favorite things there, because everything was changing for him. I wanted to the leave the rooms the same. Turning away at the door that used to be mine, ours. Hearing his “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Sometimes he opens the door after me, calling out as many times as he can until I’m in the car, closing my door.
It’s the doors. It’s the worst at the doors.
He’s getting through it.
I am going to get him through it.
Inside (work in progress) Just sketching out some ideas here.
emergency (work in progress)
During seven months of panic disorder, I was in and out of hospitals, separated from my son.
Transcranial (work in progress)
I had a very tough time in 2020 and 2021. I had an episode of Major Depression, was diagnosed with an Eating Disorder, and developed Panic Disorder. This is how it started: after changing anti-depressants twice, I finally gave in to my psychiatrist and I took a medical leave from work to undergo a series of daily Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) treatments. Because I’d had a serious concussion as a child, I was required to have an MRI before starting TMS. I use MRI Imaging sounds in the video above. More on my “consecutive disturbances” here.