The Space In-Between

In a two-channel installation with opposing screens, offering two sides of the same story, the homeless man Herlat talks with psychoanalyst Françoise. Rather than a doctor with authority and a helpless patient, the psychoanalytic situation here brings two people together who need each other. The analyst recognises subtle aspects in the behavior and words, gestures and moods of her patient; this could have been her situation. The patient is sensitive to such recognitions - even when these remain silent; it empowers him. It is when he feels the empathy coming towards him that he can, perhaps, make a step forwards, in that fragile space in-between.
In this work, in ten screen minutes, we see the totally disoriented man acquire insight in what has moved him to give up his home and live on the street: traumas that go back to earlier generations, when the war savaged his parents’ country, as well as his own lonely childhood as an “ersatz Kind” whose older siblings had died before his birth. Both trauma-generating events come from before his life began.

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The two opposing screens each present one side of the analytic situation; the edges of that space between the two parties. The viewer is invited to take a seat, in an armchair quite like the one of the analyst’s office. He or she can choose a side to watch and listen to, and thus occupies the other one, from which the view and the audio experience emanate. But another choice suggest reflection on the situation of viewing itself. The space, loosely indicated by a rug, is somewhat forbidding: once the viewer engages with the situation, she becomes sensitive to the performative quality of the space itself. It is in that space that the affects of empathy and despair, identification and anger, must freely float between the two characters. Only on the condition of that togetherness in a communicative space will Herlat be able to face it. Where does that leave the viewer? rather than intruding upon the space, viewers will feel they can go as close as possible without entering. Between fiction and reality there is a space for identification; yet the boundary must not be crossed. This is a reluctance viewers are free to ignore, but usually, such intrusions do not happen. For, the moment of considering is drives the nature of the act of viewing home.
With Françoise Davoine as the psychoanalyst, Thomas Germaine as the patient Herlat

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Sissi’s Treatment

Sissi-as-patient: for over a decade, Sissi has been confined to a psychiatric hospital. Victim of an abusive father and a distant mother who turned the other way, Sissi is severely traumatised, and seems “mad”.
In the interaction with an analyst she sometimes loathes, sometimes loves as if she were her mother, we see the mood swings and the recollections that near the surface of her awareness, but not quite. Se needs to dare face it. Sissi-as-image: the character nurtures the fantasy that she is, or is like, her namesake the empress of Austria-Hungary. She enacts the regal status of her projected self-image in gestures and facial expression, tone and word choice. The video image supports her in her desperate search for dignity, by allowing her to dress beyond her means. Every session, she appears in a new fancy outfit, new hairdo, different jewelry.
For the viewer, this fantasy image appeals to a wish to be a witness. And a witness is, precisely, what Sissi never had; no one would believe her. This raises the question: if trauma comes from such utter isolation, can witnessing help? Thus, the viewer is compelled to face the performative quality of the moving image - moving indeed.
With Marja Skaffari as Sissi, Marjo Vuorela as her analyst; music: John Morton and Leticia Bal

 

Watching the News

Visitors to this exhibition find it completely normal to watch the screens and absorb the stories played out before them. But then, one screen shows the figures doing precisely that. Two mad patients, on in the half-way house in Finland, one in the hospital in Paris, demonstrate the maddening effect of horror. They watch, go mad, watch more, go madder.
This single-channel video aims to query the alleged harmlessness of images. Without answering affirmatively, it raises the question: what is looking, and how does it affect you?
The woman on Seili theatrically imitates the madman on the screen. The man in Paris is paralysed. Between a raving lunatic and a zombie, it becomes hard to maintain that, simply because statistics are lacking, looking doesn’t do anything. Such negations provoke the isolation of those who, sensitised to horror because of their own experiences, cannot watch without being driven into the corner of madness. And there, it is silent, like a tomb.
With Kristina Bill as Gelsomina, Ihab Saloul as Aziz

 

Office Hours

Three pedestals with monitors create a space where one can roam, go from screen to screen, and take up headphones. Numerous patients, all confined, all alone together, attempt to communicate with the analyst. They cannot speak, or if they can, they cannot remember; and if they can, they cannot disentangle the real from the fiction. A bit like all of us.
One patient is ready to go out, return home and retrieve her children. How sane is she? It remains a fragile line, the one that separates the sane from the mad. One patient can only communicate through reciting poetry; one can only speed-talk; one cannot talk beyond the lullaby she sings for the analyst to express her affection. This happens after the analyst has said the simplest thing: “Me, too, I would like to be able to cry.”
With Françoise Davoine as psychoanalyst, Leticia Bal as Musical Nurse, Dominic van den Boogerd as the director of the hospital; and the patients: Paulina Aroch Fugellie, Ania Dalecki, Marlene Dumas, Roben Mitchell van den Dungen Bille, Kelly Ehrencron, Pitt de Grooth, Catherine Lord, Noa Roei, Ihab Saloul. Music: Leticia Bal
With thanks to De Ateliers, Amsterdam

 

Sissi Outside

Eventually, all patients manage to “go out”. Not that they are ready to reintegrate society, but at least they can choose to spend time somewhere else than in the hospital. Sissi performs seemingly meaningless acts on the hospital grounds, on the island. Perhaps it makes her feel free. But how free can one be on an island, where the one large building, the hospital looms side by side with the church?
When Sissi quietly walks into the water, fully dressed, the viewer holds her breath. Is she re-enacting Ophelia, or other heroines of Western literature who end their lives in water? The looped video will soon reassure us. But the slight moment of doubt and disquiet is enough to make us aware of the threat of impending doom.
With Marja Skaffari as Sissi. With thanks to the Archipelago Indtitute, University of Turku

 

Landscapes of Madness

Impending doom is tied up with past doom. Landscapes are not just beautiful remnants of nature. The land has a history. It is the territory of competitions, wars, and other forms of violence. This video offers the ultimate demise of innocence. If the bare hills in Southern Spain, the cloudy beach in the Netherlands, and the watery scenery of the Finnish archipelago cannot erase the traces of the assaults on human dignity that took place there, we are forever bound to the land by the history that came before us. This is what makes human life rich, and humans responsible, even if not guilty, of the consequences of the past.
Landscapes from Seili Island, Finland; Basel city, Switzerland; Bullas, Murcia, Spain; Auxois, France; Hoek van Holland, the Netherlands. With thanks to Alberto Montoya Hernandez for leding us the title.