Asylum

The intent of this piece of video art was to create an environment where one doesn't know who or where they are, what is real or what is not real. I collaborated on this piece with my roommate, Bebe, a psyche major. While I would never be able to major in psychology, because it both fascinates and scares me, the two of us have had many discussions on psychology, especially on the stigmas associated with mental illness. While making this piece, I was thinking about the issues that we all face at some point in time, such as feeling like we are living multiple lives or have multiple personalities. While this video would obviously be a huge exaggeration to what most people feel, I find it interesting that many characteristics of mental illnesses are just extreme versions of characteristics that we all share from time to time (i.e. depression, anxiety, paranoia.) To me this shows that, as humans, a lot of what we go through can be traced to the chemicals in our brains and that we have a lot more in common with our neighbors than we might think. I feel that when one watches this video, a philosophical question arises: if one were truly experiencing a world like this movie (hallucinations, delusions, fear), to an extreme extent, is he/she really responsible for his/her actions?