Coming off the meds
2020, video, 8 minutes
Coming off the meds uses texts regarding the mental health from various contexts
(social, economic, cultural, political) and transforms them into a video
collage. The voice over and the text itself is accompanied by a large
collection of available stock footage searched under the term “mental health” –
the neoliberal idea of inclusive spaces full of white smiling people. The texts
used date from late sixties up to the late start of millenium. They illustrate the crucial ideas of mental illness, which
has proved to not be a biological concept but a political construct. The
tension between the moving images and the ongoing audio tracks is also present
in a dichotomy that exists in the contemporary image of mental health and the
focus on fixing oneself in order to fulfill already set expectations and at the
same time accepting and loving ourselves the “way we are”. Texts used were written by authors such as Thomas Szasz, Susan Sontag, Melody Petersen, SPK, David Healy,
Florian Cramer.