fallout, a photo and video document, comments on the psychosis and addiction that runs in our family. It is also the record of my negotiation with an ordeal that begins in the Fall of 2004.
During the project my sister Katie attempts to quit methamphetamine, enters treatment in the Maricopa County Psychiatric Recovery Center, and then returns home. Simultaneously my mother is hospitalized for stress related illness. Dennis, my mom’s boyfriend, is jailed for assault with a deadly weapon, his third felony charge. Ashley, my niece (Katie’s 13 year old daughter,) enrolls in a new grade school, her fourth in as many years.
I enter counseling, and choose image making to extend and order my consciousness.
In each instance, however indirect, the cause is methamphetamine and our inability to cope with its effects. Extended use of the drug causes disorienting fusion of violence and psychosis, and in its absence, lethargy. When Katie uses, she creates panic and anger: when she uses, our home is in total disarray.
The video, entitled Methamphetamine Trifecta, explores trauma directly. Its first section animates text, stills, and found visuals over a series of desperate phone messages. The second part shows Katie after treatment: she fields a violent phone call, engages my camera, and negotiates with her daughter at the same time. The third section documents our family’s reaction when Ashley produces a meth pipe from her mom’s purse. Each part is separated by roughly nine months. The last shot comes on February 5, 2006, my mom’s 61st birthday.
The photographs result from failed efforts to manage the situation. Some, taken during moments of escape, illustrate a need for diversion. I now understand these as visions of helplessness, or perhaps attempts to find or make order within cacophony. Others are more blunt, direct, nervous– as if snapped by someone considering fight or flight.
In a gallery setting two types of narrative combine for specific effect: The photographs raise questions without providing answers. The video, its graphics and sound, provide alarming and brutal response. Viewers experience a context which carefully disassembles itself through disillusioned compositions and evocation of the sublime.
A metha-psychotic-nuclear blast and its devastating, long lasting, fallout.
During the project my sister Katie attempts to quit methamphetamine, enters treatment in the Maricopa County Psychiatric Recovery Center, and then returns home. Simultaneously my mother is hospitalized for stress related illness. Dennis, my mom’s boyfriend, is jailed for assault with a deadly weapon, his third felony charge. Ashley, my niece (Katie’s 13 year old daughter,) enrolls in a new grade school, her fourth in as many years.
I enter counseling, and choose image making to extend and order my consciousness.
In each instance, however indirect, the cause is methamphetamine and our inability to cope with its effects. Extended use of the drug causes disorienting fusion of violence and psychosis, and in its absence, lethargy. When Katie uses, she creates panic and anger: when she uses, our home is in total disarray.
The video, entitled Methamphetamine Trifecta, explores trauma directly. Its first section animates text, stills, and found visuals over a series of desperate phone messages. The second part shows Katie after treatment: she fields a violent phone call, engages my camera, and negotiates with her daughter at the same time. The third section documents our family’s reaction when Ashley produces a meth pipe from her mom’s purse. Each part is separated by roughly nine months. The last shot comes on February 5, 2006, my mom’s 61st birthday.
The photographs result from failed efforts to manage the situation. Some, taken during moments of escape, illustrate a need for diversion. I now understand these as visions of helplessness, or perhaps attempts to find or make order within cacophony. Others are more blunt, direct, nervous– as if snapped by someone considering fight or flight.
In a gallery setting two types of narrative combine for specific effect: The photographs raise questions without providing answers. The video, its graphics and sound, provide alarming and brutal response. Viewers experience a context which carefully disassembles itself through disillusioned compositions and evocation of the sublime.
A metha-psychotic-nuclear blast and its devastating, long lasting, fallout.