There's a Blizzard in My Mind

View all images ↓

Dates

2020 - 2021
Author

Zoé Clémence

Report issue

The only measure of reality is our mind. But what happens when we can no longer trust it?

In her project, Zoé Clémence explores what it can mean for a person to experience a psychosis. One in a hundred people suffers from psychosis once in a lifetime. Typical symptoms are delusions and hallucinations that affect the way the sufferer thinks, feels and acts. In close collaboration with those affected, she probes the complexity of psychotic states. Using photography and mise en scène, she searches for ways to make the sensation of psychosis visible and tangible. Her aim is to develop a visual language relating to mental health that does not reproduce preconceptions, but focuses on people and their feelings. The project wants to sensitise the public to the topic of mental health and contribute to destigmatising mental illnesses such as psychoses.

Translation: We experience the world not as it is but as we are / So everyone has its own version of reality? / What is reality? / Can the brain understand itself? / Aren't we too complex?

Translation: Our reality consists of electrical signals / Electrically stimulable things / Movements, sensations and feelings can be triggered by electrical stimuli / The brain consists of 100 billion neurons / Neuron = nerve cell - basic structural unit of the brain / What is that, are you sick?

Translation: F20-F29 Schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders F20 Schizophrenia F21 Schizotypal disorder F22 Persistent delusional disorder F23 Acute transient psychotic disorder F24 Induced delusional disorder F25 Schizoaffective disorder F28 Other non-organic psychotic disorders F29 Unspecified non-organic psychosis

Sometimes I see things other people don't see

I feel like a cadaver decomposing and dissolving into the earth. I can feel my tissue falling apart and merging with the ground.

In a psychotic situation, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between reality and pathological experience. I doubted myself and my perception and often asked myself whether what I was seeing, hearing and feeling was actually real. With physical pain, however, I felt pure reality and it pulled me out of my fears.

In my case, taking medication meant accepting severe side effects. These included trembling, drooling and gaining weight. I was very ashamed of this and under no circumstances did I want those around me to see me like this. I realised that I needed help and was willing to take medication, but I also wanted to live a normal and healthy life.

The voice tells me to lie down in bed and press my face into the pillow. Death again; I am in danger of suffocating and cannot move.

My body is evaporating. The microparticles disperse into the atmosphere. I enter space, I enter nirvana. But the voice in my mind whispers that it is not yet time to leave the earth.