‘Asylum’ is an immersive performance piece which recounts my personal experience of lockdown. I use my own body, dressed in hospital pyjamas, and ensnared in plastic tubing as a canvas onto which a video piece created out of found news broadcast footage is projected. This piece represents my struggle with mental health particularly during the Covid19 crisis where my anxiety and depression have been exacerbated by isolation and overreliance on alarmist news media. The plastic tubing is inspired by imagery of ICU wards, which would’ve previously appeared alien to the public but has now become an everyday occurrence in the media due to the pandemic.

I wanted to express the physical sensations associated with depression and anxiety. The life support imagery represents the debilitating, exhausting experience of depression whereby I feel as though I must consciously sustain my organs and every part of my body in order to stay alive. The tubing wrapped around my chest and the mask constricting my breathing refers to the constricting, breathless sensations caused by anxiety. The tubing tangled around my limbs, tying me to the chair and the wall express the limits to freedom and independence, brought about by lockdown restrictions but also my own internal struggle with anxiety.

The video is constructed out of found footage of various news broadcasts from key points during the progression of the pandemic, which I remember watching at the time. The footage cuts quickly between the different videos and this is accompanied by a chaotic cacophony of audio tracks layered on top of each other. Only one audio is decipherable above the rest. This is interspersed by periods of harsh white light accompanied by the relatively calm, quiet noise of breathing and the beeping of a heart monitor which mirrors the background noise of an ICU ward. I wanted to allude to the idea that my face is being lit up by the light from a screen in front it. this was an attempt to represent the overwhelming affect of media exposure during this time, and how it felt unavoidable due to the abundance of screens and devices surrounding us at all times.

It was important to me that this performance occurred in my own home surrounded by the objects and furniture that I am familiar with. This was the only way to properly express the conceptual narrative as this is the space that I have been trapped in for the better part of a year and is the setting where I have actually been experiencing these feelings. I wanted the performance to evoke these sensations in me and mirror the experience of lockdown. The mask and tubing did actually constrict my breathing and the claustrophobic effect of being tied up in this way did induce anxiety. The news clips that I used are ones that I vividly remember watching live at the time so listening to them allows me to relive these emotions. I designed the piece to incorporate the furniture items that I knew we owned and had this particular area of my home in mind when planning it due to the blank, white wall space behind onto which I could project my video.

I feel this work fits into the theme of alienation as it aesthetically resembles sci-fi imagery from movies and comics. But also on a conceptual level, mental illness makes me feel like my experiences, thoughts and feelings are freakish and ‘alien’ which in turn makes me feel alienated from wider society, this too has been exacerbated by lockdown isolation and being unable to touch base with another human and communicate on a non-superficial level.