PANIC
communicating the intangible and ephemeral, phenomenological experience of having a panic attack through multiple art interventions.
"PANIC" demonstrates a purging emotional ghosts by emphasizing my own introspective psychological experience through drawing, painting, poetry, performance and audio and visual arts. The series of artistic works demonstrates the intrusive nature of vivid and involuntary recurrent memory and the sudden, usually overwhelming effects of mentally re-experiencing elements of a past experience.
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Experiencing trauma can cause emotional information systems to fail and memory associations to skew, often increasing fear as an emotional default. After trauma takes hold, panic moves in to overwhelm the individual with fear without providing an understanding of the context for these emotions. Events are defined not by their intensity, but by an individuals capacity to adequately respond to them.
This series uses a number of mediums to highlight the intangible and ephemeral experience of mastering internal emotional distress. Facing my traumatic history, I use my artistic practice to confront my demons, accept my past and overcome the consequences of those experiences. Highlighting psychological phenomenons, cognitive biases and defence mechanisms, my artwork in "Panic" uses a variety of aesthetics, artistic techniques and scientific knowledge to create a fully developed, holistic and conceptually visualized understanding of experiencing a panic attack.
"She would lay, limb over limb, on top of his body and breathe. With her head to his chest and her ear to his inner music, she could feel the intensity of endorphin repair from every inch of exposed skin touching the other. No need for outside entertainment, she would run her fingers on top of his skin, not for his sensation, but for hers. Two spiritual vessels exchanging pieces of energy through permeable selves, recharged and renewed, entangled with another.
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No sense of time, yet every conscious moment memorized. These things aren’t matter they’re energies and his became her universe. She knitted hers up in his and he sowed his into hers, ensuring that knots were tied up all along the way. His eyes glowed of comfort and infinity. She left her fears within him and he left what was left of him, back into her. He became her battery, holding in him half of her, the further she got away from him, the harder it was to breathe."
