Hallucinations Part. 1, 2017
Video
Testimonial C
I never had any vision problems before. However, one day Charles Bonnet Syndrome suddenly appeared. I remember eating strawberries and cherries and not knowing if I was really eating them. They would appear and disappear. I felt the taste and texture in my mouth, but I didn't know if I had eaten them. It keeps happening to me with different daily activities. I have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction. -Eddie, France.
Testimonial A
I didn't know I had Charles Bonnet Syndrome. On one occasion, while pouring my tea, I saw my cup move. I was aware of what had happened in front of me. This kept happening to me continuously for the next two years with different objects. - Sophie, England.
Video
This project consists of the construction of visual experiences extracted from narrative fragments compiled from the book Hallucinations (2010) by Oliver Sacks.
My objective was to explore repeating figurative images described by persons afflicted by the Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Through this artistic scene, my intention is to bring the viewer closer to a representation of hallucinations that Charles Bonnet patients experience, which they see as a film projection in real time. The images they see take place in a silent atmosphere, and they are frequently perceived as a means of contemplation. For this purpose, I created a project called Hallucinations, where we can find three pieces of video art (Testimonies A, B and C), accompanied by their respective photographs, along with several independent photographic pieces (belonging to Testimony D).
Through these media, I want to expand the viewers’ gaze to the figures, objects and scenarios, as each one tells a different narrative story. I want to capture from the focus of a third person, the visions and actions of the character who experiences them. Each work is accompanied by a brief description of the experience its representation was based on, in order to convey a greater understanding of the piece. The testimonies shown here were specifically chosen from people who met the following criteria: they were not completely blind, and they became aware of the hallucination and its associated experiences through several senses (hearing -tea water-, olfactory -flowers-, and gustatory -strawberries-). The above will allow us to explore the representation of different perceptions that surround the visualization of Charles Bonnet hallucinations. As we know, they do not faithfully represent the experiences, since every person has their own imagination and subjective interpretation and it is impossible to accurately represent the hallucinations. Therefore, they are artistic interpretations of what these sensory phenomena could look like.