Participant: Who am I? What if I am not really a person?
Therapist: That’s an understandable concern
-MAPS protocol on MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
"It’s astounding the first time you realize that a stranger has a body… It means that you have a body, too." -James Baldwin
"You must not be your mother’s body" -personal notebook, 2009
Referencing Nicholas Saunder’s 1993 publication E for Ecstasy, that explores his experiences of MDMA as both a therapy and party drug, Hannah Black’s work was inspired by the use of MDMA as treatment for those with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The history of the concept of trauma is heavily tied to the military, from Freud’s early interest in shell shock cases in the First World War to modern armies’ interest in reducing the incidence of trauma among soldiers. At the same time, the concept has been used to explain and treat the psychological harm caused by other disorienting and painful events such as sexual assault and car accidents.
Recently, psychiatric categories such as post-traumatic stress disorder have gained traction in alt and online communities, becoming part of the circulation of identity categories and descriptors with which people try to navigate the world.
The video is made up of material based on two trauma treatments, virtual reality re-enactment and MDMA. It combines found and original footage, sourced from news items, image banks and an afternoon spent on MDMA. Black seeks to address how the concept of trauma has become a kind of universal solvent in which perpetrator and victim, counter-culture and hegemonic violence are dissolved.
The work takes the form of an online video. The commission is part of our This is Public Space web commissions series.
