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A photographic/storytelling project that is still in the midst of itself with an ending that is yet to be known.
I would, therefore, like to come before you and speak of myself.
We are in the throes of dark and broken times. The urge to either retreat into solitude and despair or to find distractions to numb the pain is intense. Both in and out of the consulting room, violence, turbulence, fear, rage, political disillusionment, and grief in reaction to this dark period in our nation's history arise beyond the ability to contain them. We have been here before. I find myself shutting down and without the capacity to think.
The management of violence is a shared task. Hanna Segal (1987/1997) asserted that psychoanalysts who believe in the therapeutic power of speech must not be silent in the face of human suffering. But words for me have felt empty and dead. Toni Morrison reminds us that these are the times when artists go to work. As I have done before during times of professional, sociopolitical, and personal crisis, I have turned to my art practice to occupy my own absence and to give form to my experiences (see Bassin, 2017). In doing so, I join other artists and activists resisting helplessness and dissociation. While artists are used to working in solitude, we instinctually know that we live and thrive in the shelter of others. We face the darkness in the company of others and grieve with them. Through my work with veterans who seek to transcend the community of silence and lack of recognition for war trauma, I have come to appreciate the need for civic public mourning, some kind of national response to the profound grief we carry as victims and perpetrators of violence.