Rage
Ysabel Catherina
“Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.” - Ranier Maria Rilke
Some of this film was shot during my time at FSU. I had gotten into my dream school at the time with scholarships and opportunities but everything was so different than what I thought. I was in a very different environment and I did not know anyone. I also did not realize my depression medication had stopped working until it was too late. I was freaking out and dealing with thoughts of suicide, intrusive thoughts, intense adhd, nightmares, panic attacks, inability to focus, to concentrate, to eat. It felt like my mind and body turned against me and I did not have anyone I could trust.
I needed help and the only accessible form of medical help was through the FSU health center.
The doctor was a rigid white woman. Everytime a medication did not work, it seemed to frustrate her. I felt unheard and unsafe. At one point, I was on medication that made me feel so incredibly numb that I felt like I was a shell of a human being. It was terrifying and it made me angry. Was this how they wanted me? Soulless, lifeless.
Later, I was a baker acted against my will.
What I witnessed at the hospital and in the mental health care unit was deeply disturbing. Throughout this experience, I felt overwhelmed by fear, pain, and violation. I felt unprotected and completely misunderstood. Life became a nightmare—I couldn’t trust my mind, my body, or the very people I turned to for help.
Making this video was a catharsis. I wanted it to be disturbing because the things I witnessed and experienced were wrong and disturbing. So many realities in America are deeply disturbing and so many people look away. I wanted this to be filled with horror because that is how the experience felt.
I wanted this to be abstract. Something weird and not easily definable. Something you have to sit with and figure out.
This is not meant to be something where I morph myself into easily digestible material so other people feel comfortable.
“I deeply believe in the curative potential of therapy while remaining critically aware of the history and limitations of Western psychology. Psychology, as a field, has long been entangled with systems of social control, emerging alongside colonial expansion, industrialization, and institutionalization. Early psychological theories were wielded to justify racial hierarchies, reinforce colonial rule, and pathologize those who resisted dominant social norms—women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and Indigenous peoples among them. Asylums and psychiatric institutions often prioritized containment over care, and psychological frameworks like behaviorism and intelligence testing were used to shape obedient workers, soldiers, and citizens, aligning mental health with capitalist and state interests. Even diagnoses like “hysteria” functioned as a means of policing gender and sexuality, while homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder until 1973, illustrating how psychology has historically reinforced systemic oppression rather than dismantled it.” - Decolonizing.Love
My creative process involved myself, a camera, and being creative in imovie.
Much of the original work is spontaneous and meant to be a catharsis for a traumatic experience I had in the mental health system while at Florida State University. I want the mental health care system in America and the West to have a reckoning. I want deep change.
Much of the system is built on institutionalizing and controlling people instead of humanizing them. So much of my experience felt sick and like my humanity was pathologized.
Art was a way for me to feel human again, feel empowered, feel like I could create something I wanted out of a horrible experience. I hope this work is the antithesis of control. It is meant to be strange and abstract and not easy to understand or define. Part of this process was me embracing the horror and the fear in me, expressing it so it did not destroy me. Part of it was expressing how fucked up, afraid, and alone I felt.
This creative process is a remixing of old footage and material. The creative process involves somatics, video art, writing, and wounding. The writing and audio at the end is meant to explain some of the work - the why behind the art. This art comes from memories that still haunt me.
All things at Once/ Christian John https://www.instagram.com/decolonizing.love/reel/DGjVY8ePv2V/