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the heart of the matter


i had a cart that i took with me on certain days, to hold different people's stories and experiences, to make together objects, items, memories.

an important part of my artist's kit.

I heard some good stories on this one. A lot of them ended up in my cart. Some street people helped me with my installation. One woman told me how her psychiatrist misdiagnosed her as schizophrenic and took her to conventions with him to show her off on stage. We took a cheap bag he had given her in return and destroyed it, and put the remains in my medical cart.

I befriended another woman who'd been in and out of hospitals and what she most wanted to learn was to make dolls. Well, that was also in my artist's kit, we made dolls of her wounded memories, we put them in the cart.

I read more of the literature, and began to line my cart with references to contemporary stories of abuse, in the Humanistic Psychology movement, in Gestalt therapy, in newer modalities. Stories of Fritz Perls hitting a patient across the face because, "she wanted it".  Stories of beatings in hospitals, beatings in clinics, beatings in alternative treatment centers, of misdiagnosis, of sub standard care. Sounded worse than jail.

As I changed I began to wear a mask, with stories written across it, and I wrote the stories along my dress to witness the brutality and senseless cruelty.

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