Subsistence Abuse

                The self-induced harm of living at the bare minimum. The blindness of depression. These are the ideas that my film centers around. My goal with this project was to explore the act of closing oneself off from the world. I used dance and music to portray the effects of living this way and the feeling that it is unavoidable. The choreographed sections of movement were derived from the five stages of grief. The improvisation centered on words relating to depression. The music presents an unstructured melody over a constant driving force. These contrasting sounds hint at the contradictory nature of living with depression. Wanting to be free of something but not being able.

                This project began three years ago in a very different form. My original idea was to create a documentary style dance film that brought awareness of blindness to how dance is taught and performed. I was realizing that dance was a largely visual medium, while simultaneously seeing many commercial dances using blindness as a metaphor for obstacles to overcome. Shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” have no problem blindfolding a dancer for shock value, and then removing the blindfold at the end of the dance to show that the dancer has overcome something holding them back. I hated the trivialization of blindness in such pieces and wanted to create something different.

                My idea was to create a dance that included blindness as something real that couldn’t just be removed. I wanted the lack of visual aid to be a part of the choreographic process and for this to be present in the final film as well. I actually wanted to cover my eyes for a few months of summer while creating and putting together the choreography for this film with five other dancers. During this time, I wanted to interview blind dancers and choreographers and find ways to include them in the process. I soon realized that the bounds of this project were beyond my current reach.

                I finished what would have been my senior year without completing this massive project and I was unsure of how to move forward. After a year away, I came back to school to design a manageable project out of the original outline. I did not want to depart entirely from my original plan and felt the need to present something equivalent for those who helped fund this project. I first had to decide what I could accomplish with the time and money that I had available. This required parsing through my original ideas and motivations before taking the project through a redesign.

                I concluded that I could retain the inspiration for the project by including blindness in the process and final product. I decided to shift the direction of the film to the blindness of depression. To steer clear from the trivialization of blindness which I so despise, I wanted to make sure that the end of the video would not bring a removal of disability. I didn’t want to make a film whose message was “If you try hard enough you will get better.” Instead, I wanted the film to show how impossible it can be to see a way out of depression. I wanted to show the similarities between actual blindness and the closed off world of depression.

                After some inner debate, I settled on the idea of having one dancer. Though I originally wanted a group, I realized that having one dancer would better represent the closed off world which I was trying to present. The next step was deciding on locations. I decided on liminal spaces such as railroad tracks and abandoned buildings. These locations presented their own metaphors about living with depression. Railroad tracks present this sense of being stuck when you should be moving forward. Abandoned buildings feel like something that should have been left behind; living in the past without being able to move on.

                I kept coming back to this idea of constantly moving without getting anywhere. I feel that sensation is present both physically and mentally in depression. To bring this feeling into the camera work I decided that I wanted the camera to be constantly moving. Mainly I did not want a tripod. I wanted to avoid that sense of stability. There are times when the dancer finds stillness, yet even that is unstable because of the camera. The movement of the camera is always centered on the dancer, so it is constantly moving but not really getting anywhere.

                During the filming process, I had the dancer cycle between choreographed movement and improvisation. The choreography was created in collaboration with the dancer Cole Rietenbach. I wrote down a list of words relating to depression, and then had Cole pick out ten words that he thought best represented each of the five stages of grief. I then had Cole close his eyes and create one movement for each of these words. In this way, we created five different movement phrases. In filming, we mainly stuck to the first stage/phrase denial, and the last stage/phrase acceptance. I think these stages can be the hardest to get past, and the last stage can often cycle back to the first. I think the stages of grief can be an important part of moving forward with mental disorders or physical disabilities. Presenting these ‘book end’ stages throughout the film brings back the idea of moving without getting anywhere. These five stages are not a simple one-time process, just like moving forward with a mental disorder or physical disability is not a one-time acclimation.

                The improvisation was much less structured. Most of the time the movement was just stemming from how Cole reacted to the environment without being able to see it. The different movement that came up in different locations brings a perspective to the film. In the same way that Cole’s outfits change, his reactions to his environment change. I see this as a representation of the dailiness of disorders and disabilities. With each new day comes new challenges and new strategies to face those challenges. Every day is different, and every person is affected in a different way. 

                The abandoned building that makes up a majority of the shots in the film ended up burning down after Cole and I filmed there the first time. This made it impossible to do reshoots, but I decided to role with it and filmed some shots there afterward. I used these shots in subliminal flashes throughout the film that come to a climax at the end where we get to see Cole standing amidst the rubble. I relate this to the slow realization that you have fallen into a cycle of depression. The signs can be hard to recognize, and recognition isn’t enough to get you out of that cycle.

                The music represents this cycle for me. The slow melody represents a sense of contentment amidst a growing depressive state. Short term escape from stress leads to long term avoidance. This is where the personal world closes off and the blindness of depression takes over. The percussive driving tone underneath represents the back of the mind telling you to “snap out of it.” Notice that this tone never really reaches a climax in the film. It is there but never managing to overpower the soft melody. My hope is that this leaves viewers with that sense of yearning for that tone to get louder. This is similar to the feeling of wanting to get out of depression, wanting your brain to somehow overpower itself. It is conflicting and simultaneously calming in a frustrating way.

                For a majority of the film, the audio from the original footage is cut out. I have seen this in many films, and it always seems to leave viewers with an impression of limbo. The video almost seems disconnected. Luckily this was exactly my intention with this film. The sensation of limbo helps viewers experience the disassociation felt in depression. It brings the viewer into the closed off world that the dancer is portraying. The sections where the audio does come in are moments where Cole is slamming himself on the floor. This brings the important context of pain into the film. When in a state of depression, it can be hard to experience emotions. Things can feel muted (just like the audio). At times it can feel like pain is the one thing that can be felt, or possibly the one thing that can get you out. Get you unstuck. This can lead to harmful actions. In the film Cole repeatedly slams himself to the floor.

                At different points throughout the film there are projections of Cole on the walls behind him. These are videos of Cole outside being projected into the dark space that he is currently in. These allow a glimpse at the nostalgia one might feel toward better times. Times before they got stuck. The first of these projections is Cole running down the railroad tracks. At first look this can seem brighter and possibly happier, but it actually shows the path that was taken to get to the closed off place the dancer is in now. This transition shows the act of running away from something, which eventually leads to the long-term avoidance shown in the dark building. This is the closed off world that is a result of the previous escape.

                The running shots form part of the climax of the film, as they are both the cause and the result of the depressive state represented in the film. This act of running away is what completes the cycle and prevents any actual progress forward. This is where the five stages of grief go from acceptance right back to denial. This circles back to the idea of moving without getting anywhere. This cycle is broken to a certain extent when the subliminal images climax, but this leads to a type of self-harm (the dancer slamming himself to the floor) as a different attempt at escape.

                The title “Subsistence Abuse” is an attempt to amalgamate all the ideas previously mentioned. It lends a sense of self abuse to the act of living at the bare minimum. This is what can end up happening when someone gets into such a depressive state. They get into a cycle of just doing what is necessary to survive. The play on words also brings the film into the realm of substance abuse which can be a result and further cause of depression. I hope that this film can bring an awareness to the reality of depressive states, while also relating them to the experience of blindness. If more people understood the blindness of depression, they may be more likely to reach out when in need and to those in need.