marie wengler
a visual dialogue
Marie and her visual dialogue partner started out with an interchange and mutually decided on the topic “Anxiety” before her partner disappeared and finally cut off communication with Marie and us. We decided to go ahead and publish the work of Marie who produced such compelling images.
anxiety
Screaming Silently / Silently Screaming
why do i feel so incomplete?
i created this image of myself so that people would like me but now i cannot escape that image
i played it too safe, worrying about the future, that i missed out on life
i feel like i have never been the main character in my own life
i made so many plans for the person i used to be and now i feel stuck in a life that's not mine, i feel like i don't belong in my own skin
i feel trapped in my own life
i feel trapped in what others want me to be
i have lied to myself about what i want to do with life for so long to accommodate others' expectations for me that i have lost who i really am
the idea of not being good enough haunts me
i'm scared this is all i will ever be
June, 2022
Marie
Unfortunately, there has not been much of a dialogue as I have not heard from my dialogue partner despite emailing several times with my different takes on our agreed theme: ANXIETY. I am sure there are reasons and I, of course, deeply respect that. I sincerely hope this person is alright.
However, I want to abide by my part of our agreement and I, hereby, send my three different takes on our agreement theme. We chose the subject of anxiety as we have both experienced suffering from anxiety in our lives. The idea was thus to have a visual dialogue based on our personal reflections about anxiety.
In this context, I chose to interpret the subject of anxiety from three different angles:
1) "[screaming silently]"(above): where I explore the cyclical relationship between anxiety and depression, visually examined and expressed through the experience of drowning, accompanied by personal reflections
2) "Mary": a study of the claustrophobic and panicky feeling of not being able to breathe properly during anxiety attacks, with a conscious visual reference (and pun) to the Renaissance Madonna.
3) "[self] othering": an exploration of social anxiety, ie. the fear of feeling alone amongst others; of not feeling like you fit in; of worrying about being judged by others because you are not like them; of feeling wrong and uncomfortable in one's own body in social interactions.
All three (mini) series are created within the specified time period in which our Visual Dialogue should have taken place. I have actively tried to challenge myself and dive into the subject of anxiety from different angles.
Mary
"[self] othering"
Following the collaboration we asked Marie about the experience.
1. What was your personal experience of A Visual Dialogue process?
For me, A Visual Dialogue was an ambivalent experience. On the one hand, it was a unique opportunity to dive into myself and retrospectively reflect on experiences I have had in the past with our agreed conversation topic: anxiety. These personal reflections triggered a cascade of ideas where I was only able to execute a few within the time frame of A Visual Dialogue. It was truly an inspiring and exciting personal experience – and it is definitely not the last time I will take part in such an experiment.
On the other hand, it was a shame to take the journey alone as my conversation partner, unfortunately, went quite silent after our initial dialogue. It made me deeply concerned about whether this person was feeling well or whether our agreed conversation topic had triggered adverse reactions due to this person's current experiences with anxiety. For this reason, you thus, unfortunately, can only see my outcome of the conversation in this version of A Visual Dialogue.
2. How do you feel about the outcome?
With the short time frame in mind and the monologic nature of our conversation, I am quite happy with the outcome.
Because my experiences with anxiety are in the past, I went about the Visual Dialogue as the researcher I am: as a sociologist mapping a phenomenon, using my own body as material for this study. It allowed me to distance myself from the personal experiences I have had with anxiety earlier in life and instead look at them from the outside with a curious, exploratory gaze. Therefore, my outcome of the Visual Dialogue is a number of series, each examining the theme of anxiety from different angles.
In my first experiment, Screaming Silently I Silently Screaming, I visualise the comorbidity of anxiety and depression. The series is accompanied by daily written reflections. In my second experiment, [self] OTHERING, I zoom in on social anxiety, which draws on my personal experiences as a neurodiverse individual in a neurotypical world. Finally, I initiated a third experiment, MARY, where I zoom out and reflect critically on the basis for my anxiety as a woman in today’s society: the "suffocating" gender norms that continue to limit women's agency.
3. How will it affect how you work or think about making work in the future?
Besides learning what an interesting exercise it can be to put oneself in a situation where you have to creatively examine a chosen topic within a minimal time frame, the experiment has also kickstarted my creativity in new directions. At the time of writing, I thus have a number of new series in the pipeline, all of which fit into my broader artistic practice, where I explore the limits of "normality” in society. In addition, I have chosen to continue working on one of the series, MARY, as I believe it offers something intriguing that I feel like exploring further.