We Will Become Statues (video)

       I thought this piece gave a very intimate look using every day montage sequences in co-op with an audio that was deeply profound in it's vivid use of storytelling. The visuals were pictures of still or moving images, most of which had a still background but had action happening in the foreground, like people walking or machinery moving, or snow falling against the night sky at the end. The stills used their movements wisely and coexisted in time with one another, allowing the viewer to catch up on the split screens as they were listening to Katherine Arline talk about her experiences on the mid-20's New York mental health system scene, working in "State myriads and as a social worker and case supervisor. It made a mark to address the main catastrophes of these people's experiences by sequencing the audio in a repetitive and discombobulated order, reflecting details in the system that are flawed, as well as how they're shaped by the people and their environments, that collectively make it flawed.
        One of the patients was picked up on the streets, found wandering alone and through city intersections at some time midday. Katherine explained that he was pretty young, Asian, and apparently was deaf and mute. They picked him up, and he would not say anything to the workers. But, after he was examined by an Asian doctor, the man started to speak to the doctor. This barrier of language, was a big issue present in many of the cases in those early days. I was just interviewing Jaimin for Illini Mentors, and we were discussing how international students here get ostracized at first because of the lack of similar representatives their age, their interests, their willingness to give their time to try and communicate to someone who does not speak the same language, I think that poses a lot of questioning in how we begin to approach integrative service in a social working medium. The representative faces of many institutions do not reflect its inhabitants.
        Near the end, there was a mention of patients eventually realizing they held a disconnect for the settings that their environments, shaped by a physical association to precedents outlining the building as a place they would never get out of. This mental feedback that these places were bad only support the notion that they were understaffed and underfunded, leading to a poor execution of their institutional responsibilities as a state mental facility. This matter of fixed environments with unchanging processions in social adaptation to the simplest matter of equitable sustainability for each individual, we cement them further into the system instead of letting them go through a rehabilitated cycle of treatment.